Did the Pope Condemn Personal Relationships with Jesus?

What Pope Francis is talking about is clear when we look at the entirety of what he said:

We are able to live this journey not only because of others, but together with others. In the Church there is no “do it yourself,” there are no “free agents.” How many times did Pope Benedict describe the Church as an ecclesial “we”! At times one hears someone say: “I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, but I don’t care about the Church.” How many times have we heard this? And this is not good. There are those who believe they can maintain a personal, direct, and immediate relationship with Jesus Christ outside the communion and the mediation of the Church. These are dangerous and harmful temptations. These are, as the great Paul VI said, absurd dichotomies. It is true that walking together is challenging, and at times can be tiring: it can happen that some brother or some sister creates difficulties, or shocks us. . . . But the Lord entrusted his message of salvation to a few human beings, to us all, to a few witnesses; and it is in our brothers and in our sisters, with their gifts and limitations, that he comes to meet us and make himself known. And this is what it means to belong to the Church. Remember this well: to be Christian means belonging to the Church. The first name is “Christian,” the last name is “belonging to the Church” (General Audience, Wednesday, 25 June 2014).

Pope Francis was simply pointing out the old saying: Jesus taught Christians to call God Our Father, not My Father. As Christians, we cannot simply wall ourselves off from one another and have a “Jesus and me” attitude to the exclusion of others. Jesus calls us to live our Christian faith walking side by side with our brothers and sisters.