Pope Francis' controversial statements.
pablito1954
Shipmate
in Purgatory
In January of this year, Pope Francis said, on Italian television, the he believes hell is empty. He emphasised that this is his personal view, not a matter of doctrine. Last week, at an interfaith youth group in Singapore, he said that all religions are pathways to God. They are like different languages, saying the same thing. When he comes out with these things, someone in the Vatican, in exasperation no doubt, usually issues a modified translation, rowing for the shore as much as possible!
I have always considered myself a heretic, though I have a lifelong devotion to Jesus, for believing precisely those things. If all religions are valid pathways to God, then that brings into question the exclusive claims many Christians make of Christ as the unique and only way to God.
Of course it can be interpreted two ways. One is that Christ is the only way to salvation, but those brought up in another faith can receive salvation through him without specifically knowing it. The other is that other religions can be valid on their own terms. It's a dilemma I have never been able to resolve to my satisfaction.
I don't think there are many Catholics on this forum, but the Pope, as leader of what is by far the world's largest Christian denomination, has a lot of authority. If I'm doubting my own Christian credentials for believing exactly what he says in public statements, maybe I'm worrying too much!
I have always considered myself a heretic, though I have a lifelong devotion to Jesus, for believing precisely those things. If all religions are valid pathways to God, then that brings into question the exclusive claims many Christians make of Christ as the unique and only way to God.
Of course it can be interpreted two ways. One is that Christ is the only way to salvation, but those brought up in another faith can receive salvation through him without specifically knowing it. The other is that other religions can be valid on their own terms. It's a dilemma I have never been able to resolve to my satisfaction.
I don't think there are many Catholics on this forum, but the Pope, as leader of what is by far the world's largest Christian denomination, has a lot of authority. If I'm doubting my own Christian credentials for believing exactly what he says in public statements, maybe I'm worrying too much!
Comments
That other religions, and ethical paths, help people live well in this life is I think not much in doubt among open-minded people. The questions then are which helps the most and which is closest to the truth.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/amp/news/256542/pope-francis-i-like-to-think-of-hell-as-empty
It never went away, and of course even if the RCC changed its doctrine, it wouldn’t make it no longer real, if it is real.
I think the general view is that these things are 'outside' time as we know it. So the Saints / saints are 'already' there if you like even though, from our temporal perspective the Last Judgement has yet to take place.
How do you understand the Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration where Moses and Elijah appear in an apparently 'glorified' state?
Or the Old Testament stories of Enoch apparently being taken into God's eternal presence or Elijah being taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot? Not that all the Jews believed in an after-life of course.
I'm prepared to stand corrected but as far as I've understood it, all those who have gone to heaven (if we can put it that way) are there already as far as we are concerned.
Paul wrote, "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." 1 Corinthians 15, 51 and 52
Correct. Of course Purgatory, or a purgation process of some kind (and of whatever duration, if "duration" as we know it is even relevant) between physical death and Heaven (and before the General Resurrection after that), does not have to involve either formal RC doctrine, nor imagery from Dante, nor any popular notions of "how it works."
Yes, I know he did. But that doesn't necessarily contradict what I was saying. If God is outside 'linear' time as we understand it then heaven (however we envisage it) is some kind of eternal 'now'.
So the redeemed are there 'now' as it were even though, in temporal terms, the Last Judgement has yet to take place.
If we envisage time like a book, then someone coming out of it on page 17 say, and going to heaven, is going at exactly the same time as someone doing the same on page 143.
Both those pages are there simultaneously even though we read the book chronologically as it were from start to finish.
There's a lot more that could be said of course.
We none of us 'know' how things 'work' in the 'life of the age to come.'
If Christ's Resurrection appearances are anything to go by, then it'll all be very different to what we know and experience in the here and now. Yet with some recognisable reference points as it were.
How do we understand these things? The 'trumpet' @Telford references isn't going to be a 'literal' one, for instance.
My point, I suppose, is that time 'concertinas' as it were. Those of us who worship in more sacramental settings have a concept that past, present and future coalesce in the Eucharist.
We 'proclaim Christ's death until he comes.'
The Saints and witnesses from ages past are made 'present' in the icons and invocations. The events of Christ's Passion are both commemorated and made 'present' through a 'calling to mind', a 'remembrance' and 'amenensis' (have I spelt that right?) through liturgical action - as it were.
Christ himself comes to us through the Holy Gifts.
We mystically anticipate the age to come.
And a lot more besides.
I suppose in the New Creation it'd be a case of adopting and adapting a phrase of Star Trek's Doctor McCoy, 'It's Time, Jim but not as we know it ...'
That's my limited 'take'. Others can correct me if I'm wide of the mark.
How do I know if you are wide of the mark? I would stress that my thoughts are my own.
More seriously, of course our thoughts are our own. But we rarely have 'individual' takes on things. Our various approaches are shaped by whatever form of Christian tradition we are most accustomed to.
An Orthodox, Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant or whatever else 'take' on these things aren't 'my idea' or something I've concocted on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.
I s'pose what I was doing was throwing out some thoughts as I understand them from within my own particular paradigm and rhetorically asking people to 'test' them according to their's.
I'm not 'disagreeing' with the Pauline statement you've quoted, simply outlining a particular view of time from within a sacramental perspective that sees past, present and future as somehow 'eternally present' in God's 'eternal now' as it were.
So we live between the 'now' and the 'not yet'.
God is the One who 'was and is and is to come.'
Past, present and future all included there.
It seems to work.
I agree with Gamaliel that we rarely have a completely individual 'take on things' and that we are all affected in some way, both positively and negatively, by the traditions we are most accustomed to.
Words and expressions like Holy Trinity, Sacrament, Eucharist and certainly Purgatory are words which have been formulated by Christians down the centuries to attempt to explain things.
As to whether Purgatory is 'fake' or not the present Catechism of the Catholic Church has the following to say
1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation.
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the Elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.
1032This teaching is based on the practice of prayer for the dead already mentioned in Sacred Scripture
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity
1036 These teachings are a CALL TO RESPONSIBILITY incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom and at the same time an urgent call to conversion.
1037 God predestines no-one to hell. In the eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of the faithful the Church implores the mercy of God who does not want any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
It's not my idea. It's standard Orthodox theology and found in small o orthodox and what might be deemed 'heterodox' quarters too.
@The_Riv ' yes, it all sounds pretty whacky doesn't it? Six impossible things before breakfast ...
But there we go ...
😉
Possibility one: it was revealed to him in his vision;
Possibility two: it was one of the thins Jesus taught his disciples and the disciples passed it on to Paul;
Possibility three: God does what is morally and aesthetically fitting; Paul judges correctly that this is morally and aesthetically fitting; therefore God does that.
Good question. He met with Peter (IIRC) but what about the others?
Time stands still once you are dead....IMO
A foundationalist model takes it that a belief is justified if it can be deduced from established data or from indubitable axioms.
A coherentist model takes it that belief is justified if it fits together coherently with the data and has explanatory power.
(Note that being a coherentist about justification isn't the same as being a coherentist about truth.)
While there are always holdouts and contrarians in philosophy, the general consensus of twentieth-century epistemology is that pure foundationalism in epistemology does not work.
He met with them during the Council in Jerusalem where they discussed allowing Gentiles become part of the way. (Acts 15, cf Galatians 2).
Not that this makes it untrue. As Lewis says, you don’t tell truth with a timepiece.
Well, in a sense that's what I've been saying. If there is such a thing as an after-life in the presence of God then although the Last Judgement may be in the future as far as we who are alive are concerned, to the departed it's happening 'now'.
I've said more than that but you get my drift.
Absolutely. I'm just thinking of the specifically twentieth-century aspect. (Or twenty-first, for that matter.)
What would you actually pray though? We have prayers for the dead but I've never quite understood what needs they have that we're praying about.
"Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine up on them".
That we believe God has already granted this doesn't preclude praying for it.
The serious point is that the use of Hell to scare and control people has been much practised traditionally by priests and teachers in many denominations. And it no longer flies.
“I don’t see why a God of Love needs Hell. If He does He seems to be contradicting His assertion to be a God of Love. Not sure I can believe in a God like that” or arguments something along those lines. 1 Corinthians 13 and the doctrine of Hell don’t really sit side by side.
Of course there are arguments to explain how they can. But they do seem very much like rationalisations to many folks these days.
C S Lewis argued the the doctrine of Hell was an intolerable doctrine. I think it always has been. But increasingly I believe the issue is not that it is intolerable. More that it is incredible. Whatever one believes in the authority of scripture or the Church or both.
That makes so little sense to me I have no words.
It makes perfect sense to me personally. (Of course I *trust* God has/is/will be granting this, not that I absolutely 100% know this.)
As for Hell, if we have free will, then sadly one corollary to that is that we can say No to God--and keep saying it forever. I believe if it took millions and billions of years, and innumerable miracles, to reach someone, even the worst of beings, even Satan himself, to bring them home into the Light, God would do it, absolutely.
I should point out (the poster who mentioned it doubtless knows this, but for anyone else reading this) that Lewis said that the doctrine of Hell is intolerable--not that it isn't true. He believed (as I do) that the door to Hell is locked on the inside. That separation from God is less intolerable to the damned than repentance and coming into the Light. That the pains of Hell are not tacked on by God, but a description of what that separation from Him--or even immersion in His fiery love, but rejecting it perpetually--is like. Lewis wished, and I too wish for me, that he could be a universalist, but for him (and for me) free will means that this can't be assumed.
FWIW, this reminds me of the final lines of a well-known hymn by John Greenleaf Whittier:
https://hymnary.org/text/immortal_love_for_ever_full
...to turn aside from thee is hell,
to walk with thee is heaven.
A lot of the things we choose to value just can't bear the weight of being the centre of attention for very long.
A good comparison is with someone who is elderly who has turned in on themselves and made some aspect of themselves the centre of their universe for many decades (it can often be related to bitterness). Now imagine that attitude continuing unchecked for eternity.
The only problem I have with your post is that it is, I think, a modification of both traditional Catholic and Protestant doctrines of Hell.
It’s classically Protestant of me to assert that I think these traditional doctrines have ceased to have any ethical value or functional use. They push us too far in the direction of redefining agape love. THE New Testament word. The word which more than any other should govern our understanding of eternal justice.
The alternative, that Good News requires Bad News sitting alongside it to make it effective, makes no sense to me anymore.
Ultimately saying "no" to God, forever, once all the earthly blinders are off and we are confronted with literal absolute Truth. I don't believe our earthly circumstances ultimately block us off from Him, once we see Him face to Face.
This.
Also this.
But there are aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy ( @Gamma Gamaliel -- thoughts?) that I think it fits with, particularly the "Hell is being immersed in God's fiery love, but eternally rejecting it" aspect.
I've never understood or believed that "Good News requires Bad News sitting alongside it to make it effective." Free will is something different than that.
Ah, I notice some caveats coming in, so it becomes empty of meaning. What is forever? What is absolute truth? These words are like Monopoly money.