Posted on 05/22/2016 10:52:54 AM PDT by NYer
The “religious sense” has hit Nat Geo overnight – and the Catholic Church has found itself on center stage.
First came a dramatized documentary about Pope Francis and a new series from Morgan Freeman about the “the story of God” (which affirmed the co-existence of faith and science in Catholicism and displayed a kind of “spiritual bond” with Rome).
Now, Catholicism is at the center of a very different sort of travelogue, a two-hour special called “Map of Hell.” Donning a silver cross, action anti-hero Danny Trejo (Machete) kicks this special off with some “bad news”: “Someday, we’re all gonna die.” But then what?
“What if I died today?” Trejo growls, standing over his own dead body. “Could I be going to hell?” The actor then becomes a kind of cross-cultural, heavy metal Virgil, dragging us through the depths of hell as it’s been described over thousands of years.
First up is the shadowy Greek underworld of Hades and its evolution in Socrates, Plato, and Virgil. The takeaway here seems to be that, whatever else hell is, it’s in the highest contemplation of art and philosophy that the map begins to take shape.
That trajectory continues into the early Christian and medieval periods. There’s a 12th–century Irish text about one man’s vision of the afterlife; a 14th–century chapel painting with a “menu of horrors” so graphic that some of the content is blurred out for television; and Michelangelo’s 16th-century masterpiece The Last Judgment, in which Trejo identifies with the anguished face of the “damned man.” “We see one soul right after judgment,” he says, “the face of the damned, looking out at us, as if to say: ‘I am you and you are me.’ And that’s the thing. Sure, I’ve made a few mistakes in my life. But it’s not only guys like me that go to hell. It can be anyone. Sin is everywhere.”
The show’s art direction is excellent, but it’s with Dante’s Divine Comedy that things really heat up. “For Dante, surrendering to sin means choosing the self over the route to God,” Trejo says as an unsettling montage of stacked cash, bared flesh, and brutish violence unfolds. “Take it from me, it can happen to the best of us.” One by one, we meet Dante’s sinners, doomed to live out “the nature of their sin” in the nine circles of hell, which descend from “crimes of passion” to “crimes of malice.” At the bottom of the inferno are those who have strayed furthest from God, lodged forever in a lake of ice.
What seems to interest Trejo most, though, is Dante’s “escape route” of purgatory, where sinners scale a menacing rock face in droves to reach heaven. Trejo even visits the skull-covered Fontanelle cemetery in Naples, where a woman prays to Mary to intercede for these suffering souls.
The last section begins with the Reformation and its sudden rupture with “Catholic ideas” like purgatory. What follows are two distinctively modern visions of hell. On the one hand, there’s a fire-and-brimstone pessimism chastising “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” On the other, there’s a psychologizing that reduces hell to the horror genre, a quirk of evolutionary survival.
But both of these visions fall flat after our journey through the Inferno. Dante’s depiction is not only more vivid – it’s also more human. For T. S. Eliot, the earthy Purgatorio was not just a religious text; it was also one of the best lenses through which to understand the journey of life itself.
And where theology is concerned, Trejo only scratches the surface.
What is hell? The Catechism defines it as an eternal “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed,” and its chief punishment as “eternal separation from God.” Beyond that, there is a wide range of both literal and figurative views about fire, torture, etc., most of which fall comfortably within the ambit of the Church’s teaching.
And who ends up there? “In Catholicism,” Trejo says, “only really evil dudes like Hitler or Ted Bundy go straight to hell. The rest of us head for purgatory.” But this isn’t accurate. Many Catholic thinkers, e.g., Augustine and Aquinas, have argued that, in light of the great sin of Adam, the majority of humanity is doomed. Others, e.g., St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and Hans Urs von Balthasar, have argued that, in light of the great love of the new Adam, we can reasonably hope that “all souls” be saved (“especially those in most need” of that mercy, as one of the Fatima prayers puts it). This debate rages on to this day, but has never been settled dogmatically. The Church remains suspended somewhere between doom and hope – and rightly so.
To most viewers, the middle portion of “Map of Hell” is probably the most entertaining, but also probably feels a bit too medieval to take seriously. But with these points in mind, Trejo’s show can afford us another kind of “escape route” out of the two dead-end views of hell on the market today, and back toward a more poetic – and more humble – topography.
NatGeo had some nice(?) things to say about Maryology; too.
"Now, it may be contended that a judgment, with some degree of salvation for all, encourages the sinner to pursue his dark ways. Not so. However generous the judgment, it is measured by our works. Our punishment will be the heavy regret that we might have received a greater reward, a higher kingdom, had our lives conformed more nearly to truth. Such remorse may yield keener pain than physical torture." (Understandable Religion, p. 89)
While Widtsoe is careful not to call a heavenly kingdom "hell", he is nonetheless certain that there will be a keen regret for lost opportunities:
"Humanity will be grouped according to their works in three main divisions: Celestial (like the sun), Telestial (like the moon), Terrestrial (like the earth). Within each group there will be many gradations and divisions, until from the lowest to the highest in all groups there will be a series of gradually ascending glories. There can be no talk of a hell, except for the few 'sons of Perdition,' but undoubtedly the regret for lost opportunities will be keen among those in the lower degrees of glory." (Program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, p. 226)
Joseph Fielding Smith, on the other hand, considers the tormenting regret experienced in the bottom two heavenly kingdoms and concludes "in that sense it will be hell":
"This earth will become a celestial kingdom when it is sanctified. Those who enter the terrestrial kingdom will have to go to some other sphere which will be prepared for them. Those who enter the telestial kingdom, likewise will have to go to some earth which is prepared for them, and there will be another place which is hell where the devil and those who are punished to go with him will dwell. Of course, those who enter the telestial kingdom, and those who enter the terrestrial kingdom will have the eternal punishment which will come to them in knowing that they might, if they had kept the commandments of the Lord, have returned to his presence as his sons and his daughters. This will be a torment to them, and in that sense it will be hell." (Answers to Gospel Questions, v. 2, p. 210)
This line of thinking is interesting in light of Joseph Smith's following teaching:
"A man is his own tormenter and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone" (TPJS, p. 357)
The entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism on "Damnation" essentially explains that the bottom two kingdoms of heaven are kingdoms of damnation:
"Just as there are varying degrees and types of salvation, coupled with eternal progression in some areas (D&C 76:96-98; 131:1-4), so are there varying degrees and types of damnation. In LDS doctrine, to be damned means to be stopped, blocked, or limited in one's progress. Individuals are damned whenever they are prevented from reaching their full potential as children of God. Damnation is falling short of what one might have enjoyed if one had received and been faithful to the whole law of the gospel. In this sense, all who do not achieve the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom are damned, even though they are saved in some degree of glory."
Mormonism really doesn't HAVE a 'hell'.
AFTERLIFE: The Mormon afterlife is divided up into four levels. From the lowest to the highest they are: hell, and then three levels of heaven: the telestial, the terrestrial, and the place where God dwells, the celestial (also called the kingdom of God). The celestial is also divided, the highest level being "exaltation," or becoming a God.
HEAVEN-The Mormon church teaches there are three levels of heaven (three "degrees of glory"):
HELL: A place of torment from which the worst of sinners are resurrected (if they repent) into the Telestial kingdom; only a limited number remain in hell forever, - the devil and the demons and apostates who consciously reject and work against Mormonism.
Mormonism has taught that those in the Telestial kingdom will have paid for their own sins in spirit prison, a temporary hell which serves as a place of purging before entrance into heaven (cf. D&C 138: 58-59).
Orson F. Whitney preached:
"But those who reject the Gospel altogether and are besotted and crimestained---what of them? It is written that they will be thrust down to hell; even the murderer, the liar, the sorcerer, and the whoremonger. They will, in short, be damned. But they will only be damned to the extent justified by their sins. Even for them there is hope, after they have 'paid the uttermost farthing.' They will be punished, as all men must be, for neglect of duty, for transgression of the laws of God; but after they have been punished sufficiently, they will be brought forth and saved in a glory of which the stars in heaven are typical." ("The Three Great Teachers", May 8, 1898; Brian H. Stuy, ed., Collected Discourses 1886-1898, v. 5)
Chapter 41 of the 2009 Gospel Principles manual quotes D&C 19 and concurs the same:
"Also in the spirit prison are those who rejected the gospel after it was preached to them on earth or in the spirit prison. These spirits suffer in a condition known as hell. They have removed themselves from the mercy of Jesus Christ, who said, 'Behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit' (D&C 19:16-18). After suffering in full for their sins, they will be allowed, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, to inherit the lowest degree of glory, which is the telestial kingdom" (Gospel Principles, 2009, p. 244).
Keep up the good work.
I don't think there are words in ANY language that can do justice to the term, "eternal separation from God." I am pretty sure it is INFINITELY worse than anything anyone could ever imagine in a million lifetimes.
I would imagine that even Satan doesn't know exactly what that entails, as he hasn't been there yet. Just my own thoughts. Don't go there. 👎
Which you seem to scorn as superfluous, as if the Holy Spirit could have described the end of the wicked as simply being eternal separation from God, period, but which He never does.
but it is “the bottom line” i.e. eternal separation from God.
No, it is not the final result or outcome, as apart from such descriptions as Scripture eternal separation from God could simply refer to emptiness, solitude, or even unconsciousness. Simple eternal separation from God speaks of the absence of what the redeemed enjoy in glory, but does not speak of the realization of the opposite which the Holy Spirit details.
Why reduce the final result of unbelief to simply eternal separation from God when the Lord goes into such detail as to what that means?
Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; (2 Thessalonians 1:9)
Look at the source ... What does National Geographic know about theology? Like everything else today, secularists will search for and accept whatever material they find to support their views, rightfully anticipating that viewers will not question, much less challenge it. You, my friend, do not march to the beat of the typical audience member. Your question poses a challenge. In so doing, you have breached the sacrosanct mainstream media meme and need to be shackled into compliance. ;-)
Similarly...
Like everything else today, Catholics will search for and accept whatever material they find to support their views, rightfully anticipating that viewers will not question, much less challenge it.
Interesting read, Thank you.
What this Lady describes is much more than merely eternal separation from God, from God’s power. It is a place of torment. She, interestingly, appears to say that she was able to command those in torment there, as if she communicated with them. Would these hapless souls be completely separated from God if they are receiving communications from a Nun visiting them, communicating with them? This imagery seems more suited tot he dogma of Purgatory than to the Lake of Fire.
If you can conceive of it, those in Torment will be so separated from God that He will not even hear their pleas and screams or be aware of their torment.
No, the *biggest* disservice is to argue in terms of red herrings. Purgatory is NOT, and never has been, a "way to heaven" independent of the death of Christ. Everyone in purgatory has been saved by the death of Christ ALREADY, or they never get there.
Hell is reserved for apostates from Mormonism, and them alone.
Is 33 correct Elsie?
No mention of purgatory because there isn’t any. One either goes to hell or heaven depending on whether one has believed in Jesus Christ and has through Him had their sins forgiven. Unforgiven sins mean an eternity of God’s wrath.
No mention of purgatory because there isn’t any. One either goes to hell or heaven depending on whether one has believed in Jesus Christ and has through Him had their sins forgiven. Unforgiven sins mean an eternity of God’s wrath.
Those two later replies should answer your question.
Since Rome stepped in it by proclaiming that SAINTS go to Heaven (instead of just SLEEP; like the bible says) they had to come up with some OTHER storage area for the rest of us slubs!
There’s no need for purgatory for the saved.
If they are saved, then there is no longer any sin to be forgiven for.
When the body of flesh dies, the old nature is gone and all that is left is the new, perfect, pure nature.
There’s NOTHING to be cleansed from because the blood of Jesus took care of that.
If the blood of Jesus didn’t cleanse us from all our sin, then there’s sin left to our account and the soul goes to hell, IOW, is NOT saved from God’s just judgment against sin.
Is this in post 33 correct about mormonism?
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