<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" He won&amp;#039;t wear the shoes. He doesn&amp;#039;t bait the gays, or hound the nuns, or call Mohammed &amp;quot;evil and inhuman,&amp;quot; or fear the mean-girl Vatican cardinals whose solid gold multi-millennium party he&amp;#039;s so genially wrecking. Instead Pope Francis spends his days publicly worrying about social justice, calling attention to the problems of runaway capitalism, and entreating people to be decent to one another. He even washed the feet of a Muslim woman, which is about as double a whammy as a Pope can possible execute\u2014especially after eight years of old Emperor Palpatine there. And now this. In a letter yesterday to the founder of an Italian newspaper\u2014signed &amp;quot;Francesco&amp;quot;\u2014the Pope doubled down on a comment he had made this summer about atheists not all being doomed to roast on a spit for all eternity. Back then, a Vatican spokesman dubiously retracted the notion. But here it is again.   &amp;quot;You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don&amp;#039;t believe and who don&amp;#039;t seek the faith. I start by saying\u2014and this is the fundamental thing\u2014that God&amp;#039;s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.&amp;quot;  We called up Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of leading atheist group American Humanist Association to see if he saw this as good progress, or maybe akin to being granted admission into a club you never wanted to join in the first place. So what do you think of the letter? He says some interesting stuff. One little concern I have is that he leads it off by saying &amp;quot;if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart&amp;quot;\u2014well, you can&amp;#039;t ask for mercy if you don&amp;#039;t believe in God. It&amp;#039;s sort of presupposes that people don&amp;#039;t really continue to not believe in God after they die. But the gist of what he&amp;#039;s saying is a lot more positive than what we&amp;#039;ve seen from Pope Benedict for sure, and some past leaders as well. I think he&amp;#039;s trying to be as friendly as he can and reach out as much as he can. I&amp;#039;m not sure he fully grasps that humanists and atheists base their morality on how things are good for themselves and society around them, which is a little bit more reason-based than listening to your conscience, but again, I feel like this is a positive gesture overall. A letter like this would have been unthinkable in the past. In a column you wrote for the Huffington Post in February, after Benedict resigned, you proposed an ideal pope\u2014one who emphasizes universality and good works\u2014figuring a guy like that would never get the job. But then he sort of did, right? I continue to be pleased with what Francis is talking about and his openness\u2014despite papal authorities&amp;#039; attempts to retract his statements [laughs]. He&amp;#039;s offering very universal ideas\u2014not closing the door and saying you have to be a Catholic in order for good things to happen. This is the kind of world leader that we need in a position of power that the pope has if we want hope for a more universal community. The cardinals, as you suggested, are probably freaking out about this. I assume their perception of the Pope is that he&amp;#039;s weakening the church as an institution. Do you feel that&amp;#039;s the case? Had he been rigid and conservative in his approach, I think he really would have kept pushing on the backs of those who were ready to flee the church. So what he&amp;#039;s doing gives some solace to those who are a little more progressive, which is a growing number in the church. It gives a chance for those folks to remain involved. I think that from a Catholic standpoint he&amp;#039;s doing the right thing. He&amp;#039;s doing pretty much all he can do for the good of the Catholic Church. But people assume atheists are rooting for the Church to fail. Is there a way for atheism and organized religion to be strengthened simultaneously or is a zero-sum game?  Oh, I definitely see it as an opportunity for both sides to grow in a positive direction. I think atheists are a little na\u00EFve if they think that the best solution is to convert everybody to atheisms. That&amp;#039;s not going to happen any time soon. This is the world we live in. But we have to find ways to nurture the more progressive, more open-minded people willing to reason and re-evaluate positions in churches. We should encourage that to happen. Churches do revise their opinions from time to time. Instead of criticizing them for not being true to their faith\u2014which we don&amp;#039;t agree with anyway\u2014we should encourage them.  So\u2014this is a wild question\u2014but has Francis been a net positive for you guys? Net positive is a tough thing. There&amp;#039;s still a lot of concern we have about how the church reacts towards contraception and things that avoid the spread of disease and other types of problems. The church isn&amp;#039;t clean of that yet, and it&amp;#039;s not clean of other problems yet in terms of abuses within the church. Net positive is a strong statement for me to make, as an atheist [laughs]. But he&amp;#039;s definitely moving the needle in that direction. What would you want him to do next? Well, frankly the issue of contraception is a big one. I understand that the church isn&amp;#039;t likely to reconsider its position on matters like abortion, but there is just no reasonable group in society that thinks that you should avoid contraception in a world where overpopulation is rampant and disease can spread without protection. It&amp;#039;s just\u2014the idea that sex is only for making more babies, and not for enjoyment and part of a healthy lifestyle, is just so backwards. It&amp;#039;s time for the church to revisit that. It would make the church stronger if it did. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a24662/pope-smiles-on-godless/?click=news&src=spr_FBPAGE&spr_id=22886>