“Never, never bring the gospel by proselytising. If someone says they are a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, they are not a disciple of Jesus.” – Pope Francis
Pope Francis spoke to Catholic high school students about how to reach nonbelievers, stressing that Christians should live their faith out loud rather than try to coerce people to convert, invoking the crusades as a time of great shame.
“In front of an unbeliever, the last thing I have to do is try to convince him. Never. The last thing I have to do is speak,” the pontiff said, according to Disrn. Instead, he stressed, “I have to live consistent with my faith. And it will be my testimony to awaken the curiosity of the other who says: ‘But why do you do this?’ And yes, I can speak then.”
“Never, never bring the gospel by proselytising,” he said later. “If someone says they are a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, they are not a disciple of Jesus.”
Pope Francis invoked the crusades and conversion by the sword, calling it “shameful” and noting that Christians across the globe are similarly wrongly killed for their faith.
“We are not in the times of the crusades,” he said. “… ‘Either the baptism or the sword.’ This has happened in history! They also do it with us Christians in other parts, they are also doing it but what we did was shameful because it is a story of forced conversion, of not respecting the dignity of the person.”
The Holy Father said he first learned of the principle of “coexistence” back in Argentina amid mass migration.
“There is a mixture of blood, a strong mixed race in Argentina—I am the son of a migrant, and this has made a culture of coexistence,” he explained. “I went to public school and we always had companions from other religions. We were educated to coexist: ‘There is a Jew, Russian, ah—come, come! I am a friend of Russian!’ They said Russian because the majority of the Jews came from Odessa, some from Poland but the majority from Odessa. Then there were some Arabs, Lebanese, Syrians—‘Ah, Turkish! Come, come!’ This was Muslim, this was Jewish. But we all played football together, we were all friends.”
“This has taught me so much, that we are all the same, all children of God—and this purifies your gaze, it makes you human,” Pope Francis said. “In Argentina there is a small group of closed-minded Catholics who do not want Jews, do not want Muslims, but this group … I have never liked it, is a group that is on the fringe, they have a cultural magazine but they do not have impact in society.”
“But listen: Never, never bring the gospel by proselytising. If someone says they are a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, they are not a disciple of Jesus,” the pontiff said. – Daily Wire, 24 December 2019
› Amanda Prestigiacomo is an political analyst for the American news site The Daily Wire.
Filed under: india, vatican | Tagged: pope francis, proselytise, proselytism, religious conversion |
CAVEAT
The Pope is a Jesuit and he speaks with a casuist’s tongue. He is telling Christians how to covert the heathen to Christianity—not otherwise as it may seem.
The whole of the Catholic Church is oriented towards the conversion of Hindus, India being a prime target for conversion in this day and age. Hindus must never let their guard down, which is what the Pope would like them to do with this little homily to Catholic school boys.
And more important, the problem in South india is Evangelicals not Catholics. Protestant Evangelicals do not recognise the Pope’s authority and regard him as the Antichrist. Therefore his admonitions will be ignored by them, even criticized as they are against the gospel teaching.
The gospel teaching, known as the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20), is a late interpolation into the gospels probably made in the 4th century by Emperor Constantine’s editors when he had the first Bibles commissioned. His object was to politically unite the Roman Empire using Christian doctrine as his unifying ideology and the Christian bishops, some 2000 at the time, as his political agents. He was very successful. Today Evangelical missionaries are trying to do exactly the same thing in India.
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