
Pope calls out Christians full of 'fakeness'
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When Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Chapel of the Casa Santa Marta at the Vatican, he openly described Christianity as a religion that needs to stop being hypocritical and vain.
Highlights
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
2/23/2016 (9 years ago)
Published in Living Faith
Keywords: Pope Francis, Christians, God, pontiff, faith
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "The Lord teaches us the way of doing: and how many times we find people - ourselves included - so often in the Church, who say, 'Oh, we are very Catholic.' But what do you do?' How many parents say they are Catholics, but never have time to talk to their children, to play with their children, to listen to their children. [sic]"
The pontiff spoke an ugly truth that several believers don't want to hear. Pope Francis announced that several people who claimed to be devout were actually wearing the Church as a costume to appear more faithful than they really were.
Such people are hypocrites in the Church's eyes, and God certainly knows who is truly following Him and who is a simple deceiver.
"Perhaps [false believers] have their parents in a nursing home, but always are busy and cannot go and visit them and so leave them there, abandoned," the pontiff continued. "'But I am very Catholic: I belong to that association,' [they say]. This is the religion of saying: I say it is so, but I do according to the ways of the world."
Pope Francis continued, explaining that "saying and not doing is a deception."Isiah's scripture was mentioned during the speech, with the Holy Father reminding people that we are called to "cease to do evil, learn to do good" and "relieve the oppressed, do right by the orphan, plead for the widow."
We are also reminded in Matthew's Gospel that God will judge us. The pontiff described that God will not ask, What have you said about me?" Instead, he will "ask us about the things we did."
Pope Francis did not hold back while decrying the evils of pretense and asked that those who are hypocrites turn to God.
"May the Lord give us this wisdom to understand well where lies the difference between saying and doing, and teach us the way of doing and help us to go down that way, because the way of saying brings us to the place where were these teachers of the law, these clerics, who liked dressing up and acting just like if they were so many Majesties - and this is not the reality of the Gospel.
"May the Lord teach us this way."
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