UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Nov 11, 2015

Yesterday Pope Francis traveled to the heart of Renaissance Italy and conjured up the image of a Christian Humanism threatened by ancient heresies. Speaking in Florence’s famed Duomo at the Fifth National Ecclesial Congress of the Italian church, the pontiff seized on this year’s theme of “Jesus Christ, the new humanism” to warn against the “temptations” of Pelagianism and Gnosticism.

Christian Humanism, according to Francis, is all about humility, selflessness, and beatitude. “These features tell us that we must not be obsessed with power, even when this assumes the appearance of a useful or functional power in the social image of the Church,” he said.

Pelagianism takes its name from a fourth-century British monk who taught that human nature is untainted by original sin and thus it is within the power of the unaided mortal…