The comments you see below are typical of what he has sent to at least 3 people. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction,’ … just as Christ draws all to himself by the power of his love.”Īn individual, an area resident, has been posting some very disturbing comments on Facebook. Addressing the Latin American Bishops, the Pope said, “To you who represent the Church in Latin America, today I symbolically entrust my encyclical Deus Caritas Est, in which I sought to point out to everyone the essence of the Christian message.” Pope Benedict then explained that the Church “does not engage in proselytism. To understand the Catholic approach to evangelization, it is worth considering Pope Benedict XVI’s teachings on a visit to Brazil in 2007. Even if they convert, they have done so under pressure, and thus it is not a true conversion. To use guilt, emotional blackmail, or psychological pressure to get a person to accept a religion is both immoral and ineffective. This simple definition is clear enough, but the word also carries a connotation of using coercion of some sort. To understand Pope Francis’s words, we should first understand what he means by “proselytization.” To proselytize is to attempt to convert someone to your religion. Unfortunately, Pope Francis seems more concerned with the individual contact and warm personal style than he does with clarity of teaching. He is a pastoral Pope, interested in people and passionate about meeting them on their own terms, wherever they are. Pope Francis does not have the theologian’s precision that characterized Pope Benedict XVI nor the philosopher’s clarity of thought and expression that marked Bl. When Pope Francis said “proselytization is solemn nonsense” and re-assured Eugenio Scalfari that he did not intend to convert him, they heard the Pope saying that evangelization was a waste of time and that converting people to Catholicism was “nonsense.” In this week’s interview with atheist newspaper publisher Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis commented that “proselytization is solemn nonsense.” Christians who have converted to the Catholic faith, missionaries, and those involved in apostolates that work helping people to convert to Catholicism were offended.