In the sermon of his private morning mass in his residence, Pope Francis has been talking about double life of some Catholics which equals to hypocrisy. He said: “There are those who say, ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to mass, I belong to this and that association’, but, some of these people should also say, according to Pope Francis: “’my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, [I lead] a double life’.”

“There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal,” he added. “How many times have we all heard people say ‘if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist’? It is that, scandal. You destroy. You beat down. And this happens every day it’s enough to see the news on TV, or to read the papers. In the papers there are so many scandals, and there is also the great publicity of the scandals. And with the scandals there is destruction.”

Like all Christians, Catholics see the Ten Commandments found in the Hebrew Scriptures as the basic groundwork for moral action, which together with the life of Jesus provide a deep and abiding understanding for how to act with love and justice in the world. And those principles are good but one might ask if scandals are reserved only for atheists. There are many people, regardless of religious affiliation, who do moral things and also people who do bad things. And that is not a matter of faith.

What Pope Francis wants by this rhetoric is obviously to return already shaken reputation of Catholicism. “And with scandals there is destruction”, according to Pope Francis; destruction of Catholicism, of course. It seems that if scandals aren’t public, they can’t make problems.

The Pope has already spoke about atheists. In 2013, he suggested atheists could be redeemed (if they came to Christ), but also added that even if they disagreed, we could all come together to do good.

Photo Credits: Patheos