Monsignor Pope Ping to column is OSV.
That’s why bad things happen to good people.
But, ever fair, God evens it out by
letting good things happen to bad people.
I’ve been thinking about how I will, at the time of my death, be faced with ALL the consequences of each of my sins.
I would counter that it is likely the strength of the desire for sin that is dealt with, not the specific deeds (revealing those, being humiliated as every secret is revealed before all creation when the books are opened, is possibly the transient punishment for transient deeds).
First, one must remember that the finally damned, when they are in that state, have no possible access to the Holy Spirit whereby the nature they have, which is the same nature they had when they physically died, can be supplanted so that they may be holy, having the new birth.
In essence, what Paul called the body of death is still their only body, all they will evermore be.
Each person has a different level of, um, sin-iness. Some have a raging desire for sin, some weaker. This desire remains a vital aspect of their nature after physical death since there is no One with them to remove it, as I mentioned earlier.
If the function of wrath in the LoF is to restrain the desire of confirmed sinners to have sin anew sin then the sin nurture (not a typo) cannot grow worse because it cannot be indulged by the damned. If that were the case then their “sin-iness” would never grow worse so the wrath they suffer would never need to increase.
Now, about the strength of this desire to sin ... I reason it would not be like many folks imagine. The very worst sinners are not usually the people we consider vile offenders but are those who have been awash in the knowledge that could have saved them but they never were saved.
Think of it as the Judas Iscariot phenomenon. Now, it seems that Judas’ final days aren’t so abbreviated as most believe (there is an argument that he was still with the disciples after the resurrection and hanged himself later), and about his final destiny ... God knows; but, of no one else in all of Scripture that I know of has God ever indicated that it would have been good for them not to be born.
That is a exceedingly harsh judgment.
Like Judas Iscariot the unsaved pew warmers have both the most knowledge of God and the greatest rejection of same. You may note, for example, that it is those who have known about God who are at risk of being turned over to reprobate minds ... not the simply wicked who never knew much about Him.
If you want to establish a hierarchy of sinners’ “sin-iness” I would suppose after them are those who have participated in the spirit of antichrist, whose beliefs contain reference to Christ but are other gospels, or even which deny the gospels entirely but still reference Christ, as Islam does.
(Islam is the single most numerous such system under the spirit of antichrist at this time.)
After these comes pretty much everyone else just down to how vile and consuming their particular passions were.
So the rub is that people we might be tempted to think of as okay, sometimes called Hell’s masterpieces (though Hell is not Satan’s work, but the Lord’s for it was created by Him to hold the demons), are really the worst sinners of all.
I remember a conversation I once had with a preacher. It was his contention that the righteous gentiles who hid Jews from the Nazis committed sins as deadly as the Nazis who killed the Jews when they lied to protect them. Lying to save a life is as bad in God’s eyes as taking a life.
I will never understand that kind of thinking.
No, there are three levels of sin:
Mortal sin
Venial sin
Sins committed by Catholic Democrat politicians.
The last sins are insignificant, because when a Catholic Democrat politician commits them, even though they are mortal sins like abortion or sodomy, the bishops will still support them, give them communion, attend dinners with them, give them annulments, and officiate at their funerals.
If you want to have your mortal sins excused, become a Catholic Democrat politician like Biden, Pelosi, Leahy, Kennedy, etc.
No penance either. EASY, PEASY. They are on the "easy" path.
I can easily understand why people stay non-Catholic Christians...TOO HARD to be a Catholic. It's the straight and narrow path, with lots of potholes and sins, MORTAL and venial, way too hard.
"Sorry, Lord."
What is difficult to understand is why such folks like
1. Scott Hahn [Presbyterian minister and Professor of Theology at a major Protestant seminary], http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/the-scott-hahn-conversion-story.html
2. and Steve Ray [Evangelical Protestant Minister], both serious men of the cloth,
turn to CATHOLICISM.
Steve Ray explains HIS conversion in his book, CROSSING THE TIBER and has DOZENS OF writings at: http://catholicconvert.com/resources/writings/steve-rays/
O, you non-Catholic Christians, NEVER read those books about the early Fathers of the Church. STAY away from all those Catholic writers, web sites, movies and documentaries...you might get moved to the LIGHT/RIGHT side.
Pardon the rhetoric and drama. It just felt right.
Not in consequence.
The wages of sin is death.
ALL sin.
All sin damns.