(RNS) Days after creating a stir by saying that Donald Trump “is not Christian” because of his harsh views on immigrants, Pope Francis again took up the theme of “fake” Christians in a homily Mass.
Referring to the readings of the day from Isaiah and from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus warns of the judgment that awaits those who do not practice what they preach, Francis said Christians must act on their beliefs and care for the neediest — the hungry, the thirsty and those in prison.
“Merely talking leads to vanity, to faking being a Christian. But no, one is not a Christian this way,” Francis said Tuesday (Feb. 23).
Pope Francis gives his blessings during a Jubilee audience in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican, February 20, 2016. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Tony Gentile
*Editors: This photo may be republished with RNS-POPE-CHRISTIANS, originally transmitted on Feb. 23, 2016.
RELATED STORY: Pope Francis calls Trump ‘not Christian’
According to Vatican Radio’s report, the pontiff said the readings highlighted the “evangelical dialectic between saying and doing.”
He pointed in particular to the way Jesus called out the “scribes and Pharisees” as seemingly devout believers who in effect tell the crowds to do as they say, not as they do:
“The Lord teaches us the way of doing: and how many times we find people — ourselves included — so often in the church, who say, ‘Oh, we are very Catholic.’ But what do you do? How many parents say they are Catholics, but never have time to talk to their children, to play with their children, to listen to their children. Perhaps they have their parents in a nursing home, but always are busy and cannot go and visit them and so leave them there, abandoned. ‘But I am very Catholic: I belong to that association.’ This is the religion of saying: ‘I say it is so, but I do according to the ways of the world.’ ”
This type of religion “is a deception,” Francis continued.
“To be a Christian means to do: to do the will of God. And on the last day — because all of us will have one! — that day what shall the Lord ask us? Will he say: ‘What you have said about me?’ No! He shall ask us about the things we did.”
(David Gibson is a national reporter for RNS)
