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 Dantes 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
Oh my god...I never, ever thought about it like that. What an interesting way to look at this whole subject. Super!
Not a theological expert by any means, but are the billion hindus and buddist hellbound by this account?
You've never been married have you?
When it comes down to it you know absolutely nothing more or less than this poster or me about God. You have a belief. Belief doesn't equal truth. Sorry.
Or Thursday's Gospel?
**Yeah, like all of the priests who raped little boys for decades while the church covered it up. I'm thinking there's a special place in hell for them.**
Yes some priests made mistakes and made selfish choice that were only self-fulfilling. But please don't bash the entire Catholic church because of them.
Here's a quote for you:
"The walls of hell are lined with the skulls of bishops."
Saint John of the Cross
"Hell is hotter than the Sun. It is a place of darkness and where the worm never dies. If using the physical limitation of the world, the fire is so hot that you cannot see the flame. There are some fire that does not have any visible flame such as fire with alcohol as a fuel. Regardless of the eternal address, you will have body either in Heaven or in Hell. The body in Hell will experience severe pain, something beyond what is known in the world. The pain will be in every cubic inch of your Hell body."
Hmmm, and you know all these details exactly how?
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:
1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic." "
From here: Hotter than hell
This is a most cool Pope.
Oh, really? Then why does St. Paul speak of those "saved as through fire" in 1 Corinthians 3 ??
The RCC uses purgatory to make people feel better about their sins.
Wrong.
I love what Spurgeon has to say
Yes, I'm sure you do, whilst simultaneously claiming you go by "the Bible alone". There is no "Book of Spurgeon" in my Bible, so why should I pay the slightest respect to the opinion of a mere man who hasn't the tiniest shred of God-given authority to teach me?
Either Christ's atonement is satisfactory and complete, or it isn't.
Either you are, at the moment of your death, utterly perfect, completely holy, and absolutely ready to enter the presence of a righteous God (who is, according to Scripture, a "consuming fire," and will not be deceived by any snow-covered dunghills merely covered by an imputed legal fiction, pace Martin Luther), or you'll need purgatory ... or you're going to hell.
Those are the only possible choices.
My favorite part about the heaven myth is the references to Midas-like gold on everything and mansions and other trappings of extreme, gratuitous wealth-- which is generally counter to the poverty of Jesus and the Apostles.
It's like heaven/Christianity was set up deliberately as a way to lure the poor (who make up almost all of any society-- the rich being in the very top percentile). If you set up a religion, make sure it has mass appeal. Telling the poor that they will be filthy rich in the afterlife is a good start.
We are all condemned by our sins. There are no small sins. Jesus came and died on the cross in order for us to be forgiven of all our sins. The only way to Heaven is to repent and believe the Gospel!
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only son.
John 3:16-18 NIV
Good one.
There are no small sins.Yes,I understand that is what The Bible says.
But lets use common sense.Chinese Communism was responsible for something like twenty million deaths from forced starvation.
I stole a quarter from my mom's purse when I was twelve.
There is a moral equivalency there?
Following your comment to it's logical conclusion, does God then sentence bad men to marriage?
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