The Deacon's Bench
This may be the most concise and clear-eyed dissection of the eyebrow-raising remarks recently attributed to Pope Francis — and it includes several excerpts and links to writings in which the Holy Father, in fact, said that Jesus is God.
Jimmy Akin concludes:
It looks like Scalfari may have simply mangled something Pope Francis said based on the teachings of St. Paul and Hebrews—mistaking, like some heretics in Church history, Christ’s self-emptying as a loss of divinity. But this is not what Paul said or meant. As Pope Francis has said, Jesus is “true man and true God.”
This incident provides us with several lessons that apologists should keep in mind:
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Christology is a subject that involves precise distinctions that must be carefully made. In fact, it took the Church centuries to hammer out the correct language for articulating those distinctions.
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It’s important that we communicate the Church’s teachings using clear and precise language at all times.
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There are some individuals with whom the costs of engaging in dialogue outweigh the benefits.
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