Dear Doves,

Pope Francis gave his second interview.

Pope Francis cranked up his charm offensive on the world outside the Vatican on Tuesday, saying in the second widely shared media interview in two weeks that each person “must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them” and calling efforts to convert people to Christianity “solemn nonsense.”

The Vatican’s head seemed intent on distancing himself from its power, saying church leaders “have often been narcissists” and “clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity.”

A top official with the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, took the unprecedented step of rebuking Francis, writing that the pope’s interview was “a theological wreck” and that Francis was dabbling dangerously in relativism.

“What these interviews seem continually to do is what evangelical theologian Carl Henry warned Protestants of in the 20th century, of severing the love of God from the holiness of God,” wrote the Rev. Russell Moore, a past dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and head of the convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “We must speak with tenderness and gentleness, but with an authoritative word from God.”

Some conservative Catholics were also taken aback by the interview.

“My e-mail is filled with notes from people who need to be talked off the ledge,” wrote the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, author of one of the more popular blogs for Catholic conservatives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/pope-francis-stirs-debate-yet-again-with-interview-with-an-atheist-italian-journalist/2013/10/01/9e7a6790-2acb-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_print.html

Full transcript here:

http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2013/10/01/news/pope_s_conversation_with_scalfari_english-67643118/

Contained in the above, Pope Francis said to his atheist interviewer:

“From my point of view, God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us. In the letter I wrote to you, you will remember I said that our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone."

My comment: interesting that he mentions the end of our species, and his talk throughout of ‘light’ reminds me of the Bible saying that satan would appear as an “angel of light”.

YsiChrist,

Patty RP