Posted on 04/22/2004 8:09:19 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
Msgr. M. Francis Mannion is still at it, giving bum answers to good questions. In his regular column in Our Sunday Visitor (Nov. 16, 2003), he is asked: "My 25-year-old son was recently killed in a motorcycle accident. He was a very good man and a good son, and he had a lot of integrity. However, he was an agnostic…. Now, I worry about his salvation. I want to believe he is with God or at least in purgatory…. Should I worry that he might be in hell?"
Mannion answers: "If we love someone and hope for their [sic] salvation, God sees their merits and virtues far more deeply and perceptively than we do…. It is a holy and noble thought that no one ever goes to hell who has been truly loved by another human being in this life. What good we see in the lives of those we love, God sees all the more."
First, if God sees more good in those we love than we do, think of how much more bad God sees in them. Most people like to advertise their goodness, not their badness, but people cannot hide their badness from God.
Second, to "hope" for someone’s salvation has no bearing on whether he is actually saved.
Third, it is not "a holy and noble thought that no one ever goes to hell who has been truly loved by another…." Such a "thought" has nothing to do with authentic holiness. And if it’s noble, at best it’s a noble lie. We defy Mannion to find anything in Scripture or magisterial Church teaching that would affirm that "no one ever goes to hell who has been truly loved by another."
Mannion’s answer was most amusing in light of the previous week’s Visitor (Nov. 9), which inaugurated a sweeping re-design of the Visitor and included a feature called "Catholic Journalists You Know and Trust." That feature highlighted the Visitor’s regular writers, giving bits of their biography, and often their philosophy and their take on the Church. Greg Erlandson, the Publisher of the Visitor, gave this two-sentence quote on his understanding of what the Visitor stands for: "Catholics have a right to know what the Church teaches and why. Too often, personal agendas obscure the clear presentation of these truths." If Erlandson really believes that, we don’t know why he allows Mannion to write for the Visitor, for Mannion often gives us his strange "personal agenda," not what "the Church teaches."
Mannion is notorious for inventing new doctrines. In his Visitor column (July 16, 2000), he said: "To say that Judas’ sin could not be forgiven is to say that the power of Satan is greater than that of Jesus, that Jesus’ resurrection had limited power to redeem and was not able to grasp the soul of Judas. In truth, Jesus’ death and resurrection overpower the worst evil of which human beings are capable." What Mannion is saying is that ultimately man has no free will (Jesus "overpowers" our evil choices), and that everyone is guaranteed salvation, no repentance needed — all of which is clearly contrary to Catholic teaching. If Judas was saved — which we seriously doubt — he repented of his own free will; whether he was saved or damned has nothing to do with the preposterous notion that "the power of Satan is greater than that of Jesus."
Also in his Visitor column (April 14, 2002), Mannion said that "it is reasonable" to "speculate" that Hitler and Stalin are in Heaven because "Christians are called to solidarity with all their fellow human beings." Doesn’t Mannion know that "Christian solidarity" has nothing to do with how Jesus Christ judges Hitler and Stalin? Mannion also said that "Hitler and Stalin could only be in heaven if they were embraced there by their earthly victims." Where did Mannion get the ridiculous notion that mortal men decide Hitler and Stalin’s eternal destiny rather than Jesus Christ? To go to Heaven, Hitler and Stalin had to repent before death; the embraces of mere men are of no avail.
It’s obvious that Mannion has major problems with the Church’s doctrine of Hell — and feels free to promote his doubts in the pages of the Visitor. But Mannion’s strange concoctions are, as St. Paul put it, "fables" (see 2 Tim. 4:3-4).
Now, we can understand why Mannion would want to offer words of comfort to that mother whose 25-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident. But assuring her that because she loved him and because she thinks he was good that therefore he is in no danger of going to Hell is some other gospel, not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover, the vast majority of mothers love their children and think they’re essentially good, but mothers don’t decide who goes to Heaven.
Rather, the mother of the son killed in the motorcycle accident should have been urged by Mannion to pray persistently that her son somehow did whatever it takes to be saved and/or that God will have mercy on her son (because God foresees all, He hears such prayers before the son’s actual death). The mother — who is a Catholic and surely raised her son to be a believer, but who died an agnostic without faith in Jesus — is right to worry that her son might be in Hell. By telling her not to worry, Mannion is causing the mother to deprive her son of needed prayers. And by broadcasting his weird opinions in the Visitor, Mannion is telling moms everywhere that it doesn’t matter if their children apostatize or commit unrepented mortal sins, that just so long as the mom loves her children and the mom (not Jesus) thinks they were "good," they go to Heaven.
Mannion’s column is called "Pastoral Answers." It’s precisely these kinds of bogus "answers" that cause real Catholics to be on guard whenever they hear the word "pastoral."
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Check out these great books by Michael S. Rose
Priest Portraits of Ten Good Men Serving the Church Today (2003)
Goodbye, Good Men How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church (2002)
Ugly As Sin Why They Changed Our Sacred Places to Worship Spaces--And How we Can Change Them Back (2001)
The Renovation Manipulation The Church Counter-Renovation Handbook
As charity "thinketh no evil" (1 Cor 13.5), it would seem wrong to attempt to judge a man damned except in the case of clear divine revelation (cf. Num 16.33, St. Matthew 26.24, St. Jude 7).
Since, then, without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11, 6.) and reach the fellowship of his sons and daughters, it follows that no one can ever achieve justification without it, neither can anyone attain eternal life unless he or she perseveres in it to the end. (Dei Filius Ch. 3 §9)
The proper advice would have been to advise the mother to pray that her agnostic, unbelieving son would convert before his death. Since God is eternal, he can hear such prayers and apply them to the past. I am sure this is what the objectors to Msgr. Mannion mean.
Good night.
Putting people in hell is a promise made by the Holy Trinity........
Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. -- Matthew 13:36-42
Just a little of the many verses of Holy Scripture the V2 New Church ignores at their peril and from which they will suffer the eternal pain of hell.
You can't be a Scripture cherry picker and a traditional Roman Catholic.
A traditional Roman Catholic finds favor with God only when he strives to adhere to the Almighty's Commandments and Scriptural direction, and as necessary, seeks forgiveness from God through a priest for sins he fervently regrets.
A Scripture cherry picker is a pretender. A fraud. A sinner. An abomination before God and man, and will likely go to hell.
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