He just stated that he believes something that is simply and provably not true, and contradicts Official Catholic Doctrine. People who don't devoutly believe Catholic Church doctrine, make up their own feel-good "factoids" that contradict the Church's teaching, yet still claim to be Catholic are lying. And there's a commandment against that. (But what do they care, if they don't actually believe what they claim to believe?)

You don't get to make up your own doctrine and still call yourself Catholic. Not believing doctrine and making up your own religious beliefs, and spreading misinformation about the actual doctrine of the Catholic Church, is NOT an option for real Catholics. The Pope said so himself, and he's the one whose JOB it is to make "big assertions".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritatis_Splendor#Moral_autho...

>Moral authority of the Catholic Church

>Ultimately, John Paul teaches, "to ask about the good, in fact, ultimately means to turn towards God, the fullness of goodness." Against the idea that the Church's teaching body has a mainly exhortatory role, the pope reiterates the Catholic doctrine that the magisterium of the Catholic Church has authority to definitively pronounce on moral questions. Even more, John Paul teaches that the Church is Christ's particular response to help answer everyone's question of what is right and wrong.

The term "Cafeteria Catholic" describes people who think they can pick and choose what they want to believe and make up their own mythology. It's a pejorative that "real" Catholics use to describe people like tptacek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafeteria_Catholicism

>In a similar vein, Pope John Paul II stated in his talk to the Bishops in Los Angeles in 1987:

>It is sometimes reported that a large number of Catholics today do not adhere to the teaching of the Catholic Church on a number of questions, notably sexual and conjugal morality, divorce and remarriage. Some are reported as not accepting the clear position on abortion. It has to be noted that there is a tendency on the part of some Catholics to be selective in their adherence to the Church's moral teaching. It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a "good Catholic," and poses no obstacle to the reception of the Sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching of the Bishops in the United States and elsewhere."

My point is that if he thinks he can make up his own doctrine and spread misinformation like "Catholics don't believe sin is atoned for with suffering", when they most certainly and provably do (and that's the whole point with their bizarre fetish about Christ being crucified on the cross and dying for our sins, and Mother Teresa's own words prove she is obsessed with people suffering for their sins, instead of preventing that suffering), he is committing a "grave error". Thats not just my opinion, it's the official doctrine, and I'm quoting Pope John Paul II.

"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." -Mother Teresa, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#1990s

It's not surprising he's wrong and doesn't even realize it, because:

Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248/ath...

That's why many Cafeteria Catholics are happy to explain to you that Transubstantiation is only a metaphor and Catholics don't actually believe such crazy baloney that they're literally eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ. But Transubstantiation is most certainly NOT a metaphor, and anyone Catholic who says so is committing a "grave error".

So of course he's confused about Catholic doctrine after 12 years of Catholic school, after having been indoctrinated with inconsistent self contradictory lies about both the real world and the fictional Catholic mythology, as well as their historic waffling on purgatory and other doctrine.

It's ALL about suffering and punishment: don't let tptacek fool you, even if he's fooled himself.

"MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself — and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?"
Christopher Hitchens, "Mommie Dearest: The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.", Slate, 2003-10-20 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Quotes_about_Mot...