THE POPE LEO EFFECT: FOCUSING THE CHURCH ANEW ON CHRIST (CHRISTO-CENTRIC) AND ON SALVATION (SOTERIOLOGY)

The AI description of “soteriology” below is basically correct in a general Christian sense, except for the last thing mentioned, “the outcome of salvation.” Here AI and often many in the Church, make salvation out to be just a here and now experience without pointing us to eternal life with God in heaven where we will be eternally happy, free from all suffering and death. We are made perfect by God’s grace if we find ourselves in heaven when our earthly life as concluded. 

 Soteriology is the study of how people are saved from sin and its consequences, often through Jesus Christ. Key questions include: 

• What we are saved from:

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  Sin, death, and the consequences of rebellion against God. 
Who offers salvation:
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Jesus Christ is central, as his work on the cross is considered the means of atonement and salvation. 
How salvation is achieved:
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This involves concepts like faith, grace, justification, redemption, and the work of the Holy Spirit. 
The outcome of salvation:
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Salvation leads to a new relationship with God, forgiveness, reconciliation, and a transformed life. 

Pope Francis seem to focus more on the here and now and creating a sort of utopia on earth by our efforts. This is especially true of the particular ideology His Holiness chose to follow that thinks that we can end climate change and the final consummation of the world. If our deceased Holy Father, RIP, is in heaven, he knows the folly of this. All of creation is heading to its final conclusion. Humans experience death each day and there is no stopping it. We can speed it up by our lack of a good stewardship of our bodies and souls or we can delay it by a good stewardship of our bodies or souls. But we can’t stop death and the end of the world. We need to be saved outside the bounds of time and place.

We need to hear more about eternal salvation as we face suffering and death, our own, that of others and the destruction of the planet. 

Thanks be to God, Pope Leo is reorienting the Church to be centered on Christ and His eternal salvation beyond the here and now. Of course salvation begins here and now, is already but not yet. 

During his recent “Address to the Participants in the Social Week of Peru,” Pope Leo made some observations well worth noting: 

“Let us understand that all social action of the Church must have as its center and goal the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ, so that, without neglecting the immediate, we always remain aware of the proper and ultimate direction of our service. For if we do not give Christ in his entirety, we will always be giving extremely little.”…

“Dear brothers and sisters: it is not two loves, but rather one and the same, that moves us to give both material bread and the bread of the Word that, in turn, by its very dynamism, will give rise to hunger for the Bread of Heaven, which only the Church can give, by the mandate and will of Christ, and which no human institution, however well-intentioned it may be, can replace. And, for our part, let us not forget the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles: ‘Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.’” (Galatians 6:9)