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Thread: Pope Francis Urges Christians Not to Try to Convert Nonbelievers

  1. #1

    Pope Francis Urges Christians Not to Try to Convert Nonbelievers

    Pope Francis Urges Christians Not to Try to Convert Nonbelievers

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...-nonbelievers/

    THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D. 18 Jan 2023

    ROME — Pope Francis said Wednesday that trying to convince someone to become a Christian is a “pagan” activity unworthy of followers of Christ.

    “To evangelize is not to proselytize,” the pope told crowds gathered in the Vatican for his weekly general audience. “To proselytize is something pagan, it is neither religious nor evangelical.”

    “This is not about proselytism, as I said, so that others become ‘one of us’ – no, this is not Christian,” he reiterated. “It is about loving so that they might be happy children of God.”

    According to the Cambridge Dictionary, proselytizing means “to try to persuade someone to change their religious or political beliefs or way of living to your own.”

    Proselytism — or the attempt to convert others to one’s faith — is different from evangelization, the pope has proposed, which is the joyful witness of one’s experience of Christ.

    “You know your contemporaries, you know that many are alone, that many do not know Jesus,” Francis told young people gathered for a national Catholic youth conference in 2019. “Go, go and bring the Lord, go and fill your environments, even the digital, but not of convictions, not to convince, not to proselytize, but to witness to the tenderness and mercy of Jesus.”

    The following month, the pope told a group of Christian high school students that they should respect people of other faiths and not attempt to convert them to Christianity, insisting “we are not living in the times of the crusades.”

    Asked by one of the students how a Christian should treat people of other faiths, the pope said that “we are all the same, all children of God” and that true disciples of Jesus do not proselytize.

    A Christian should never try to convince others of the truth of Christianity but should simply give a testimony of consistency and wait for others to ask about the faith, he proposed.

    “You must be consistent with your faith,” he said. “It never occurred to me (and nor should it) to say to a boy or a girl: ‘You are Jewish, you are Muslim: come, be converted!’ You be consistent with your faith and that consistency is what will make you mature. We are not living in the times of the crusades.”

    “The last thing I should do is to try to convince an unbeliever. Never,” he said. “The last thing I should do is speak. I should live my faith with consistency. And it will be my witness that will awaken the curiosity of the other who may then ask: ‘But why do you do this?’ And yes, then I can speak.”

    “But listen, the gospel is never, ever advanced through proselytism,” he continued. “If someone says he is a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, he is not a disciple of Jesus. Proselytism is not the way; the Church does not grow by proselytism.”

    The Church grows by attraction, by witness, he said. “Soccer teams can do proselytism, this can be done, political parties can do it, but there should be no proselytism with the faith. And if someone asks me: ‘But why do you do this?’ Read, read, read the Gospel, this is my faith. But without pressure.”
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11



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  3. #2
    This is a communist Pope of Satan, an anti-Pope who directly contradicts the word of Christ himself:

    16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

    17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

    18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

    19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

    20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.


    Matthew 28 Verses 16-20 KJV
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    This is a communist Pope of Satan, an anti-Pope who directly contradicts the word of Christ himself:

    16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

    17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

    18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

    19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

    20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.


    Matthew 28 Verses 16-20 KJV
    Popes are usually politicians. They usually choose their words carefully. In the recent past a lot of seemly horrible things said by popes were bad translations. The current guy really is that bad.

    He is devious enough to leave an out for himself in saying something to the effect of actions are louder than words, but in this case the action is social justice warriorship not acts of faith.

    That's one reason I left the Catholic Church years ago. I was teaching the kids classes and the curriculum had nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with social communist justice. Lots of denominations are heading that way.
    ...

  5. #4
    I should know better, having been born (tho no longer) a Catholic, but this should be grounds for ex-communication, right? This goes directly against doctrine, does it not?

  6. #5
    THE antichrist speaketh
    FLIP THOSE FLAGS, THE NATION IS IN DISTRESS!


    why I should worship the state (who apparently is the only party that can possess guns without question).
    The state's only purpose is to kill and control. Why do you worship it? - Sola_Fide

    Baptiste said.
    At which point will Americans realize that creating an unaccountable institution that is able to pass its liability on to tax-payers is immoral and attracts sociopaths?

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by RJB View Post
    Popes are usually politicians. They usually choose their words carefully. In the recent past a lot of seemly horrible things said by popes were bad translations. The current guy really is that bad.

    He is devious enough to leave an out for himself in saying something to the effect of actions are louder than words, but in this case the action is social justice warriorship not acts of faith.

    That's one reason I left the Catholic Church years ago. I was teaching the kids classes and the curriculum had nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with social communist justice. Lots of denominations are heading that way.
    Quote Originally Posted by A Son of Liberty View Post
    I should know better, having been born (tho no longer) a Catholic, but this should be grounds for ex-communication, right? This goes directly against doctrine, does it not?
    It's my understanding that a Christian's number one duty, ahead of everything else, is to bring people to Christ.

    Salvation is impossible without Christ:

    Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

    John 14 Verse 6 KJV
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    It's my understanding that a Christian's number one duty, ahead of everything else, is to bring people to Christ.

    Salvation is impossible without Christ:

    Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

    John 14 Verse 6 KJV
    Yes, I would agree that spreading the Word is a Christian's duty, but specifically to Roman Catholic doctrine I believe though I'm not 100% sure that this is an excommunicable offense. But again, I'm not sure. Seems like it should be, though.

  9. #8
    I'm no fan of Bergoglio's theology, but I think this is one of the less controversial things I've seen him say. Jesus sent us into the world to "make disciples" (Matthew 28:18) but the altar-call and similar "come to Jesus" outreach events you see in the modern evangelical Protestant churches is a very poor representation of the Great Commission. Jesus says, "All power in heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The "therefore" is connecting his power to what follows. He's saying that he has defeated Hell itself in the Resurrection, and so the disciples are to go forth from Israel into "the nations" (goyim) and conquer the demonic powers in his name, finishing the work he began on earth in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Another way of looking at it is that the whole world is Jerusalem and the Gospel narrative is repeating itself, this time, over the earth instead of just in Jerusalem. But when they go to crucify his body (the church) this time (in the Great Tribulation, Matthew 24), the outcome isn't going to be the same. This time, he will come down off the Cross and save himself and his church, along with himself.

    This picture of the Gospel is very different from the sales-pitch / MLM style of "Gospel" you frequently hear in modern churches. Yes, part of the Gospel is getting the word out (preaching). But that's not the whole of the Gospel. And while we baptize all who come to Jesus, this is not primarily a "culture war". Culture, with some important exceptions, is neutral. The goal is not to proselytize people away from their culture, their race, their lifestyle and way of life, except in one respect, and that is sin. So, if the Gospel is proselytic, it is proselytic in one and only one way: Repent! Stop sinning! Throw away your sin, your lifestyle of sin, your culture of sin, and obey Jesus because his kingdom is at hand. Notice that this has nothing to do with whether you drink or smoke or dance. It has to do with whether you sin, however you sin.

    In modern cultures with a Christian heritage (like the US), we have well demonstrated that sin flows through any kind of activity, it doesn't need a special space in which to exist. You don't need to drink in order to sin. You don't need to dance in order to sin. There's plenty of sin in our churches that tolerate no drinking or dancing. And yet these churches tend to be the most proselytic, the most oriented around getting that "hard conversion" from living in the gutter to following Jesus. Nothing wrong with a hard conversion, praise God when that happens, but those are the exceptional cases. Most people come to God because they've run out of their own "solutions" to the problems in their life. Those problems are the Gospel directly from God's own tongue, and so they are driven into the arms of Christ by the impossibility of solving the problems of life resulting from sin much more than they are by any sales-pitch or slick Gospel marketing campaign. The reason is obvious -- talk is cheap. Anybody with cash can build a massive marketing campaign. Therefore, the scale and grandeur of your marketing machine says nothing about whether you are offering the Truth or not. But lives are not cheap. A church comprised of people who actually live the Gospel is a far more powerful and permanent witness to what the Gospel really is. The Gospel is not a product or an idea, it's a transformation. That's what Bergoglio is saying, here.

    Once again, I want to clarify that I disagree with much of what I've read of Bergoglio's theology. I'm the furthest thing from a papal cheerleader. But it's important to acknowledge when he speaks truth, so as not to reduce the strength of the criticism if he speaks error.

    If you (generic) are interested in learning more about this old-fashioned way of understanding the Gospel, I highly recommend the following discussion, it is well worth the time-investment:

    Last edited by ClaytonB; 01-18-2023 at 02:15 PM.
    Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28



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  11. #9
    Standard Marxist procedure. Do a one 180 whenever convenient. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  12. #10
    I wonder how much it cost the WEF to secure this guy his office?
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  13. #11
    Don't you guys realize he is joking?

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged View Post
    Don't you guys realize he is joking?
    OBVIOUSLY

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged View Post
    Don't you guys realize he is joking?
    Quote Originally Posted by A Son of Liberty View Post
    OBVIOUSLY
    Oh no. I'm not getting into another argument about whether someone was joking or not again, not for a long while. Ha ha!
    ...

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by RJB View Post
    Oh no. I'm not getting into another argument about whether someone was joking or not again, not for a long while. Ha ha!

  17. #15
    https://twitter.com/ClownWorld_/stat...23516865114112

  18. #16
    Pope Francis Urges Christians Not to Try to Convert Nonbelievers
    Hmmmmm ...

    https://twitter.com/disclosetv/statu...76316001534122



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  20. #17
    Seems like there is another major religion that does not proselytize or attempt to convert people. Perhaps the Pope himself has converted to that religion...
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  21. #18
    I urge the Pope to step down from his position and stop promoting communist garbage.
    "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."

    Calvin Coolidge



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