Posted on 05/07/2021 8:50:03 AM PDT by ebb tide
It has rightly been said that in order to appreciate the “Good News” of salvation we first need to recognize the bad news of damnation. This point appears to have been lost on the likes of Bishop Robert Barron with his echoing of 20th century Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar’s suggestion that we might reasonably hope that all men are saved. In a recent Sunday sermon, Barron is careful to affirm that the “fullness of salvation” lies in Jesus alone, yet he immediately follows this with the observation that all the other major religions of the world can participate in this salvation offered by Christ.
The case which Barron develops is made on the basis of Lumen Gentium 16, as well as John Henry Newman’s description of conscience as the “aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul.” What the good bishop neglects to mention, however, is that this same John Henry Newman was deeply pessimistic about the eternal prospects of those outside the Church. Like Augustine, Newman felt compelled on the basis of Scripture to believe in the massa damnata, a position which takes literally Christ’s words that only few will enter the gate to eternal life (see Matthew 7:14).
The soteriological realism of Augustine and Newman stands in stark contrast to the quasi-universalist view adopted by Bishop Barron.
(Excerpt) Read more at crisismagazine.com ...
Ping
What's "the modern church", Murph?
Did your "modern church" start in 1962?
And then you, like a true modernist, go on to quote your flawed modern catechism which is highly flawed.
Bottom line: Jesus did not lie when He warned us souls would be going to Hell, despite what you, Barron, the modern Church and its modern catechism claim otherwise.
There’s something a bit pathological about people who want others to go to hell. Why would we not hope and pray for everyone to escape damnation thru the mercy of God?
We ought to hope that God gets what he desires. I think we have a pretty clear expectation from Scripture and our own practical experience that, in the final analysis, he doesn't. But still, we should want what God wants without exception or qualification.
There’s something pathological about those who falsely claim their fellow catholic posters on this forum want people to go to Hell.
It’s called bearing false witness.
If one hopes no one goes to Hell now, in the past or in the future, one thus hopes Hell is empty.
If Hell is empty, what is it's reason for existence, Murph? Just to scare us into being good little boys and girls?
Was Jesus just scaring us; and not telling us the Truth?
Pope St. Pius X would have probably agreed with you.
That’s why he fought the modernists so hard throughout his papacy in the beginning of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, the modernists finally got their way with VCII, the new Mass, the new Bible, the new catechism and their New Pentecost.
The hope is individual by individual.
If time were to slow down and permit such an exercise, the Church could gaze individually upon every human being alive, recognize the kernel or seed of the divine in each such person, and legitimately hope that each such person, in turn, exercises their free will in such a way as to to make the individual choice to husband that kernel or seed, to deliberately cooperate with God’s grace, to fear, and to tremble, and in so doing, to work out his or her salvation.
In every era, the Church has witnessed at least some of its brothers deliberately grind that kernel or seed underfoot. The Church knows that this behavior—final impenitence—defiantly spitting right in the eye of the Holy Ghost—angrily slapping away the soothing caress of the Blessed Virgin Mary—during the last moments before death, is perfectly incompatible with salvation. It is consistently met with implacable justice and, ultimately, a “zero” measure of mercy at each such person’s individual or personal judgement. Such person is saying, once again, using their own free will, which God is obliged to repect: I choose Hell.
Doing this instantly earns one a first class one way ticket to the hot place, no refunds, no returns. Such people CANNOT legitimately be imagined as having potentially avoided eternal perdition.
Nothing can be gained, and a great deal lost, in pretending that EVERY human upon which the Church gazes longingly and lovingly as described above will ultimately exercise their free will to make the choice to husband the kernel or seed gifted to them by God. SOME there are at all times who, at death, deliberately reject Heaven, and embrace Hell. Let us all, please, refuse to waste another minute or ounce of energy imagining or “hoping” that even one of those people was or is or ever can be (consistent with the divine economy) awarded with an eternal fate that does not match their final choice!
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