{"id":10596,"date":"2024-05-24T14:37:01","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T18:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=10596"},"modified":"2024-05-24T14:37:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T18:37:01","slug":"pope-francis-accused-of-heresy-after-calling-the-human-heart-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/05\/pope-francis-accused-of-heresy-after-calling-the-human-heart-good.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis Accused of Heresy After Calling the Human Heart \u201cgood\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Riccardo De Luca \u2013 Update \/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pope Francis has drawn accusations of heresy after a recent \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview<\/a> with Norah O\u2019Donnell showed him calling the human heart \u201cgood.\u201d After discussing women in the church and the Pope\u2019s blessing of homosexual individuals, O\u2019Donnell asked the Pope what gives him hope. Pope Francis responded (translated from Spanish) saying \u201cEverything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live. People forge ahead. And people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pope\u2019s words fly in the face of traditional Christian doctrine, which teaches that humanity lives in a fallen state of sin, unable to redeem itself, and requiring a perfect sacrifice in the form of Jesus Christ, the only perfect and sinless man. It also goes against Jeremiah 17:9 which states \u201cThe heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?\u201d and Jesus\u2019s words in Mark 10:18 when he expresses that none are good except God. X<\/a> did add context to the Pope\u2019s words, noting he had said \u201csomos un poco p\u00edcaros y pecadores,\u201d which literally means \u201cwe are a little bit rogues and sinners\u201d rather than \u201csome rogues and sinners.\u201d That does not address, however, the idea that people or the heart are fundamentally good. \u201cIf this is true, we don’t need a Savior to die on the Cross. So this pope is a heretic,\u201d Eric Metaxas, who comments on Christianity and culture, wrote on X<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cThis is core to Christianity. Because if everyone is basically good, the gospel is not good news. If the gospel is not good news, what\u2019s the point?\u201d wrote<\/a> \u201cRelatable\u201d podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey.<\/p>\n

Other users on X accused the Pope of heresy, calling his viewpoint Pelagianism, so named after Pelagius, a fifth century Catholic monk who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for teaching that humanity is inherently good. Al Mohler<\/a>, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had strong words against the Pope. After declaring the papacy an \u201cunbiblical office,\u201d Mohler called Pope Francis a contradiction. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a man who now inhabits that office who is the contradiction of at least many of the claims made by the Roman Catholic Church. He\u2019s not the defender of even those Roman Catholic doctrines. Well, he relativizes them. He emotionalizes them.\u201d After affirming that the Bible calls the heart \u201cdesperately wicked,\u201d Mohler stated that the Pope\u2019s abandonment of Scripture was similar to liberal Protestant churches that have abandoned established doctrine. \u201cOne lesson here is that theological liberalism ends up as the same mush, whether it\u2019s Catholic mush or Protestant mush. It\u2019s mush,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis has drawn accusations of heresy after a recent \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Norah O\u2019Donnell showed him calling the human heart \u201cgood.\u201d After discussing women in the church and the Pope\u2019s blessing of homosexual individuals, O\u2019Donnell asked the Pope what gives him hope. Pope Francis responded (translated from Spanish) saying \u201cEverything. You see tragedies,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":10602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Francis Accused of Heresy After Calling the Human Heart \u201cgood\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Francis has drawn accusations of heresy after a recent \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Norah O\u2019Donnell.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/05\/pope-francis-accused-of-heresy-after-calling-the-human-heart-good.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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