His Holiness or His Hellishness?!

A highly respected Christian brother has expressed his personal view on the recent death of Pope Benedict XIII. (M. Luther would have called the pope not 'his holiness', but 'his hellishness' - even R. Dawkins can learn from that!), saying: "One thing is clear from the Bible, we know where the soul of the papa is right now - in the bottomless pit!". 

True, true, unless God granted him repentance before he died, and of that we cannot know with absolute certainty, though Benedict's successor would disagree with me as he seems to be a universalist! 

For all that, Rome - and the late pope - have deliberately rejected the biblical Gospel of 'grace alone, in Christ alone, by faith alone', anathematising any dissenters (see Canon IX.ff. / Session 6 - The Council of Trent) – in the name of God! Trent may be old hat, but its dogmatism has never been revoked, and it can't be as the Council convened under the Holy Ghost which surely is a new definition of blasphemy! 

Going back to the late pope, I find it inconceivable that the Spirit of truth could lead anyone to become a pope at all. Was it not Pope Gregory the Great who said that the “universal bishop” is the Antichrist?!

Ignorant friends need to read 'Pope Boniface VIII's Unam Sanctam' (which no infallible pope can repudiate!). P. Schaff is surely right when he said, in less strong language than I could manage about that greatest of all human egomaniacs that has ever walked on earth, that in the Unam sanctam "the arrogance of the papacy finds its most naked and irritating expression." Amongst all Romish writings I find it to be the most detestable one! It makes Putin look nice!

The late pope was sound on some doctrines and outspoken on moral issues, but Matthew 7:21ff. remains as a strong warning to all who think that Christianity is just about being good and orthodox, or intellectually respectable! It is regrettable that so many so-called evangelicals have been taken in by Romanism.

Ratzinger certainly preached another gospel and he should have listened to the apostle Paul (Galatians 1, in loc.), but since when has Rome accepted ‘sola Scriptura’?! Not since the Protestant Reformation, at any rate!

What matters is not what we think of Ratzinger, or for that matter, about this writer’s opinion, but 'what do you think of Christ?'! He needs to be at the centre of our preaching and our living - and here Rome is of no help, whatsoever, as evidenced from Benedict's Funeral Mass, none of which can be squared with New Testament Christianity by any stretch of the imagination! 

R. Albert Mohler Jr. [see his ‘A warning from Rome The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI holds big lessons for evangelical Christians’], with whose brain no one seems able to compete these days, has missed the point altogether by not addressing my concerns, but I will have to forgive him, as we are strangers  to one another!