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In a previous blog post, I talked about the error of both Fr. Robert Baron and Hans Urs von Balthasar in positing the real possibility that Hell could be empty for all eternity. This post led to people asking more questions about the nature of Hell itself. What is it? Is it really "eternal?" and more.Below find my answers to some of those questions.By definition, according to CCC 1033, hell is “[the] state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” Some people cannot fathom how Hell could be a reality if God is truly an “all-loving” and...

Love of the World Fuels the Fear of Death – A Meditation on a Teaching of St. Cyprian By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs November winds down and Advent still looms, the traditional meditation we make on the four last things (death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell) is still operative. A classic writing by St. Cyprian comes to mind. It is a meditation on the fundamental human struggle to be free of undue attachment to this world and to have God (and the things waiting for us in Heaven) as our highest priority.In this meditation, St. Cyprian has in mind the Book of James and...

Hell is real, in some form or another.Hell on earth is something every human being agrees exists. War tears families apart. Disease kills parents and leaves behind orphans. Famine neglects to feed the most vulnerable. Consumerism by the privileged fuels the ramifications of all of these things. Hell on earth–this is real.Hell as a literal place of eternal conscious torment for those who never make a mental assent to the Four Spiritual Laws (1. God loves humans, 2. Humans are sinners, 3. Only Jesus saves sinners, 4. Accept Jesus to live eternally) is another perspective. People with this view, which...

“We are not heading for an eternal void and an eternal silence but we are on our way to an encounter, an encounter with Him who created us and loves us more than mother and father.” (Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, see here). Only a delusional mind could advance such a hypothesis. At a time when children are being slaughtered in the womb, governments are promoting sodomy and so-called "gay marriage," terrorism and other forms of violence are on the rise, there is general immorality with people engaging in and condoning various mortal sins, and the Churches are emptying, we are supposed...

Funeral services for former Gov. Mario Cuomo are being planned for Tuesday at the Saint Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a church official told the Daily News. A time for the service has not been determined but the funeral is likely to cause a week's postponment of the State of the Address, which had been planned for Wednesday, two sources said. Another source said Cuomo administration officials have asked the Empire State Plaza Convention Center, where the speech was to be held, to keep time availabe for the re-scheduled speech the week of Jan. 12. Officials in...

I’ve been through hell several dozen times, and each time I go I want to take pictures and bring them back to show life-size on my living room wall with my $399 data projector from Microcenter in order to warn my family and friends. I find in the Gospel of Luke my folly in this daydream, for “if they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (16:31).Oh, well. If people won’t heed warnings, the next best thing is to give them a list of 10 must-see...

Speaker John A. Boehner pushed back Thursday on speculation of an expanding "hell no" caucus in the Republican party following Tuesday's Midterm Elections, instead calling on President Barack Obama to rebuild trust by not acting unilaterally on issues like immigration.

Thomas Michael Menino, who insisted a mayor doesn’t need a grand vision to lead, then went on to shepherd Boston’s economy and shape the skyline and the very identity of the city he loved through an unprecedented five consecutive terms in City Hall, died Thursday. He was 71 and was diagnosed with advanced cancer not long after leaving office at the beginning of this year.

A grainy and gruesome photo has fueled speculation that the infamous leader of the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram is dead, even as the African nation's army presses fighters in the northern territory and the fate of hundreds of hostages hangs in the balance. The military in neighboring Cameroon claims to have killed Abubakar Shekau, the warlord seen earlier this year in a monstrous video vowing to sell nearly 300 kidnapped schoolgirls, and even released a photo purportedly of his corpse. Nigerian security forces are trying to authenticate the report, and officials in the U.S., which has aided Nigeria's hunt...

Vatican II, in its Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (Apostolicam Actuositatem), explains that, "The hierarchy should promote the apostolate of the laity, provide it with spiritual principles and support, direct the conduct of this apostolate to the common good of the Church, and attend to the preservation of doctrine and order. Indeed, the lay apostolate admits of different types of relationships with the hierarchy in accordance with the various forms and objects of this apostolate. For in the Church there are many apostolic undertakings which are established by the free choice of the laity and regulated by their...

Hamas declared on Tuesday night that Israel had “opened the gates of hell”. In a statement, the group’s so-called “military wing” said that it had resumed the rocket fire on Israel because the Israeli Air Force had launched an airstrike on a home in Gaza. The group warned that “the price will be a heavy one”. Senior Hamas official Ezzat al-Rishq warned, according to AFP, "Israel will not enjoy security so long as the Palestinian people do not, and it started it." While the latest truce between Israel and Hamas was set to end at midnight on Tuesday, Hamas violated...

Don Gabriele Amorth recounts his mentor's advice on how to talk to the Devil. In 2012, the cause of beatification and canonization for Fr. Candido Amantini, a Passionist priest who served as the exorcist for the diocese of Rome for 36 years at the Scala Santa, was taken up in Rome. His most famous disciple (who is considered to be his successor) is 87 year old Don Gabriele Amorth, who wanted to participate in the opening ceremony of the process. The Pauline priest, who recently published the book, The Last Exorcist, wished to remember the Passionist Father and told us about the time when...

Locals call it the Door to Hell, a giant burning pit that has spit out angry flames for more than 40 years, casting a yellow-orange glow into the evening sky. "It takes your breath away," said visitor Gozel Yazkulieva, 34, from the Turkmenistan capital Ashgabat. "You immediately think of your sins and feel like praying."

We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell. Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use...

President Obama delivered brief comments today on the capture of a man suspected to be involved in the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate. The president said the capture sends a clear message to the world that whenever an American is attacked, “no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice.” Yesterday U.S. special forces captured Ahmed Abu Khattala in a surprise raid. Khattala had previously denied in a number of interviews he gave that he had any direct involvement in the Benghazi attack. In his comments today, Obama praised the...

In certain schools of Christian thought, hell is not everlasting, but a more painful form of purgatory. M any Christians presume that hell is a place where brutally painful punishments are inflicted on evildoers for an indefinite, and perhaps infinite, amount of time in the afterlife. Think of a medieval torture chamber with no exit — or fire extinguishers. But this, as I argued in a recent column, makes no theological sense. If morality is good, then doing the right thing must be its own reward and doing the wrong thing must be its own punishment. To think that a...

*Poster with burning flames put up at Attleborough Baptist Church, Norfolk *The sign read: 'If you think there is no God you'd better be right!!' *Robert Gladwin, 20, accused the sign of going against Christian traditions *Pastor forced to remove sign after police investigated it as a 'hate incident'A baptist church was at the centre of a police probe after a sign which suggested non-Christians would 'burn in hell' was investigated as a 'hate incident'. The offending sign at Attleborough Baptist Church in Norfolk, pictured burning flames below words which read: 'If you think there is no God you better...

In the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, in the Office of Readings, we are getting close to the great culmination of the Book of Revelation where the victorious Christ is united with his bride forevermore. Penultimate to this great victory, is the casting down of Satan into fiery hell the sealing over the great abyss.Central to the imagery of the Hell, is fire, along with some other unpleasant things such as worms that never die etc. We do well to ponder these images, but also to be careful about them. For while many take them literally, they are probably meant...

One of the most interesting cases of resuscitation that ever came to my knowledge was that of George Lennox, a notorious horse thief of Jefferson County. He was serving his second term. Sedgwick County sent him to the prison the first time for a similar offense - stealing horses. During the winter of 1887 and 1888 he worked in the coal mines. The place where he was laboring seemed dangerous to him. He reported the fact to the officer in charge, who made an examination, and deciding that the room was safe, ordered Lennox back to his work. The...

In Robert Speaight’s The Unbroken Heart, a novel sadly neglected in the long years following its publication in 1939, a character named Arnaldo has just been told of his beloved wife’s untimely death. His reaction, by today’s standards, seems very strange indeed. “It does not really interest me,” he confesses, “to know by what accident Rhoda died. All our lives are an accident and we must all die somehow.”So what does interest him? The answer, to his interlocutor at least, sounds almost incomprehensible. “I want to know how she died, what was in her mind, what her soul said...