Bishop Barron Talks Nonsense About Hell [Catholic Caucus]

This is a follow-up to Friday's more general post on Bishop Robert Barron's apologetics. Here I want to specifically evaluate one aspect of Barron's views on Hell.

Before beginning, I want to head off one possible misunderstanding. In the following, I talk about the chances or "odds" that an individual person or a group of people may be saved. In doing so, I don't mean to imply that those chances may ever be known in any particular case, nor even that they are chances in the conventional sense - that eternal salvation is metaphysically equivalent to, say, a coin flip. What I do want to do, among other things, is to point out the logical consequences of language. You can't claim both X and Not X. If A implies B and B implies C, then you can't claim both A and Not C. And so on.

Or to anticipate, if you claim there's a "realistic hope" of X happening, that means something. For example, among other things, it doesn't mean "there's virtually no chance" of X happening or "there's only a minuscule possibility" of X happening, etc.

In a number of well-known videos and articles (see here, here, here and here), Catholic apologist Bishop Barron argues that while Catholic doctrine (claims) that Hell exists . . . the Church has never claimed to know if any human being is actually in Hell. Barron, cites the views of Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Balthasar argued that . . . we may reasonably hope that all people will be saved . . . we may entertain the lively and realistic hope that all people will eventually be drawn into the divine love. And then writes: My own conviction is that Balthasar has this more or less right. But Barron adamantly claims that the Balthasar/Barron view is not universalism - the view that everyone will be saved, or the view that we know in the case of each person that he will be saved. Instead:

When the Church says that Hell exists, it means that the definitive rejection of God’s love is a real possibility. All of this is of course utter obscurantist nonsense.

Let's put Hell aside for a moment and ask a series of abstract questions having to do with odds.

When you flip a different coin, is it realistic to hope that it might come up heads?

The answer to the last question is No. At some point between 1 to 1 odds and 105,999,999,999 to 1 odds our hope becomes unrealistic.

The previous answers assume that there's a 50% chance on any flip of getting heads. But what if we're using a "trick" coin that, say gives a 99% chance of heads? In that case, we might have a realistic hope of getting all heads if we flipped 10, 20, 50, 100 or even 200 coins.

But we would still have no realistic hope for that 106 billion. The odds of getting 106 billion heads even with a coin that came up heads 99% of the time are over a billion to one.

Indeed, even if we define "realistic" conservatively as having, say, at least a 1% chance (which might be "realistic" but is still pretty small), then to have a realistic hope of getting heads on all 106 billion flips, the chance of getting heads for one coin would have to be on the order of 99.9999999%, give or take a few nines. That's not certainty, of course, but it's as close to certainty as virtually anything ever gets.

If I (being the ingenious and clever sinner that I am) use a magnet on a slot machine, giving me a 99.9999999% chance that I will come up a winner, in common-sense language, I would be perfectly within my rights to say that I know or I'm certain that I will win.

On one estimate, there have been approximately 106 billion human beings born on earth since 6,000 BC.

To say that we have a realistic hope that all of those were or will be saved, then (see above) there would have to be at least a 99.99999999% chance for each one of us, considered individually, to be saved.

It follows that there would be only a .00000001% chance (if that) for each one of us to go to Hell. To claim that that amounts to a "real possibility" is an abuse of common-sense language.

The main point is that the "realistic hope" of universal salvation contradicts the "real possibility" of individual damnation. You just can't assert both things at the same time. Or, rather, if you do, you're talking nonsense.

A subsidiary point is that Barron's "realistic hope" makes him for all extents and purposes a universalist. Or if he is not technically a universalist - for each person, there's a whopping .000000001% chance that he will not be saved - then he's a watered-down universalist. His giant frothing mug of universalism contains one atom of water.

Lastly, of course, those incredibly low "odds" for damnation are in complete contradiction to the words of Jesus, the opinions of the Church Fathers and the traditional formulations of the doctrine of hell by the Church.

I hope I'll be saved. I hope you'll be saved. I hope that that drunken, abusive guy who had a fatal heart-attack while in bed with his mistress will be saved. If I am a true Catholic and a magnanimous fellow, then I hope (or should hope) that Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot will be saved. Perhaps in some sense it is "realistic" to hope for Napoleon, etc. After all, God will forgive anyone if they sincerely repent.

But it isn't realistic to hope for all of them to be saved in sum. If Christianity is true, then they won't be. Not all of them.

Why does all of this matter? Well, obviously, logic matters and the truth matters, whatever one's purpose.

But beyond that, I think what we might call Barron's trickery is obvious. And I do mean trickery. It is incomprehensible to me that a man of at least middling intelligence, such as Barron, cannot see what he is doing. Obviously, Barron thinks scaring people with Hell is medieval or low-class or fundamentalist or whatever. Respected contemporary theologians or apologists just don't do it. And you know how much he wants to be respected.

Or to be more charitable, perhaps he thinks scaring people with Hell just won't work to convert them or get them to stay. (As I argued a few days ago, there's no evidence for that, whatsoever. Indeed, the opposite is much more likely.)

But he can't explicitly ditch Hell since it's such an obvious Church teaching. Hence, the bait and switch.

Traditional Catholicism is often criticized for putting inordinate importance on being Catholic. But of course, for the Church, being Catholic has always been a means to an end. The end (or at least one of the primary ends) is the salvation of one's soul. Or as the Church used to put it for the first 98% of its existence before people like Barron came along, the salvation of as many souls as possible.

The irony is that it's the anti-traditionalist Barron who really seems to have the fetish for being Catholic, without really telling us what it's for. By strongly implying that everyone will be saved, he's jettisoned the practical importance of saving people, and thus eliminated at a stroke what the Church historically affirmed as its most important mission.

Pure B.S. The Hell There Is!

I didn't think you were a Catholic. You've apparently proved me right. This is a caucus thread.

I am a Catholic and an R.C.I.A instructor. Frankly, you don't even sound Christian. You and the author you posted here seem to take an almost demonic glee in your false certitude that people have been condemned to eternal separation from God. I hope that you reexamine your position.

If you are Catholic, then you should trust in the Magisterium of the Church. If it were important for us to believe that people are in Hell, the Church would provide us with clear doctrine on this point. Since it hasn't, we are free to hope in God's infinite mercy for all of us sinners.

You may find the exert from the article linked below interesting. It is from a much better source than anything you have contributed to this thread.

The Population of Hell by Avery Cardinal Dulles

"The search for numbers in the demography of hell is futile. God in His wisdom has seen fit not to disclose any statistics. Several sayings of Jesus in the Gospels give the impression that the majority are lost. Paul, without denying the likelihood that some sinners will die without sufficient repentance, teaches that the grace of Christ is more powerful than sin: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Passages such as these permit us to hope that very many, if not all, will be saved.

All told, it is good that God has left us without exact information. If we knew that virtually everybody would be damned, we would be tempted to despair. If we knew that all, or nearly all, are saved, we might become presumptuous. If we knew that some fixed percent, say fifty, would be saved, we would be caught in an unholy rivalry. We would rejoice in every sign that others were among the lost, since our own chances of election would thereby be increased. Such a competitive spirit would hardly be compatible with the gospel."

I am a Vatican II Catholic and an R.C.I.A instructor..

Fixed that for you.

We are free to hope in God's infinite mercy for all of us sinners.

It doesn't surprise me that you believe and teach as the Modernist Barron does. Pope Pius IX condemned such "hope" in his Syllabus of Errors:

Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.

I am a Catholic and an R.C.I.A instructor.

I feel sorry for your students; I'll pray for them.

If you are Catholic, then you should trust in the Magisterium of the Church.

Cardinal Dulles is not, and was never, the Magisterium of the Church.

Check out the Council of Trent on Hell.

Apparently you didn't read the link I provided you in post #20. Here's an excerpt from it. It quotes both the Catholic Catechism and Pope St. John Paul II.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, ‘eternal fire.’ The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs" (CCC 1035).

In his 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote that too often "preachers, catechists, teachers . . . no longer have the courage to preach the threat of hell"(p. 183).

Concerning the reality of hell, the pope says, "In point of fact, the ancient councils rejected the theory . . . according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction, and every creature would be saved; a theory which abolished hell. . . . [T]he words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matt. 25:46). [But] who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard" (pp. 185–6).

Thus the issue that some will go to hell is decided, but the issue of who in particular will go to hell is undecided.

emphasis mine

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