Ripped from the headlines

In March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Roman Catholic bishop in Argentina, became a whole lot of firsts:

• first pope from the Americas,
• first pope from the Southern Hemisphere,
• first non-European pope in 1,300 years,
• first Jesuit pope,
• first pope named Francis,
• and the first pope whose home country played the previous pope’s home country for the World Cup while both were still alive (Benedict XVI’s Germany vs. Pope Francis’ Argentina).

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You might have noticed that Francis seems to be making a lot of other firsts as well. Every week, sometimes every day, Pope Francis bursts onto my Facebook news feed:

• “Pope excommunicates mafia!”
• “Pope says atheists go to heaven!”
• “Pope says about homosexuality: ‘Who am I to judge?’”
• “Pope tells divorced woman she can take communion!”
• “Pope to meet with Eastern Orthodox at Nicea in 2025!”
• “Pope pays own hotel bill!”
• “Pope moves out of swanky papal apartments for simple rooms!”
• “Pope invites Muslims and Jews to pray in Vatican”
• “Pope washes the feet of women, convicts, Muslims on Maundy Thursday!”

People wonder: “Is this pope turning over a new leaf?”

An article by Vatican watcher John Thavis gives us the headline: “Curia rumblings about a pope who won’t be filtered”. Thavis cites the “unusual statement” of a Vatican spokesman reminding us that when the pope says or does things off the cuff (“Who am I to judge?”) “Consequences relating to the teaching of the church are not to be inferred from these occurrences.”

But what does it mean?

The Lutheran church teaches that the office of the papacy, far from being a moral exemplar or leader of the Christian Church, is actually one of the great enemies of the Christian Church.

Lutherans (and not just Lutherans, but many from other Protestant denominations) point to Scripture passages that warn about a “man of lawlessness” who “will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God”, a man who leads a great falling away bolstered by “counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2). The Spirit describes the coming of an Antichrist (1 John 4) who looks like the Lamb but speaks like the Dragon (Revelation 13). Daniel foretells an enemy who will emerge from the Roman Empire to wage “war against the saints and defeat them” (Daniel 7:21).

Passages like this, and the infamous behaviors of the popes during the Renaissance and Reformation (1375-1550 AD) led the Lutheran Reformers (among others) to say “that the pope is the true Endchrist or Antichrist” (Smalcald Articles, 1537).

Today many, even among Lutherans, lament or deny this teaching. How could we call a Christian leader such a thing? Aren’t there worse problems than popes? Don’t Francis’ words make it clear that Luther and others like him were all wet?

The problem

The identification of the pope as the Antichrist wasn’t just the result of party spirit or indigestion. Those who identify the pope as the Antichrist do so because of what he teaches and does.

What he does is put something between the Christian and Christ: himself.

• The pope damns to hell anyone who believes that faith alone in Jesus saves them from sin, death, and hell (Council of Trent, 1545-1563).
• The pope says you can’t know for sure you’re going to heaven (Council of Trent).
• The pope says that priests offer the Mass (Lord’s Supper) as a sacrifice that can buy the living and dead out of purgatory (Catechism of the Catholic Church).
• The pope says that if you do your best, you will go to heaven, whether you believe in Jesus or not (Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965; Catechism of the Catholic Church).
• The pope says that Jesus died for your sins, and that’s important, but you have to do the rest to earn – that’s right, earn! – eternal life (Catechism of the Catholic Church).

Still, some say: “I haven’t heard the pope say that.” They’re right. And they’re wrong. The last few popes have been more focused on fixing society, and when they discuss theology (at least the kind that makes headlines) it usually focuses on moral theology (abortion, divorce, homosexuality, women’s ordination). Yet, at the same time, they all affirm those papal teachings. Else they could not be pope. For example, Pope Francis explicitly reaffirmed the Vatican II teaching that anyone can go to heaven, as long as they do the best they can with what they have – Muslim, Jew, or atheist.

In other words, the pope teaches people to replace Jesus’ sacrifice for mankind’s sins with man’s own efforts to earn eternal life. The whole papal system rests on this devilish lie: that Jesus isn’t enough to make you sure of eternal life. You need to finish the job. Getting into heaven is up to you.

Church history, anyone?

The Who ended their song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with the line: “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMD_W_r3Fg?rel=0]

We can say the same about Pope Francis. People fawn all over him because he says things that sound somewhat revolutionary or like he might just be tweaking long-held Catholic teaching. But drawing that conclusion ignores papal history. The handlers of this current pope agree. According to Thavis, “they’re worried about the doctrinal and pastoral implications of the pope’s supposed remarks, and the risk of raising expectations for a change in church policy that may never occur” (emphasis mine).

That’s right: “may never occur.” Meet the new pope, same as the old pope. Consider some examples from “recent” papal history.

• After forty years of controversy when there were up to three popes at once, a church council elects Martin V (1417-1431), who promises that councils will make church decisions from now on. The moment he’s officially pope, he renounces his promise and officially reminds people that the pope is in charge.
• As the Lutheran Reformation takes hold, some recognize the need for reforming not just morals, not just doctrine, but the head and parts: that is, the papacy needs reform. Pope Paul III (1534-1549) asks for a reform document. He gets one. He puts it away. Indulgences still get sold. Lutherans still get treated like heretics. The Mass remains a sacrifice. The pope still demands unconditional obedience.
• In the nineteenth century, Piux IX (1846-1878) gets elected pope. He begins as a “liberal” granting rights and privileges to the people of central Italy that he rules not just as a spiritual lord, but also as a secular ruler. A previous pope forbade electric lights and trains, because, you know, they’re the devil. Two years later, after a revolution breaks out, things change for Pius and he becomes the pope who bellows, “I am Tradition! I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!”, who by his own authority defines for the church that Mary was conceived without original sin and jams through the teaching of papal infallibility: that the pope, sitting in God’s Temple (the Church), can, like God, define doctrines without error (significantly, the only two doctrines formally so defined said little to nothing about trusting in Christ as our Savior from sins and our confident hope for eternal life, but instead elevated Mary as born without sin and bodily assumed into heaven).
• Another “revolutionary” pope, John XXIII (1958-1963), convened the Second Vatican Council. People thought it would breath new life the church. Well, in a way, it did. John’s council said that non-Christians could get to heaven without Jesus. But Christians had better obey the pope, or else they’re not quite fully Christian.
• John Paul II (1978-2005), again, considered a “revolutionary,” door opening pope, spent many years in office and did many things (the fall of communism, anyone?), but he also decided that Christians and Muslims could pray together because they worship the same God. He also suggested that evolution and Genesis don’t conflict. And in 1999, when Lutherans and Catholics in Europe signed a “groundbreaking” doctrinal agreement that claimed to end the Reformation divide on the issue of justification by faith, at the same time, before the ink dried, John Paul promulgated an indulgence by which an individual could earn time out of purgatory.
• Benedict XVI (2005-2013), agreed with and continued in those ways. As a cardinal he said the ability for anyone and everyone to read the Bible and interpret for it themselves was a problem, and that only those who submit to the pope are fully members of the Church.

Francis stands in this unbroken succession. Meet the new pope, same as the old pope: damning to hell Christians who say with Paul, “We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law” (Romans 3:28). Francis talks a good game about Jesus, but he refuses to let Jesus alone take away the sins of the world when he says that you do that by sacrificial masses, purchasing indulgences, praying to Mary, and other good works. He makes Christ’s death of no value – “…for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:20) – when he agrees with his predecessors and says a path to heaven exists apart from faith alone in Jesus Christ.

So, am I saying that all Catholics are the Antichrist?

The Bible does not say Roman Catholics are the “man of lawlessness”, “the Antichrist”, or “the one who looks like Lamb but speaks like Dragon.” It says that about this leader who stands at the head, who claims to represent Christ, but instead “deceives those who are perishing” (2 Thessalonians 2:10).

We pray for the Christians of this church laboring under such a bad shepherd and we look forward to the day when “the Lord Jesus will overthrow [him] with the breath of his mouth” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). We also rejoice that our Lord has wounded this enemy of the church by the preaching of the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ in whom “God was reconciling the world to himself…not counting men’s sins against them” for “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:19, 21).

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Those words apply to Jesus Christ too. The plan has always been for God to come down and rescue us completely, not partially: God’s grace alone! The plan has always been for Jesus to do everything necessary, once for all, as the biblical writers put it, to guarantee God’s promise of heaven: faith alone in Jesus! The plan has always been for the Church to fix our eyes on Christ alone and nothing else: not Mary, not Masses, not indulgences, not purgatory, not the saints, not our own good deeds: Scripture alone guarantees that focus, and guarantees that we won’t be fooled again.