Posted on 03/27/2007 10:53:30 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said.
Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to “admit blame and promise to sin no more”, they risked “eternal damnation — the Inferno”.
Hell “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more”, he said.
The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine, noted that “forgiveness of sins” for those who repent was a cornerstone of Christian belief. He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the “woman taken in adultery” and prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
God had given men and women free will to choose whether “spontaneously to accept salvation . . . the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind”.
Vatican officials said that the Pope — who is also the Bishop of Rome — had been speaking in “straightfoward” language “like a parish priest”. He had wanted to reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that Hell is a “state of eternal separation from God”, to be understood “symbolically rather than physically”.
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a Church historian, said that the Pope was “right to remind us that Hell is not something to be put on one side” as an inconvenient or embarrassing aspect of belief.
It had been misused in the Middle Ages to scare the impressionable with “horrific visions” of damnation, as described in Dante’s Inferno.
It had a pedigree, however, that went back to Ancient Egypt and the Greek idea of Hades, and was described by St Matthew as a place of “everlasting fire” (Matthew xxv, 41).
“The problem is not only that our sense of sin has declined, but also that the world wars and totalitarianisms of the 20th century created a Hell on Earth as bad as anything we can imagine in the afterlife,” Professor Bagliani said.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II declared that Heaven was “neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life.” Hell, by contrast, was “the ultimate consequence of sin itself . . . Rather than a place, Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy”.
In October the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a “halfway house” between Heaven and Hell, inhabited by unbaptised infants and holy men and women who lived before Christ, was “only a theological hypothesis” and not a “definitive truth of the faith”.
Timely visions
— “Outer darkness . . . there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” St Matthew
So then, Catholics believe in eternal security of the believer...
Can you say you know for sure you are going to heaven when you die (after purgatory)???
This is interesting because when I converted to Catholicism my priest told me that "Hell was an absence from God".
Hell is kind of like Limbo to Catholics. They have ignored it for a long time now and I wonder if there isn't more to come from this Pope concerning those places.
By the way...I still don't believe in a fiery Hell.
There will be child murderers in Heaven...There will be girl chasers in Hell...Our justice is not God's justice...
Not to hijack this thread, but is this how the history of Sweden's shameful collusion with Nazi Germany now being rewritten? Has Sweden's deplorable collaboration while her neighbors bravely fought against Nazi and Soviet aggression now seen as some kind perverted victory? The French at least declared war and fought in defense of Poland and their own country before capitulating. No offense, but the only thing Sweden accomplished militarily in the last century was to spread her legs for any potential invader and arrange for the rape of her neighbors. To claim some sort of pride in Sweden's cowardly collaboration is simply perverse. If this is how Sweden is publishing her history books, it will be no great loss when they are soon rewritten in Arabic.
But again as you put it, no offense!
With pleasure:
John 21: 25 But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
2 Thess 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.
Galatians 1:8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.
2 John 1:12 Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink, but I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
Purgatory exists in Sacred Tradition -- committed to the apostles by our Lord, as scripture records, and faithfully handed down by them. Scripture itself is witness that a teaching doesn't have to be explicit in scripture to be authentic.
Romans 10: 15 And how can men preach unless they are sent?
Jesus sent the apostles. Who sent you, or those who taught you?
In all seriousness, would you condemn your own child (if you are a parent) to such eternal torture, for disrespecting you or dishonoring you? What you describe would be expected to have come from the brain of a violence fetishist, a sadist. It's totally gratuitous. I will never grasp why people view someone as being worth worshiping who chooses something like that (especially such asymmetrical punishment-- like sawing a person's head off for merely being an infidel) when literally every punishment option is at his disposal.
As you like to say, "Chapter and verse, please."
IMHO, Purgatory is not so much a place as an event. The thief you mention had his purgatory event on the cross when he recognized his failure and asked for Christ's salvation before he died. Many people do not get similar opportunities while alive and thus are allowed them after death.
As has been noted here before, Christ's salvation is a gift to all, and I think we will be surprised (and maybe disappointed) about the people we may meet in heaven. I only pray that I am not one of the vineyard workers who complain that the late comers have received the same wage as I.
It is precisely because He is NOT "quick to anger" that he puts up with the impudence, arrogance and haughty nonsense thrown back in the face of Him...
Job would disagree with you on that. It seems he is quick to anger. But, then my god is not the new testament biblical god.
Ya, I read it...Pope JP2 says Heaven and Hell are a state of mind...It's all in your head...
Did you read it???
He says Heaven is not an abstract place but it is not in the clouds either...Where is it then??? It's a real place in his head apparently...
not your job [smile]. You won't ever be much good at it either, if you ever REALLY screw up (or, what is worse, get a good look at your own heart). Go to Jesus. He is a professional at it. He is never shocked or appalled at your stuff. There is a freedom in "being the sinner" and accepting that He eternally lives to help you actualize the forgiveness He purchased. It is not negative, or pouty. It is the real source of joy. I find that He forgives far better than I can.
Odder still, is that we are, apparently, his second attempt at creating organisms that have the sole purpose of worshiping him (the first attempt ended in a war-- in heaven, of all places-- and the banishment of a third of the citizens of that created society). You would think he would have learned his lesson, but he did the same exact thing again with the exact same result-- betrayal by his subjects. God gets an "F" in creation, unless he's graded on a curve or something.
What I don't get is how hell is so monotonously painful, having only one thing to offer, that being discomfort as a result of searing heat. And of course, heaven is a placeof comfort and relaxation, and there is milk and honey and all those that went before us will be there to greet us, unless they went to hell. Now, if you are a sinner, you go to hell. Unless you are forgiven, that is. In which case you get to go to heaven. The trick is to make sure you get forgiven before you die. And how do you get forgiven? Why, you go to confession and accept Jesus as your lord and savior, and voila! You get to go to heaven. But when Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," nobody was able to cast a stone, so right there things were looking pretty bad for people.
Not that you can't get forgiven and stuff, just that it's too pat an answer. This is midieval mythology, designed to scare people into acting against their baser instincts, and it worked some. There was a lot less general knowledge back then, being as how the world was flat and all. A lot of people got burned at the stake then too, as if the concept of hell wasn't quite scary enough for people.
LOL! Dude, you're hilarious. By your "reasoning", all the people who lived before the time of Christ are doomed to roast in Hell, since Christ hadn't died for their sins yet.
And they'll burn along with all the American aborigines who lived here prior to 1492, I suppose? And all the African natives prior to European colonialism. And the Japanese. And the Thais, Malays, and Eskimos.
And how about babies who aren't yet old enough to understand? Do they go to the Hot Place, too? What about aborted children? Miscarried babies? The mentally handicapped who can't understand the Gospel message? The comatose? That deaf, dumb, and blind kid that sure plays a mean pinball? They're all going to fry like taco meat because they never invited Jesus into their hearts as their personal Savior?
Please. It's a fact that all who are saved are saved through Jesus Christ. But precisely HOW He chooses to accomplish that salvation is His business and nobody else's. If He pleases to allow people into Heaven that never came forward at a Baptist altar call, He has that authority.
Listen, Pope ItsOurTimeNow, I know you mean well. But if I have to decide between the "infallible" doctrine promulgated by you and the one the Pope in Rome has proclaimed, I'll stick with the original.
Or unless there is more to the picture than a hairless biped who struggles to figure out the relationship of gravitation to matter can figure out.
Here's a perspective for you... What Christ did on the Cross was the culmination of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb begun during the Last Supper. In this celebrated liturgy, we were brought into the family of God as Christ's bride, the Church. The ritual and realities conform to ancient convenant ceremonies where families were formed. It is more than pardon, it is adoption.
In Baptism, we are washed clean and we take on God's Name as a new creation (we are Baptized in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Just as the neighbor kid can't become a member of my household on his own, we couldn't become members of God's family without Him covenanting with us. There is no reason that the infant that Christ said should "come to" Him, can't be born again into this reality of God's family just as the infant was to be circumcised in the old convenant to be a member of God's Holy People, Israel.
I was making fun of algore who said the global warming debate is over.
So much for "nice". I'll be over here having an interesting conversation with the adults...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.