[Crackle Crackle]
“Yes, Your Holiness. We’re receiving you.”
[Crackle Crackle]
“Please say again. All after ‘atheists can go to heaven.'”
Yesterday, while I was talking to my dad, the earth moved in California, a bridge on I-5 here in Washington crumbled and fell into the Skagit River, and NBC reported that Pope Francis said atheists can go to heaven.
It was a weird 35 minutes.
Thankfully, no damage was reported from the earthquake.
Thankfully, no one was killed in the bridge collapse, and the three people injured are all in stable condition or better.
Thankfully, the Pope’s announcement did not crack the Seventh Seal and usher in the Apocalypse.
The Pope’s announcement has far-reaching ramifications in the Catholic world, but to be blunt, saying that atheists can go to heaven is rather like saying your dog can check out books at the local library.
The salient point of the Pope’s message, however, is that the most important thing for us all is to “do good and do not do evil.” A secondary but equally important point from his homily is that “To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”
Wow. I mean, really. Wowie Wow Wow!
Seriously, this is big stuff.
Atheists in heaven? Alongside Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and…even pagans? Apparently so. “Doing good” is the paramount test of our salvation, according to Pope Francis, and our religious or non-religious affiliations are irrelevant.
And what about that “killing in the name of God is blasphemy” bit? Because, let’s face it, the Roman Catholic Church has had its share in some of that biz. Can you say “Crusades?”
How do we rectify the fact that Pope Urban II, who pretty much got the whole Crusades thing underway, was both Pope (and therefore infallible) and but also (apparently) a blasphemer?
It’s not that I’m against either of these statements. They are actually quite a positive shift in Catholic rhetoric, which heretofore has been less inclusive and more proscriptive.
As an atheist myself, the whole “going to heaven” thing is meaningless, but what Pope Francis has said is that religion and morality are separate things, and you don’t have to follow the former in order to have the latter.
I haven’t liked a Pope in, like, ever. This guy…so far, I’m rather impressed…
k
To be fair, the Skagit bridge didn’t crumble, it just sort of… fell. The structure crumpled a bit, but it looked otherwise fairly intact sitting there in the river…
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You’re right. Looks like that truck hit the overbeam and the masonry/concrete just went “piffle”. The whole section fell as a piece.
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