Remember: Take off 50 IQ Points When the MSM Covers Religion

You recall that when the MSM covers something you actually know about, they often get it badly wrong?

So remember that when the MSM covers something you don’t know about.  So when you don’t really know what the Pope said during an interview and the MSM attributes something really bizarre and outrageous to him (“Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God to go to  heaven”), don’t just swallow that hook, line, and sinker and then start panicking about how to answer the accusations that come flooding in from fundamentalists and Catholic reactionaries (but I repeat myself) who are sure that, once again, they have the goods on the Heretic in Rome.

First, find out what the Pope actually said, not what the theologically illiterate media *thinks* he said.  Jimmy Akin is a reliable source for that, filtering out the media rubbish and actually looking at what was really said and what it actually means.

Best of all, because Jimmy has done the heavy lifting, I don’t have to, which is really nice.

Do note, however, that only three sorts of people are *eager* to believe the Pope is a heretic on the flimsiest provocation: MSM types (who simply have no idea what they are talking about and often write in honest ignorance); anti-Catholic Fundamentalists who are both hostile toward and ignorant of the Church; and Catholic Reactionaries, who claim to love the Church but in fact hate her (the actual, real, living Church I mean) and the Pope and believe the darkest things first, not last.  Reactionary Catholic love a Church of the imagination, not the actual flesh and blood Church in which we live. It’s a species of gnosticism, ironically.  Of the three, the Catholic Reactionary who declares the Pope a heretic have the least excuse at all, since they know (and insist for everybody they want kicked out of the Church, that outside the Church there is no salvation.  They need to remember that the measure they use will be measured to them, as they long for the expulsion of almost all the Church’s members.

Meanwhile, those of us who don’t think God sent Jesus into the world to make sure that as few people as possible would be saved have a take like this on the possibility of salvation for those outside the visible Church–including atheists.