No, Pope Francis does not teach universalism. He’s just sloppy.

t would prob­a­bly be a bad idea if some­one at the Vat­i­can were to fix Pope Fran­cis with a device that gave him a small lit­tle shock every time he used the word “jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” or maybe squirt­ed him with a water gun. It might con­di­tion him against say­ing it, but I don’t think you can do that. Maybe some­one has a more eth­i­cal idea. A few years back, the pope said that Catholics and Luther­ans agree on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion now; we’re all copacetic. He said Luther “did not err.” I wrote about it here and here; it was one of the few times you’ve heard me crit­i­cize the poor man. The­o­log­i­cal chaos occurs any time jus­ti­fi­ca­tion comes up with Frank. But at least in 2016 it was only in an inter­view; this time, it hap­pened in a homi­ly. Saints pre­serve us.

This was back on May 4, and you can find the Eng­lish trans­la­tion at Zen­it. (I’ve checked with some­one who knows Ital­ian, and the trans­la­tion is accu­rate.) The pope was speak­ing about Matthew 22, the para­ble of the wed­ding feast. In that para­ble, Jesus tells us that the king invites every­one to the wed­ding feast. The gift of sal­va­tion is for every­one, the pope explains, not just a select few. And then he expands on that thought:

This “all” is … the vision of the Lord, who came for all and died for all. “But did He die also for that wretch who has made my life impos­si­ble?” He died also for him. “And for that brig­and?” He died for him, for all. And also for the peo­ple that don’t believe in Him or are of oth­er reli­gions: He died for all. This doesn’t mean that one must engage in pros­e­lytism: no. But He died for all; He has jus­ti­fied all.

No he has­n’t. Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is a process that begins with bap­tism. With­out bap­tism, accord­ing to the Coun­cil of Trent, “no man was ever jus­ti­fied.” Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion con­tin­ues as we grow in holi­ness and grace through the sacra­ments. If we become guilty of mor­tal sin, we lose our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and we are restored only through the sacra­ment of penance. Our final jus­ti­fi­ca­tion hap­pens only after we have per­se­vered to the end.

One might say the pope means that even­tu­al­ly every­one will receive the final jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; he’s teach­ing uni­ver­sal­ism. Even with­out bap­tism, God will jus­ti­fy by some oth­er means. But I don’t think that’s what Fran­cis had in mind. He says that God “has jus­ti­fied all,” not that God will jus­ti­fy all. More than that, the pope seems to con­nect jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to Christ’s death: Christ died for all, he says, and then, with the sep­a­ra­tion of just a semi­colon, “He jus­ti­fied all.” The pope appears to con­nect jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to Christ’s death, as though every last per­son­’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion occurred right there on Cal­vary.

That is why Dr. Kwas­niews­ki spec­u­lates that the pope is con­flat­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and redemp­tion. Every­one who has ever lived or will ever lived was redeemed on Cal­vary, but not all will be jus­ti­fied. And it’s pos­si­ble that the pope meant to say “redeemed” and slipped in a moment of absent-mind­ed­ness. It’s prob­a­bly less like­ly that the pope does­n’t have any grasp of basic the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts and he’s reveal­ing his igno­rance. There’s all but zero chance he’s a heretic.

I actu­al­ly find Tay­lor Mar­shal­l’s expla­na­tion more con­vinc­ing. (As rare as it is for me to crit­i­cize the pope, it’s about as rare for me to agree with with Dr. Mar­shall. My detrac­tors should enjoy this while they have the chance.) Dr. Mar­shall says that Pope Fran­cis was prob­a­bly think­ing of Romans 5:18:

There­fore as by the offence of one judg­ment came upon all men to con­dem­na­tion; even so by the right­eous­ness of one the free gift came upon all men unto jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of life.

I have put the word “unto” in bold because it’s impor­tant in dis­cern­ing what Paul means here. The free gift is “unto” jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; that means that Christ’s death made our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion pos­si­ble. It means that he died in order that we may be jus­ti­fied. But it did not guar­an­tee the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of any­one. We need to coop­er­ate with grace first.

If I may spec­u­late, I think the pope meant some­thing like that. I think he meant that Christ “offers jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to all” or “makes jus­ti­fi­ca­tion pos­si­ble for all” or “desires the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of all.”

That’s not what the pope did say, but I should point out that some trans­la­tions of Romans 5:18 say exact­ly what the pope did. The trans­la­tion I used above is the King James; here’s the World Eng­lish Bible: “So then as through one tres­pass, all men were con­demned; even so through one act of right­eous­ness, all men were jus­ti­fied to life.”

That’s a bad trans­la­tion. It lacks pre­ci­sion; the King James is more exact. Sim­i­lar­ly, I think some­thing got lost in trans­la­tion between the pope’s brain and his mouth. Fran­cis has always seemed to me prone to stream of con­scious­ness. He is prone, I think, to elide a great deal of the­o­log­i­cal pre­ci­sion that he takes for grant­ed his audi­ence will already under­stand.

Dr. Kwas­niews­ki writes:

When lis­ten­ing to or read­ing tran­scripts of the hom­i­lies of Pope Fran­cis, one often gets the sense of a man who, as soon as he speaks off the cuff, reveals the inad­e­qua­cy of his own the­o­log­i­cal train­ing and the slop­pi­ness of his think­ing. He sel­dom sounds like some­one delib­er­ate­ly try­ing to dis­man­tle tra­di­tion­al the­ol­o­gy with the clev­er­ness of a Karl Rah­n­er; rather, he comes across as an embar­rass­ing wit­ness to the col­lapse of sound dog­mat­ic and moral the­ol­o­gy in the mid- to late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Popes in gen­er­al would do well to speak only when their thoughts have been cor­rect­ly formulated—it was not for any triv­ial rea­son that papal speech­es and doc­u­ments of any kind were always care­ful­ly reviewed by house theologians—and only on occa­sions when pub­lic speak­ing is pas­toral­ly nec­es­sary, rather than doing it day after day like a radio talk show or a tear—off cal­en­dar with affirm­ing sen­ti­ments. If popes lim­it­ed them­selves in this way, their state­ments would have a greater res­onat­ing force and a greater pos­si­bil­i­ty of fruit­ful eccle­sial recep­tion.

Apart from the part about the pope hav­ing “inad­e­quate the­o­log­i­cal train­ing” and being a “slop­py thinker,” I think this is fair enough. I don’t think the pope has inad­e­quate the­o­log­i­cal train­ing, and while I agree he’s a slop­py talk­er, I don’t agree that he’s a slop­py thinker.

The only oth­er thing I would say is this: Although it would be nice if popes spoke only from care­ful­ly pre­pared texts, I don’t sus­pect you’re going to get Pope Fran­cis to do that. He is who he is. And he’s not unortho­dox, or hereti­cal; he’s just some­times uncar­e­ful.