I’m getting ready to tell you something profound, and most importantly, from the heart.
Catholic Culture reports on the Pope’s video message to the John 17 ecumenical movement’s meeting in Phoenix over the weekend.
Pope Francis sent a video message to the Celebration of Christian Unity, an event that took place on May 23 at the Phoenix Convention Center.
The celebration was sponsored by the John 17 Movement, an organization founded by a Protestant pastor and whose leadership team includes a bishop, Catholic laymen, and evangelical Protestants.
“I will be with you spiritually and with all my heart,” the Pope said. “We will search together, we will pray together, for the grace of unity. The unity that is budding among us is that unity which begins under the seal of the one Baptism we have all received. It is the unity we are seeking along a common path. It is the spiritual unity of prayer for one another. It is the unity of our common labor on behalf of our brothers and sisters, and all those who believe in the sovereignty of Christ.”
Unity among Protestants and Catholics is not something worth seeking. It’s a ridiculous idea very common to our time. What is there to unite? Of course we can love each other. Of course we can praise virtue and regret sin, but there is only unity in the Faith. How will they ever see this if we keep acting like fools, giving false honor to their lies?
The Pope sounds as if unity with heretics is some high holy goal when in truth unity with heresy can only equal sin and death. I wonder why there’s so much of both today!
Referring to Satan– “the Father of Lies, the Father of Discord,”– the Pontiff added:
feel like saying something that may sound controversial, or even heretical, perhaps. But there is someone who “knows” that, despite our differences, we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he who is persecuting Christians today, he who is anointing us with (the blood of) martyrdom. He knows that Christians are disciples of Christ: that they are one, that they are brothers! He doesn’t care if they are Evangelicals, or Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics or Apostolic…he doesn’t care! They are Christians. And that blood (of martyrdom) unites.
Today, dear brothers and sisters, we are living an “ecumenism of blood”. This must encourage us to do what we are doing today: to pray, to dialogue together, to shorten the distance between us, to strengthen our bonds of brotherhood.
If I were a sentimental Protestant, of which there are very few among the more faithful Baptists and Evangelicals, I might be swayed by this nonsense; but I don’t imagine I’d be moved enough to renounce my own heresies, give up my sins, and become Catholic. That would require facing hard realities, not feel-good-ism. But that’s not what’s so striking about the Pope’s statement here. It’s the fact that he thinks the Devil could care less whether people are Catholic or not.
To call blood shed at the hands of ISIS a sign of Christian unity is to make bloodthirsty Muslims our Christian touchstone is it not? We all must die and even bleed, some of us at the hands of others. Many, please God, will call upon Christ or stand with Him at that moment; but does that make us united in Faith? Of course not.
We can’t count on our bishops nor our Pope today to express what matters in terms of Heaven and Hell; but one thing for which we can be certain, the Devil does care about those things! If it means Hell then he’s for it. If it means Heaven, he’s against. The Devil is hateful, angry and proud, but he is not blind to his own cause.
The Pope himself, in his own clumsy and self-revealing way, knows that this sounds like heresy. He says as much but he doesn’t seem to care. He is not here to condemn heresies. He’s here to build and solidify the new FrancisChurch. He’s on a mission, and he seems just as ready to spread destructive falsehoods about the Devil as he is about God Himself.
