2013-06-13      John W                   John W's previous articles

  Pope Francis and Pelagianism

On June 6 Pope Francis is reported to have said:

I share with you two concerns. One is the Pelagian current that there is in the Church at this moment. There are some restorationist groups. I know some, it fell upon me to receive them in Buenos Aires. And one feels as if one goes back 60 years! Before the Council... One feels in 1940... An anecdote, just to illustrate this, it is not to laugh at it, I took it with respect, but it concerns me; when I was elected, I received a letter from one of these groups, and they said: "Your Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure: 3,525 rosaries." Why don't they say, 'we pray for you, we ask...', but this thing of counting... And these groups return to practices and to disciplines that I lived through - not you, because you are not old - to disciplines, to things that in that moment took place, but not now, they do not exist today...

If Francis said these words, he would have had absolutely no intention of making fun of the Rosary, given his strong devotion to Mary (c.f. this article re his love for Mary)

What Francis was getting at was the idea that salvation is something we can achieve completely, or largely, by our own efforts ....as taught by Pelagiansim (not to be confused with plagiarism) 

On this site's menu of June 2 (can be seen here, scroll down) I said how this AD 2000 article made fun of Dr Kenneth McAll's teaching on healing the family tree.  At first I wrote that the AD 2000 article sniffed of Pelagianism....but then I deleted those words, thinking I'd gone too far.  But now that the Pope has said that some restorationist groups (such as AD 2000?) display a Pelagian current, maybe I wasn't so wrong after all

I'd be grateful for any readers who can throw light on this issue: to what extent are some restorationist groups displaying a "Pelagian current". Please post your comment here