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
There was a poll done once of those who profess to be Christian, and I don't remember the numbers but I remember there was a disturbing number of them who did not think Hell is a literal place, including those who were in the Clergy. I am glad the Pope spoke up.
The very quote you post REFUTES your claim that the Church teaches "heaven and hell are not real..." Did you even read it?
You never had a chemistry set as a kid, did you? Every kid knows that sulfur burns with an amazing blue flame:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur
Well,if all you say is true and I am not saying I think it IS,then that famous Curtis Mayfield song is defintely applicable-
If Theres a Hell Below,Were All Going to Go!
I am not a person who takes The Bible literally.I do read it a lot and much is very inspirational and just basic common sense.Yet I simply cannot take every word at face value.I am a critical thinker and do not accept ANY book or idea without deep analysis and a healthy dose of skepticism.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html
Good debate on the subject if you ask me. Dr. Craig touches on some of the things you bring up.
Hope you/they are not "unpleasantly" surprised postmortem.
Frank
Job asked questions like that. That's all the answer you will get.
There comes a point where additional hotness is kind of beside the point, don't you think? I mean, how much more pain can there be once you've gotten hotter than the sun? Kind of like trying to light a candle that's already lit.
I'll let you know when I get there, since I do not believe in the resurrection, although I am profoundly grateful that our nation was founded by people who mostly did.
I do believe in God though, but I obviously cannot claim to be a Christian.
Pray for this well-meaning but imperfect sinner anyway, if you find a spare moment. Thanks.
Only a god with an ego could belive in Hell.
Oh,then I am definitely OK by those standards.
Of course I don't think living in the US is comparable to Hell!
Though sometimes it seems comparable to living in a lunatic asylum.
I will pray for you. May God be merciful to you and may you hear His call to His Table.
Back when I was GranadaHillsDan you could look East a cross the Valley and never see the San Gabriel Mts all summer long. From where I lived looking South across The Valley you would be looking DOWN on top of the inversion layer - a grayish blue that appeared as though we were on the shore of some great inland sea. After a 10 minute bike ride to the store in July or August my lungs would fell like they wanted to burst and my eyelids would twitch uncontrollably. Now that I think of it, I guess I already had my time in hell...and I didn't even realize it.
Thank you.
gracias.
"Father why have you forsaken me?!?" Well, that was the same question Job asked. It was after that question that god forgave man for his sins forever. Christ is the answer to Job's question.
Some of my lib friends have said that they would prefer to go to Hell, because "that's where all the cool people will be".
It have?
(signed)
The Self-Annointed FR Grammar Police
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