Amoris Laetitia: Pope Francis encourages greater acceptance of those with lifestyles opposed to by the Bible

Francis’ Papal Coat of Arms

Pope Francis authorized the Synods on the Family in 2014 and 2015. He was unable to get enough bishops to support what he wanted, so today he did what could be termed his own version of an ‘executive order’ titled Amoris Laetitia or The Joy of Love.

Its first page consists of his papal coat of arms (shown at the beginning of this post) and the following:

POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION AMORIS L Æ TITIA OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO BISHOPS, PRIESTS AND DEACONS CONSECRATED PERSONS CHRISTIAN MARRIED COUPLES AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL ON LOVE IN THE FAMILY

Here is a link to the 264 page pdf document: Amoris Laetitia.

CNN and the New York Times summarized parts of it:

April 8, 2016

(CNN) Pope Francis put his shoulder to the doors of the Catholic Church and shoved them open a little wider Friday, calling for the church to be more tolerant in practice while not changing any official doctrines.

He urged priests around the world to be more accepting of gays and lesbians, divorced Catholics and other people living in what the church considers “irregular” situations.

“A pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws … as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives,” Francis writes in a sweeping paper outlining his stance on family matters.

He urges more common sense and less unthinking following of rules.

“By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth,” he writes.

He emphasizes that “unjust discrimination” against gays and lesbians is unacceptable, downplays the idea of “living in sin” and suggests that priests should use their own discretion on whether divorced Catholics in new marriages can take Communion. …

The Pope tells priests that they should make decisions appropriate to their local conditions.

“Each country or region … can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs,” he writes in a possible effort to satisfy both liberals and conservatives by decentralizing authority. http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/08/europe/vatican-pope-family/

April 8, 2016

ROME — In a broad proclamation on family life, Pope Francis on Friday called for the Roman Catholic Church to be more welcoming and less judgmental, and he seemingly signaled a pastoral path for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion.

The 256-page document — known as an apostolic exhortation and titled “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love” — calls for priests to welcome single parents, gay people and unmarried straight couples who are living together. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/world/europe/pope-francis-amoris-laetitia.html

Of course, Pope Francis can run the Church of Rome as he pleases. And he seems to wish to at least partially please those who promote the LGBT agenda as well as other forms of sexual immorality. Although many LGBT-types were disappointed, some others claim Pope Francis‘ “Amoris Laetitia” Is a Closeted Argument for Gay Marriage.”

The Pope has apparently reduced some restrictions related to ‘communion.’ But if he and his church feel that those who they believe as somehow living in sin and wish to remain doing so, then he has overlooked the following that the Apostle Paul wrote:

26 Whenever you eat this bread, then, and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. 27 Therefore anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup; 29 because a person who eats and drinks without recognising the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill and a good number have died. 31 If we were critical of ourselves we would not be condemned, 32 but when we are judged by the Lord, we are corrected by the Lord to save us from being condemned along with the world. (1 Corinthians 11:26-32, NJB)

Now, I intentionally used the New Jerusalem Bible, which is a Roman Catholic accepted translation of the Bible. While the above applies to Passover, the Church of Rome believes this applies to weekly/daily ‘communion.’

Should a professed ‘Christian’ leader teach that it is fine for people to commune to their “own condemnation”? One would think not. But Pope Francis seems to confuse tolerance of sin with love.

Notice something he has in his Amoris Laetitia paper that mentions the Apostle Paul:

First, Paul says that love “bears all things” (panta stégei ). This is about more than simply putting up with evil; it has to do with the use of the tongue. The verb can mean “holding one’s peace” about what may be wrong with another person. It implies limiting judgment, checking the impulse to issue a firm and ruthless condemnation: “Judge not and you will not be judged” (Lk 6:37). Although it runs contrary to the way we normally use our tongues, God’s word tells us: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (Jas 4:11).

But does this mean that Christians should not condemn evil, even if practiced by those who claim to be Christian, like Pope Francis implies?

No.

Look at the following from the Apostle Paul:

1 It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, immorality of a kind that is not found even among gentiles: that one of you is living with his stepmother. 2 And you so filled with your own self-importance! It would have been better if you had been grieving bitterly, so that the man who has done this thing were turned out of the community. 3 For my part, however distant I am physically, I am present in spirit and have already condemned the man who behaved in this way, just as though I were present in person. 4 When you have gathered together in the name of our Lord Jesus, with the presence of my spirit, and in the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 hand such a man over to Satan, to be destroyed as far as natural life is concerned, so that on the Day of the Lord his spirit may be saved. 6 Your self-satisfaction is ill founded. Do you not realise that only a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ; 8 let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 In my letter, I wrote to you that you should have nothing to do with people living immoral lives. 10 I was not including everybody in this present world who is sexually immoral, or everybody who is greedy, or dishonest or worships false gods — that would mean you would have to cut yourselves off completely from the world. 11 In fact what I meant was that you were not to have anything to do with anyone going by the name of brother who is sexually immoral, or is greedy, or worships false gods, or is a slanderer or a drunkard or dishonest; never even have a meal with anybody of that kind. 12 It is no concern of mine to judge outsiders. It is for you to judge those who are inside, is it not? 13 But outsiders are for God to judge. You must banish this evil-doer from among you. (1 Corinthians 5:1-13, NJB)

Again this is from the NJB to clearly point out that Pope Francis has a different take on this matter than the Apostle Paul and the Bible. So, while we in the Church of God are supposed to judge such matters according the the Apostle Paul, the current Bishop of Rome does not want this to happen.

While Christians are encouraged to help those with sins (cf. Galatians 6:1), condoning or tolerating public sexual immorality is not in the scriptures.

Yet, Pope Francis, sometimes subtly and sometime directly, speaks of tolerating the obviously sexually immoral in his church. And while the Church of Rome seemingly has decided to do that, the Bible warns specifically against that type of tolerance:

20 Nevertheless, I have a complaint to make: you tolerate the woman Jezebel who claims to be a prophetess, and by her teaching she is luring my servants away to commit the adultery of eating food which has been sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent but she is not willing to repent of her adulterous life. 22 Look, I am consigning her to a bed of pain, and all her partners in adultery to great hardship, unless they repent of their practices; 23 and I will see that her children die, so that all the churches realise that it is I who test motives and thoughts and repay you as your deeds deserve. (Revelation 2:20-23, NJB)

According to Jesus, those who divorce and remarry, for most reasons, are committing adultery:

9 Now I say this to you: anyone who divorces his wife — I am not speaking of an illicit marriage — and marries another, is guilty of adultery.’ (Matthew 19:9, NJB)

The Bible does not teach that the Church of God is supposed to tolerate intentional and ongoing sexual immorality. It is NOT love to encourage people to be in immoral lifestyles.

The pontiff mentioned being careful about throwing stones. But when Jesus discussed that, He also told an adulteress:

11 … go and sin no more (John 8:11)

Interestingly, the statement on the bottom of Francis’ coat of arms, miserando atque eligendo, translates into English as “pity and choosing.” Pope Francis has apparently also decided to choose to overlook biblical restrictions related to normal church attendance. (Note: Information related to the “IHS,” shown on his coat of arms, is in the article Marcus, the Marcosians, & Mithraism: Developers of the Eucharist?).

Notice something else the Apostle Paul wrote:

9 Do you not realise that people who do evil will never inherit the kingdom of God? Make no mistake — the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, the self-indulgent, sodomites, 10 thieves, misers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Some of you used to be of that kind: but you have been washed clean, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, NJB)

Thus if Christians were once sexually immoral or homosexual (sodomites), they are to have repented and been washed clean of that. They are not to go back to those practices as those that do so WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

Pope Francis wants people to accept a ‘gospel’ that was not part of what Jude referred to as “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3, NKJV).

Consider something else that the Apostle Paul wrote:

3 But I am afraid that, just as the snake with his cunning seduced Eve, your minds may be led astray from single-minded devotion to Christ. 4 Because any chance comer has only to preach a Jesus other than the one we preached, or you have only to receive a spirit different from the one you received, or a gospel different from the one you accepted — and you put up with that only too willingly. 5 Now, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to the super-apostles. 6 Even if there is something lacking in my public speaking, this is not the case with my knowledge, as we have openly shown to you at all times and before everyone. (2 Corinthians 11:3-6, NJB)

Paul is telling everyone that despite not being a popular speaker, he is teaching God’s word, and those that will listen to something in conflict with what he wrote are tolerating a different, a false, gospel.

Notice something else from Pope Francis’ paper:

No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and re – married, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves. Naturally, if someone flaunts an objective sin as if it were part of the Christian ideal, or wants to impose something other than what the Church teaches, he or she can in no way presume to teach or preach to others; this is a case of something which separates from the community (cf. Mt 18:17). Such a person needs to listen once more to the Gospel message and its call to conversion. Yet even for that person there can be some way of taking part in the life of community, whether in social service, prayer meetings or another way that his or her own initiative, together with the discernment of the parish priest, may suggest.

What the pontiff is claiming is that let’s say someone is in a biblically adulterous or other type of biblically immoral situation, if they do not flaunt it, they still should be treated as ‘Christian.’ And he takes this a step further by saying that even if the person flaunts the sin, that person still should be able to be involved with the Church of Rome in prayer meetings, social service, etc.

But Pope Francis seems to forget that the purpose of disfellowshipping people from the Church of God is to encourage them to repent (1 Corinthians 5:6).

Surely he must also be familiar with the following from the Apostle Paul:

26 For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature.

27 And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

28 And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient;

29 Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers,

30 Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

31 Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.

32 Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1:26-32, Douay-Rheims)

18 Keep away from sexual immorality. All other sins that people may commit are done outside the body; but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18, NJB)

Sexual immorality is not good for those who engage in it or who consent to it. The Ten Commandments teach us how to love God and our neighbor (cf. Matthew 22:38-40) and it is not good for our neighbor to participate in sexual immorality (cf. James 2:8-12).

Now, there was another particular quote from Francis’ paper I would like people to consider:

The Gospel goes on to remind us that children are not the property of a family, but have their own lives to lead.

People who believe that the world’s governments have the answers like to believe that the State has the first claim to children and then the parents. Pope Francis’ statement is consistent with that.

Why bring that up?

Because it is consistent with a pattern from this pontiff to support world governance and look to human governments as the solution to the world’s problems.

Pope Francis’ Laudato Si encyclical, last year, was a prelude to the New Universal Agenda’ that the United Nations adopted this past September.

Many world leaders believe that it will be international human cooperation and acceptance of a sexually immoral agenda that will bring a clean environment, peace, and prosperity. They do not believe it will really take the Kingdom of God to make that happen. They, however, also like the Vatican’s involvement as it can influence many of the world’s 1.2 billion alleged Roman Catholics, as well as others in other faiths.

Mystery Babylon the Great (Revelation 17:5) is gaining momentum, and the immoral LGBT agenda is one of the ways those associated with the “great city” (Revelation 17:18) have been doing this the past couple of years.

Some items of related interest may include:

The Gospel of the Kingdom of God This free online pdf booklet has answers many questions people have about the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and explains why it is the solution to the issues the world is facing.
The Gospel of the Kingdom of God was the Emphasis of Jesus and the Early Church Did you know that? Do you even know what the gospel of the kingdom is all about? You can also see a YouTube video sermons Why Teach the Kingdom of God? and The Gospel of the Kingdom.
United Nations: Humankind’s Last Hope or New World Order? Is the UN the last hope for humanity? Or might its goals end up with sinister results? Two related videos include UN’s ‘New Universal Agenda’ is a False Gospel! and United Nations and Vatican Are Planning the New World Order.
Do You Know That Babylon is Forming? How is the final Babylon forming? Are Protestants such as Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland are endorsing something dangerous? Could Pope Francis be the ‘False Prophet’ that the Bible warns against? Is an antipope expected to endorse a one-world religion? Here is a link to a related written article In Vatican City: New Babylon more openly forming!
Why Should American Catholics Fear Unity with the Orthodox? Are the current ecumenical meetings a good thing or will they result in disaster? Is doctrinal compromise good? Here is a link to a related video Should you be concerned about the ecumenical movement?
Will the Interfaith Movement Lead to Peace or Sudden Destruction? Is the interfaith movement going to lead to lasting peace or is it warned against? A video sermon of related interest is: Will the Interfaith Movement lead to World War III? and a video sermon is also available: Do You Know That Babylon is Forming?
Some Similarities and Differences Between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Continuing Church of God Both groups claim to be the original church, but both groups have differing ways to claim it. Both groups have some amazing similarities and some major differences. Do you know what they are?
Orthodox Must Reject Unity with the Roman Catholics Unity between these groups will put them in position to be part of the final end time Babylon that the Bible warns against as well as require improper compromise.
Cross-dressing and other assaults against your children. What should you do? Is there an agenda to turn your children and/or grandchildren away from biblical morality and towards practices promoted by homosexuals? What does the Bible teach about cross-dressing? What should parents do? If there is an agenda, what has been going on? There are also two YouTube videos related to this, titled Transgender ‘Woe to those who call evil good’ and Cross dressing and Other Assaults Against Your Children.
The Bible Condemns Homosexuality “Same-sex marriage” for “gays” and lesbians is becoming more acceptable to many. What does the Bible teach about homosexuality? Can homosexuals change? A related video sermon is titled: What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?
Pornography: A scourge on society Is pornography harmless fun? Does the Bible teach anything about it? What are the views of some involved with it? Here is a link to a YouTube video Pornography: Harmless Fun or a Scourge on Society?
When Will the Great Tribulation Begin? 2016, 2017, or 2018? Can the Great Tribulation begin today? What happens before the Great Tribulation in the “beginning of sorrows”? What happens in the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord? Is this the time of the Gentiles? When is the earliest that the Great Tribulation can begin? What is the Day of the Lord? Who are the 144,000? Here is a version of the article in the Spanish language: ¿Puede comenzar la Gran Tribulación en 2016 o 2017? ¿Es el Tiempo de los Gentiles? You can also see the English language sermon video: The Great Tribulation from the Mount of Olives. A shorter video is: Can the Great Tribulation Start in 2016?
Laudato Si: Pope’s Agenda or Kingdom of God? Pope Francis’ 2nd encyclical is titled ‘Laudato Si.’ In it, he goes over his views related to environmental, economic, social, moral, agricultural, and spiritual issues. He advocates international cooperation to solve various problems he believes are affecting humanity. Is that Pope’s agenda the solution? What about the Kingdom of God? does the Bible teach? Two related articles include Laudato Si: Will Pope Francis’ economic actions match his words? and Laudato Si: A call for a one-world government?
Some Doctrines of Antichrist Are there any doctrines taught outside the Churches of God which can be considered as doctrines of antichrist? This article suggests at least three. It also provides information on 666 and the identity of “the false prophet.” Plus it shows that several Catholic writers seem to warn about an ecumenical antipope that will support heresy. You can also watch a video titled What Does the Bible teach about the Antichrist?
Where is the True Christian Church Today? This free online pdf booklet answers that question and includes 18 proofs, clues, and signs to identify the true vs. false Christian church. Plus 7 proofs, clues, and signs to help identify Laodicean churches. A related sermon is also available: Where is the True Christian Church? Here is a link to the booklet in the Spanish language: ¿Dónde está la verdadera Iglesia cristiana de hoy? Here is a link in the German language: WO IST DIE WAHRE CHRISTLICHE KIRCHE HEUTE? Here is a link in the French language: Où est la vraie Église Chrétienne aujourd’hui?
Continuing History of the Church of God This pdf booklet is a historical overview of the true Church of God and some of its main opponents from Acts 2 to the 21st century. Related sermon links include Continuing History of the Church of God: c. 31 to c. 300 A.D. and Continuing History of the Church of God: 4th-16th Centuries. The booklet is available in Spanish: Continuación de la Historia de la Iglesia de Dios, German: Kontinuierliche Geschichte der Kirche Gottes, and Ekegusii Omogano Bw’ekanisa Ya Nyasae Egendererete.