"Pope Declares No Hell?"So ran the riveting headline on the Drudge Report of Holy Thursday.
Drudge quoted this exchange, published in La Repubblica, between Pope Francis and his atheist friend, journalist Eugenio Scalfari.
Scalfari: "What about bad souls? Where are they punished?"
Bad souls "are not punished," Pope Francis is quoted, "those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls."
On the first Holy Thursday, Judas betrayed Christ. And of Judas the Lord said, "Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed; it were better for him if that man had never been born."
Did the soul of Judas, and those of the monstrous evildoers of history, "just fade away," as General MacArthur said of old soldiers? If there is no hell, is not the greatest deterrent to the worst of sins removed?
What did Christ die on the cross to save us from?
If Francis made such a statement, it would be rank heresy.
Had the pope been speaking ex cathedra, as the vicar of Christ on earth, he would be contradicting 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine, rooted in the teachings of Christ himself. He would be calling into question papal infallibility, as defined in 1870 by the Vatican Council of Pius IX.
Questions would arise as to whether Francis is a true pope.
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