EUGENIO SCALFARI: POPE FRANCIS DENIES BODILY RESURRECTION OF JESUS -Italian journalist doubles down on Francis’ alleged denial of Jesus’ divinity
ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) – In a new series of troubling revelations, Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari has quoted Pope Francis as denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus in stating that the crucified Christ emerged from the tomb as a spirit rather than as a body.
In a front-page article in Tuesday’s La Repubblica, Scalfari expands on his earlier quote from Pope Francis, where the Holy Father is interpreted as rejecting the divinity of Jesus while on earth, and dovetails that statement with Francis’ alleged denial of Christ’s bodily resurrection.
According to Scalfari, Pope Francis said, “He [Jesus] was a man until he was put in the sepulchre by the women who restored his corpse. That night in the sepulchre the man disappeared and from that cave came out in the form of a spirit that met the women and the Apostles, still preserving the shadow of the person, and then definitively disappeared.”
Church Militant contacted the Holy See Press Office for comment, which was caught by surprise and was unaware of the new allegations. Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told Church Militant:
As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during the interviews he had cannot be considered as a faithful account of what was actually said, but rather represent a personal and free interpretation of those who listened, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The explosive new quotes have been published in Scalfari’s book Il Dio unico e la società moderna: Incontri con papa Francesco e il cardinale Carlo Maria Martini (“The One God and Modern Society: Meetings With Pope Francis and Cdl. Carlo Maria Martini”) released on Tuesday.
“The Scalfari claims about Francis’ heretical beliefs are so shocking, and the Pope’s adamant silence so incomprehensible, we have to assume that this is an accurate account of their conversations, U.K. Deacon Nick Donnelly told Church Militant.
“The claim that Francis denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus takes us into the area of de fide doctrine,” he added. “Every time we recite the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed we proclaim the bodily resurrection of Jesus. In the past, an ecumenical council would have been convened to condemn Christological heresies.”
“Scalfari’s claim that Bergoglio is a Docetist — someone who holds that Jesus only appeared as a phantasm or spirit — takes us into the territory of needing an Ecumenical Council to condemn him and uphold the Catholic doctrine of the Resurrection,” he said.
Scalfari’s La Repubblica article is a reproduction of his introduction in his book.
The journalist, who admits to being an unbeliever, insists that he is nevertheless “very much interested in the history of the Church that began when Paul fell from his horse while going from Jerusalem to Damascus.”
Drawing a wedge between Pauline Christianity as a radical innovation compared to the Jewish Christianity of Jesus’ first apostles, including Peter, Scalfari identifies Jesus’ recognition of His divine Sonship at the age of 30.
“Until he was 30 he had remained in the family but it is at that moment that he discovers in himself the Son of God descended to earth for the redemption of men from all over the world,” Scalfari writes.
Because Saint Paul interpreted Christianity as totally different from Judaism, Christianity now saw itself as unique “without being confused with other religions.” This gave rise to a number of controversies, chief of which was the relationship of Jesus to the Father.
“The Son had the same powers as the Father but there was a substantial difference between them: the Father had created the Son, after which the powers were the same but the Son was Creature while the Father was Creator,” he remarks.
It is in this context Scalfari elaborates on his meeting with Pope Francis.
“I was personally responsible for speaking with Pope Francis in our first meeting four years ago, and His Holiness, who is very prepared in these matters,” told him that “God, who is Unique to all the people of the whole world, decided on his incarnation to help humanity to believe in the hereafter and to behave appropriately in thinking and acting.”
Then, Pope Francis reportedly told Scalfari: “That is, he is a man: true and total, and he shows it in the last week spent in Jerusalem, at the last supper, in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays to God to exempt him from being crucified, but God does not answer him.”
“Also on the cross he is a man who turns to what he calls the Father and almost reproaches him by saying: ‘Father, Father, you have abandoned me,'” Francis reportedly said.
Italian social media has erupted in shock at the new revelations.
“Scalfari continues to attribute to Bergoglio quotes that contain unheard-of theological enormities and no one from the Vatican cares in the least of denying, nor do they tell Scalfari to stop. Catholics think: those who keep silent agree,” tweeted noted Italian journalist Antonio Socci.
“Pure heresy: the risen Jesus was not a Spirit but was alive in flesh and blood. Thomas put his finger in his wounds,” an Italian Catholic tweeted back.
Scalfari commends Francis for preaching this interpretation “with the strength that no one else has employed,” as it “corresponds to a reality that our mind can only judge perfectly logical for those who believe in a deity.”
Pope Francis has solved the problem of religious plurality because he is not thinking of a God monopolized by only one group, Scalfari explains.
“There cannot be a supreme deity generated only by a group of faithful while other groups have different deities,” and “these are differences that must be overcome.”
“Thinking of a God owned by a people and not others is meaningless, and the Pope is denying it day by day, and not only with words but with facts: He embraces Muslims, obviously embraces Jews and Protestants,” he adds.
Explaining why he treats both Pope Francis and Cdl. Martini in one book, Scalfari notes that “both priests addressed issues of the highest cultural, religious and even political level in the sense in which politics has a positive or negative influence on the life of men.”
Moreover, Martini was a great friend of Pope Francis in Argentina and, like Francis, had tried to modernize the Church. “Martini knew that the Church needed profound changes,” writes Scalfari.
A companion piece in La Repubblica written by Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito suggests that Martini also supports the idea of Jesus’ spiritual rather than bodily resurrection.
“The Resurrection of the spirit — states the cardinal in one of the highest moments of the dialogue with Scalfari — it is the flame that drives the wheel of the world,” Esposito writes.
Esposito relativizes the Resurrection: “The resurrection is not only the dead, in the unfathomable mystery of faith. It can also involve the living, whenever the love of neighbour wins over self-love. In this second sense we rise again, we can rise again, with respect to the hell of egoism, at every moment, on the part of each, even of the worst of sinners.”
Esposito praises Scalfari’s book for examining Francis’ “relationship with politics and therefore with power” as “the other front on which all the novelty of the pontificate of Francis is measured.”
This position of Francis is “revolutionary” and “an exercise that looks like a real battle outside and inside the Church.”
“Outside, in defense of those who are abandoned, discriminated against, rejected by the protected areas of the world. Inside the Church, against the powers that, putting the interests of the ecclesiastical institution in front of her and remove her from her pastoral mission,” Esposito observes.
Martini, a biblical scholar and Jesuit who died in 2012 as the archbishop of Milan, was suspected of being a member of the Italian Freemasonry.
Read the source: https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/scalfari-pope-francis-denies-bodily-resurrection-of-jesus
FRANCIS, JESUS AND SCALFARI
Weird. Really weird.
October 11, 2019
TRANSCRIPT
I’m Michael Voris coming to you from Vatican City, specifically with some thoughts on the disturbing news about the Pope Francis-Eugenio Scalfari interview about whether Jesus was, in fact, divine — God.
There’s a lot to say about this, a lot that is problematic, from the original story to the Vatican’s somewhat wobbly response, to the further questions raised about the whole affair.
First, the conversation between the Pope and Eugenio Scalfari. Scalfari is a very old Italian journalist, who has known the Pope for a very long time and who enjoys a warm friendship with Francis.
That friendship has earned Scalfari various interviews in the past — and not without controversy.
Scalfari reported last year that Pope Francis does not believe in Hell, that human souls do not go there. Scalfari says the Pope told him that souls aren’t eternally damned, they are just annihilated, pass into non-existence.
That comment set off a firestorm, which the Vatican feebly tried to put out by saying that Scalfari’s interviews aren’t reliable. They are just rough freely interpreted recollections.
OK, so why keep giving interviews to a man who apparently doesn’t electronically record the interviews, does not take any notes and just rambles with a very bad memory when recounting the interview?
You’d think the Pope being misquoted as denying the immortality of the soul and that no human is ever damned would be enough to decline the next interview request from Scalfari.
But, no — not in this pontificate.
The man who zipped his mouth shut on the plane back from Ireland when the Viganò accusations emerged and told the reporters on board he would not say a single word; when the man who refuses to defuse the controversy surrounding his supposed denial of humans in Hell and immortality of the soul; when the man — the Pope — who refuses to meet with the remaining dubia cardinals does meet with an atheist reporter who, according to the Vatican, can’t be trusted to get the story right — then Houston, we have a problem.
Here’s the overarching problem which frames this controversy. Francis continues meeting with this atheist journalist, knowing he will be quoted, accurately or inaccurately.
And in the midst of everything, here’s the question that hasn’t been asked: Just how could Scalfari get this so wrong?
Seriously, how does a reporter sit down with a long-time friend, who he constantly says he knows very well and talk about things like, oh, whether Jesus is God — or not.
The Pope says, “Yep, Eugenio. Jesus is God,” and then Eugenio goes, “Yep. Got it. Jesus is not God.”
That scenario is more difficult to believe than a pope who doesn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus while he was on earth. How could a journalist get this so terribly wrong? Not even close, 100% wrong, 180 degrees backward.
Yet, if we are to believe the Vatican statement, then that’s precisely what you must believe, which of course begs the questions: Why isn’t the Vatican actually denying the content, not just soft-balling and saying Scalfari is wrong? And two, why do you keep giving this guy interviews?
For years, decades really, there has been a theme running through the Jesuits, a kind of Arianism, that while Jesus was on earth, walking around during His Galilean days, He either actually wasn’t divine, or didn’t really know He was divine.
That second proposition is completely stupid because how could God, which is a being who is all-knowing, not know He is God?
But nonetheless, this is a Jesuit thing echoed almost constantly by the likes of James Martin, who says things like Jesus learned His mission from the Syrophoenician woman — really?
Well, I guess the rest of the human race has her to thank for bringing to Jesus’ consciousness that He needed to redeem us — phew!
But don’t forget that this is precisely what Bp. Barron’s hero, Hans Urs von Balthasar, believed, that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity “deposited” His divinity — his term — before the incarnation.
He had a “kind of access” to His divinity when He prayed to the Father, but He Himself while on earth, nope, not divine.
Now, when you have that background, the Jesuits’ decades-long denial, or at least fudging, of Jesus’ divinity while on earth, von Balthasar’s insane claim that he deposited, whatever that means, His divinity before the incarnation and you go back and read the interview, what Scalfari wrote, it starts to get a little dicey because what Scalfari says the Pope said is exactly what all these other guys say.
That Jesus wasn’t divine when He was walking around on earth — a good man, full of virtue, blah blah, but not a God.
There is a very disturbing convergence here between what has become accepted theology among many Jesuits — and Pope Francis is a Jesuit — and what Scalfari says the Pope told him.
And there’s that annoying, pestering, nagging question in the back of your mind on this one: How could the Pope say Jesus was divine and Scalfari take away the Pope said Jesus isn’t divine?
Weird. Really weird.
Read the source: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-francis-jesus-and-scalfari
Pope’s go-to interviewer now claims Francis denies Jesus’ bodily resurrection
ROME, November 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis’ favored Italian interviewer Eugenio Scalfari is now claiming that the Pope told him that Jesus did not have a bodily resurrection after His passion and death on the cross, but that the man “disappeared” and he came forth from the tomb “in the semblance of a spirit.”
The Pope has granted numerous interviews to Scalfari that have stirred confusion and questions about the Pope’s beliefs. So far, the Pope himself has not issued any personal denial or clarification in the wake of Scalfari’s claims and has not said he will stop granting interviews to the atheist journalist.
Scalfari is a founder of La Repubblica, which has long been critical of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. The octogenarian journalist does not have the practice of recording his conversations with the Pope, as is the journalistic standard in interviews of this importance, but apparently relies on his memory to present his interpretation of the meetings.
Writing in the Italian daily La Repubblica on Tuesday (see full Italian text here), Scalfari related what Pope Francis allegedly told him about the Resurrection of Jesus.
“He was a man until he was placed in the tomb by the women who recomposed his body. That night, in the tomb, the man disappeared and came forth from the grotto in the semblance of a spirit that met the women and the Apostles while still preserving the shadow of the person, and then he definitely disappeared.”
The bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead is a central tenet of the Christian faith. St. Paul told the Corinthians that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14).
The above quote attributed to the Pope appears in Scalfari’s new book Il Dio unico e la società moderna: Incontri con papa Francesco e il cardinale Carlo Maria Martini (“The One God and Modern Society: Meetings With Pope Francis and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini”).
Last month, Scalfari claimed that Pope Francis had denied the divinity of Jesus. Scalfari claimed that the Pope “conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, a man, not God incarnate. Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross.”
The journalist continued, saying: “When I happened to discuss these phrases, Pope Francis told me: ‘They are the definite proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once he became a man, even if he was a man of exceptional virtue, was not God at all.’”
This prompted Matteo Bruni of the Vatican press office to issue a clarification: “As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during conversations with him cannot be considered as a faithful account of what has actually been said, but rather represent a personal and free interpretation of what he has heard, as is quite evident from what has been written today about the divinity of Jesus Christ.”
Italian journalist Antonio Socci expressed shock about the comments about Jesus’ Ressurection attributed to the Pope: “Scalfari continues to attribute to Bergoglio quotes that contain unheard-of theological enormities and no one from the Vatican cares in the least of denying, nor do they tell Scalfari to stop. Catholics think: those who keep silent agree.”
Antonio Socci@AntonioSocci1Scalfari continua ad attribuire a Bergoglio dei virgolettati che contengono inaudite enormità teologiche (Repubblica, 5 novembre, p. 35) e dal Vaticano nessuno si preoccupa minimamente di smentire, né dicono a Scalfari di smetterla. I cattolici pensano: chi tace acconsente.
Last month, after the claim about Pope Francis’ remarks on Christ as Son of God, both Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Cardinal Gerhard Müller called on the Pope to personally address Scalfari’s claims.
“Christians expect a clear answer from the Pope himself. The thing is too important; it is essential: Yes, I believe that Christ is the Son of God made Man, the only Savior and Lord,” Archbishop Viganò told LifeSite.
“All Christians await this clarification from him, not from others, and by virtue of their baptism have the right to have this response.”
Read the source: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-go-to-interviewer-claims-pope-denies-jesus-bodily-resurrection
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Eugenio Scalfari: Pope Francis Told Me That Jesus Incarnate Was a ‘Man … Not at All a God’ http://www.pagadiandiocese.org/2019/10/09/eugenio-scalfari-pope-francis-told-me-that-jesus-incarnate-was-a-man-not-at-all-a-god/
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