Pope Francis, who has often said that we should never judge, has unleashed one of his most brutal judgments against daily church-goers. As LifeSiteNews reports, during his General Audience of January 2, he condemned Catholics who go to church every day but who “go on hating” their fellow man. He said it “is better” that they not go.
“How many times have we witnessed the scandal of those who go to church and spend all day there or attend every day, and later go on hating others or speaking ill of people. This is a scandal,” the pontiff said.
Francis speaks of those tradition-minded Catholics who earnestly correct him of his many errors. A troubled conscience indeed is behind his rhetoric. While the ‘words’ of his Wednesday address carry much truth, they actually apply to Francis who has spent his pontificate detracting the defenders of holy tradition.
The pope went on to say, “It would be better to not go to church. Live like an atheist. If you go to church, then live like a son, like a brother, like an authentic witness, not a counter-witness.”
By “counter-witness,” he speaks of those loyal witnesses of tradition who counteract the modernist trend in the Church. Francis has a history of derogatorily referring to such witnesses as “superficial Christians,” “Idolaters,” “Gnostic”, “climbers…attached to money,” and “fomenters of coprophagia.” He has regularly referred to traditional Catholics as “rigid” and dubs “museum mummies” those proponents of the Latin Mass who adhere to the traditions of the old Church. Consider this excerpt from his Gaudete et Exsultate:
“Not infrequently, contrary to the promptings of the Spirit, the life of the Church can become a museum piece or the possession of a select few. This can occur when some groups of Christians give excessive importance to certain rules, customs or ways of acting.”
In his General Audience Francis also took a pop-shot at vocal prayer. According to the pope, those who devoutly say their vocal prayers [Rosaries] out-loud in church are “hypocrites” engaging in mindless parrot-babbling without heart just so “they can be seen by people.”
“Pagans,” the pontiff said, “think they pray by talking, talking, and talking. I think that many Christians believe that praying is to talk to God, if you’ll forgive me, like a parrot. No, praying is done in the heart, from within.”
His rant echoes the typical Protestant charge against “empty repeated prayers” said by Roman Catholics. And how interesting to note that his slight of vocal prayer comes just at a time when he is considering making a historic change to the most sacred and famous of all vocal prayers—the Our Father—on the grounds that this prayer as it is currently said “speaks of a God who induces temptation.” Is it that Francis loves prayer from the heart or is he just barking against heartful prayer?
Certainly, he has gone out of his way to extol heartless rebels who bark against the Church—people like Luther, Bonino, Camara, and Castro. According to Francis, censured homosexuals and liberals are the “marginalized ones” that Jesus has “crowned with joy.”
As we know, eulogizing rebels as martyrs is a commonly used ploy in the Communist world. Alluding to this red faction, the pope also said in his audience, “This is the Gospel revolution. Everyone is capable of love. Peacemakers that until then had been on the margin of history are building the Kingdom of God.” He emphasized, “Where the Gospel is, so too is revolution. The Gospel does not leave us unmoved. It pushes us; it is revolutionary.”
His use of the word “revolutionary” suggests that the Church is a Marxist organization that Jesus set up to counteract institutionalized religion. Did Francis not say more than once that “it is the communists who think like Christians” and that “the communists have stolen our flag”? The inference is that the communists and not the Catholics deserve to carry the flag of “justice and peace.”
Francis says, “It would be better not to go to church” than to “spend all day there” as “hypocrites.” Amen, it would be better never to go to church than to spend every day there trying to update and revolutionize the Church. Better that modernist hypocrites leave the Church, lest Christ suddenly come and sling them from His Temples!
Pope Francis: It’s better to be ‘atheist’ than attend daily mass as hypocrite