At the end of the interview, when O’Donnell asked Francis about his legacy, he said that he is not concerned with his personal legacy but with the legacy of the church and of every Christian. “Personally, I get on the bandwagon of the church and its legacy for all,” he said.
“You mean that the church is for everybody,” O’Donnell responded.
“Yes, for everybody. And in particular for the privileged,” said the pope, explaining that the privileged are “we the sinners” because Jesus came for all of us. “The Lord forgives everything, everything. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”
Mohler seemed to condense these exchanges into one, focusing on the first. “Everyone is in the church?” he said in his reaction. “Now, I’ll just state that that is outside even the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, or it represents an absolute relativization.”
“And it just is claiming that every single human being is right now a part of the Roman Catholic Church,” he added, “and that is just sheer nonsense.”
Mohler then addressed “the most infamous” question of the interview, when O’Donnell asked what gives Francis hope. Notably, some people have disagreed with the reported English translation, “There are some rogues and sinners,” saying the pope’s words were closer to saying, “We are a little bit rogue and sinners.”
In the pope’s reply, said Mohler, “not only did the pope utter absolute banalities and empty words, he directly, repeatedly refuted the direct teachings of Scripture.”
A number of people, including Mohler, who have taken issue with Francis’ response have cited Jeremiah 17:9, which says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
RELATED: Albert Mohler: Having Women Serve as Pastors Has Never ‘Made Sense’ to Southern Baptists
Calling the pope’s views “Christless” and saying they demonstrate “the abandonment of the gospel,” Mohler added, “the pope is not alone in this. And the Roman Catholic Church, let’s remember in its official doctrine, contradicts the Protestant understanding of the gospel as revealed in Scripture. That’s just a very honest statement.”
One user on X pushed back on the criticism against the pope, indirectly pointing out that Catholics do not believe in the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity and saying that Francis’ remarks do not negate the idea of original sin.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Holy See’s website explains the doctrine of original sin at length, stating that “Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.”
“It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind,” the catechism says, “that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice.”
“Human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence,” the catechism states further on. “Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”