Fortunately, the Pope has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a soul is or is not condemed thereto. 
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
I don't know about you but I want my children washed in the blood of the Lamb ASAP.
I understand what you are saying. However, your problem is that you need to think outside your box. God is NOT LIKE us. What we see as neurotic obsession with worship, HE sees as the rightful and just debt owed Him by the creature. What we see as being overly picky, he sees as a cosmic assault on His holiness, etc. You make a quick run to "what a **** to be so self concerned" when the true answer is that He is a being who is truly OWED awe, worship, honor, and all we have...., and not because he wants it or craves it, but because that is truly the greatness of his being. He is truly "worthy" of such praise. Such a being who thinks such things of himself is either neurotic and vain beyond description, or He is truly the biblical God. Like I said, you need to think outside your box.
- Scripture
- Tradition (primarily the Liturgy)
- Magisterium (the Church's teachings)
Protestants have (rashly) council/papal teachings ever since Worms, when Eck argued that they trumped the plain and common teaching of Scripture (ok, it is an oversimplification). Both Catholics and Protestants have suffered for this, albeit in different ways.
It is important to note that even in the most vicious rants against the papacy, Calvin, Luther, et. al, never made the jump that many later reformers/puritans did and taught that the Roman Catholic church was not a part of the body of Christ.
I think you guys should renounce the 9th and 12th sections of Trent. That is the real sticking point for most Protestants, including myself. We believe that all of salvation, including our good works which evidence it, are ALL a pure gift of God, and that our good works play no part whatsoever in our legal justification before God. We in no way "cooperate" with God by working out an infused righteousness in order to merit favor with God. That favor with God comes solely and singly on the basis of an imputed righteousness which I receive by faith as a gift. Any good works which proceed from this are evidences (although no less gifts!) of my legal standing. They do not add to it in any shape manner or form. Until you guys can quit anathematizing me over that, we remain at odds over the nature of the gospel itself. I will not say that no one who affirms Trent can be a true Christian, but I will say that no one who affirms WHAT TRENT CLEARLY SEEMS TO ME TO TEACH can be a true Christian. My understanding may be deficient, but I cannot buy into any system where our salvation is divided between God's activity and ours.
That said, I believe that there are many regenerate Roman Catholics who........, let us just say that their understanding of Trent is different than mine.
Tell me what you think happened (according to Christian teaching) on the cross, and we can at least try to begin to address your question. Your answer sets the stage for whether or not the biblical answer to this makes any sense.
The desire to be gods has long captivated man but prior to this century the attempts to destroy the Catholic Church were usually initiated and fought from outside. This wasn't working so the plan was to infiltrate the Church and destroy it from within.
One of the prongs of the attack was to infiltrate it with men who were committed to their program or could be easily influenced. Men with weaknesses were recruited to the ranks of the clergy and homosexuals with their particular weakness were prime candidates. The Church is now living with the results of this programmed plan to destroy it.
It's costing lots of money and caused many good and decent people to lose heart as well as their faith but I think the tide is turning,at least I hope it is. Many people,myself included are convinced that if Catholicism is destroyed,all of Christianity will soon follow in America and Europe and western civilization will be dead forever. This would be truly tragic.
While there is nothing wrong with pointing out the sins and crimes that homosexual priests have perpetrated on young men and in some cases young boys,at this point it would probably be wiser and more fruitful to look at why and to work toward addressing the core issues and foundational cracks and repair them instead.
Time to identify the enemy and fight them rather that divide ourselves with meaningless accusations and smarmy swipes. As you so rightly stated "there's a special place in Hell for them,I agree and so we must move on and fight the enemy,here and now,rather than each other.
Meaningless accusations? Smarmy swipes? I'm sorry but I find the rape of children and the decades long cover-up of the rapes worthy of my comments. I hope the rapists burn in Hell!
Well,according to your post,I think I am in the clear.But I am never to cocky to admit I might be wrong.
Because God is just as well as merciful, it is only right that those who sinned greatly undergo some sort of expiation for the damage they caused on earth. And, after all, who would want to appear before God in a less than pristine condition?
Dreams,I have previously stated to you in past posts how much I not only respect your perspectives on various issues but your CREATIVITY and original methods of elucidating your views.
Let me state for the record that:
1.I believe in God and pray and honor Him daily
2.I believe Jesus is the divine son of God and honor and revere Him as well(what would Jesus do)
3.Am TRYING to live a life that is reflective of Christian values at the price of having to remove myself mentally and culturally from the wickedness of this world.Well worth that "sacrifice"by the way.
4.See myself as an integral part of God's love and redemption of my soul here on Earth and ready to come home to Him when He calls.
Yes,I forgive myself but not just to go sin again.I go through many hours of intense self-examination and communion with God before I get to that point.
And then the next day I do it all over again,getting more in synch with Him each time I pick myself up from a fall.
Fortunately, the Pope has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a soul is or is not condemed thereto.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
He offers free will and then punishes you with eternal torture if you freely choose some course of action that displeases him. He decides that he needs things to worship him constantly and for all eternity so he creates angels, many of which decide to not do that and, so, after realizing that whole experiment was a failure, he tries again with mankind. This time, though, he sets a trap for mankind before man is even created, like a baited hook and a trout, which makes no sense unless he's a person with emotional/neurotic issues (feel free to think outside the box and tell me how that wouldn't be the case)-- because none of the good creators any of us know (good mothers, good artists) set their creation up for failure/destruction from the start-- my mom never put baby food or my favorite toy in a set rat trap, for example.
God is supposed to be all powerful, but he doesn't have the power to stop his emotional need to be needed, loved, worshiped.
Kings for all time have viewed themselves as being worthy of praise, as it being a rightful and just debt owed. God behaves like human kings. Since he appears in stories written by humans, it's not surprising. And, much of his odd behavior didn't seem odd to people who were used to kings acting like that their whole lives.
Just wrapping your brain around drowning basically your entire creation (save a very few) is beyond comprehension, except to see him like an artist that has created some work of art that he has totally screwed up bit by bit and ultimately has to toss it in the trash-- except God isn't supposed to make mistakes and when God trashes his creation, he's killing a lot of babies and young children and mentally and physically handicapped people, and that makes it hard to reconcile with his being all-good.
There are many basic things about him and what he has done and what he has promised to do that demand some really weird outside the box thinking. You're welcome to assist me.
Agreed, it is far worse now. Here's my ancient memory of LA: Most days we could see Mt. Wilson clearly. Orange groves filled the SF Valley and Eastwards to Riverside. I can recall the perfume of those orange trees for miles when we drove to Big Bear. I used to run the mile in clear air at high school. Man, I'm old!
God doesn't send anyone to hell. Men send themselves to Hell.
God offers salvation from hell.
Yes, heaven, hell, purgatory are all real.
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