Dr. Albert Mohler recently offered his thoughts on an article published in the Wall Street Journal about the topic of hell. More specifically, Mohler responded to a comment offered by Pope Francis, who said he hopes “hell is empty.”
Mohler’s comments came in the context of an episode of his podcast, “The Briefing.” Before reading the pope’s comments on hell, Mohler warned his audience to “brace yourself.”
Of the doctrine of hell, Francis said, “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought, I’d like to think that hell is empty. I hope it is.”
“Well, on the one hand, you can just say that’s Pope Francis being Pope Francis,” Mohler said in response. “That’s such a Pope Francis thing that sounds just like him, because Pope Francis is an agent of doctrinal confusion, and he is intentionally an agent of doctrinal confusion.”
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Mohler went on to reiterate his belief that Francis has intentionally “sought to confuse the teaching of his own church, the Roman Catholic Church, and much to the consternation of traditional and conservative Roman Catholics.”
Mohler added that sowing confusion “seems to be what [Francis is] basically all about.”
While Mohler acknowledged that Francis’ words were an expression of his personal thoughts and not official Catholic dogma, he said that Francis’ remarks fly “in the face of the fact that the New Testament tells us that, actually, wide is the way that leads to hell and narrow is the way that leads to heaven.”
Mohler went on to allege that Francis is likely not aware of the fact that in the gospel accounts, Jesus “has more to say about hell than he actually says about heaven.”
“So the Pope may like to say that he would like to think that hell is empty and then say, ‘I hope it is.’ But that just shows how little he’s constrained at all by scriptural truth, and quite frankly, even by the words of Jesus,” Mohler remarked.
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Mohler then commented more broadly about how the idea of a righteous God who eternally damns souls has become “culturally unacceptable.”
