A letter from a woman in Hell

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Tis_Bearself said:
To me, the point of the story was not that the woman wanted to be treated nicely or have nice things, but that she rejected God, repeatedly.
It wasn’t just a case of somebody who was lukewarm. She expressed a real distaste for God all through the “letter”. When she sees God sitting in judgment, instead of throwing herself on His mercy, she runs away. This sounds to me like an example (possibly fictional, but like I said I don’t think it really matters) of “the unforgivable sin” as expressed in Scripture.
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I guess I saw someone who was extremely broken and damaged. Yes she ‘rejected’ God’s mercy but the examples she gave were hardly sufficient to make me think that God really gave her the psycologcal means to really change.
 
steamboatp2 said:
Hi, @misstherese ,
Just wanted to post on here to say “thank you” for posting this. It really helped my devotional reading and meditation. There is nothing really controversial about it-- and just one note: @Xanthippe_Voorhees , I don’t think this letter implied that “petty” sins like missing Mass send you to Hell - but they get you in the wrong habit, and pretty soon you’re committing bigger ones- like subtly lying about your romantic rival.
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I didn’t say anything about petty sins. I see a total lack of culpability towards many of the sins from a psychological standpoint. I see someone who was not treated right as a child and acted accordingly.
 
I understand your perspective. This letter obviously dates from a time when people were not quite as sensitive to the damage somebody might have suffered in their youth as an unwanted or abused child, as perhaps they are today.

When I read some of the messages purportedly coming from Purgatory or Hell that are even older, from several centuries ago, some of the “sins” seem to me to be very insufficient to merit the level of punishment that is being doled out - and in those centuries there seemed to be even less emphasis on the mercy of God than we now have in the 20th century where St. Therese of Lisieux (now a Doctor of the Church) and St. Faustina both emphasized God’s mercy.

The possibilities would seem to be
  1. that the messages were pious fiction developed to make a moral point in the context of the time when they were written; or
  2. that the messages were authentic private revelation, which could be fallible and which we do not have to believe, and that even if the message was basically true somehow, there could be dimensions to the person’s story that were known only to God, like their full state of mind or other private things about their life.
 
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I mean the full name of the religious sister to whom the dream is attributed, the convent in which she lived, and so on, not the place you found this on the internet. I don’t doubt your sincerity one bit and the piece doesn’t seem heretical or anything. It just sounds a bit too much like a friend-of-a-friend story, and internet experience has taught us all that every once and again those pick up some embroidery along the way.
This is a very remarkable letter, after all. The convent from which it came would surely want to safeguard the story. (As an example, the Missionaries of Charity have a full page of “no, Mother Teresa didn’t actually say that so don’t believe everything attributed to her on the internet” clarifications. Not bad things, but she still didn’t say them. It pays to be a bit nitpicking about these things…)
 
I just don’t think the Church would discourage anyone from praying for the dead because someone had a disturbing dream. Evil spirits do masquerade as angels of light. No prayer is ever wasted. When some “vision” tells you some poor soul is beyond praying for, kick the tires on that one.
The parts that ridicule the sister’s motives for showing kindness do not ring quite like true wisdom, either. To paraphrase Pope St John Paul II, either truth without love or love without truth fall short. (I can look up the real quote, if anyone wants it.)
 
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PetraG said:
I just don’t think the Church would discourage anyone from praying for the dead because someone had a disturbing dream. Evil spirits do masquerade as angels of light. No prayer is ever wasted. When some “vision” tells you some poor soul is beyond praying for, kick the tires on that one.
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I am saying that I find it disgusting and discouraging that anyone would touch this drivel with a 10 foot pole, nevermind put an imprimitur on it.
 
Who put an imprimatur on it? I don’t even see the diocese it is from or the convent that is supposed to be the source.
I have read things on the internet attributed to all sorts of famous people that turned out to have been added to after the fact or just fabricated outright. This included things that sounded like maybe they would have said…only they did not.
I am not going to get disgusted over something I am not even sure has been faithfully transmitted, if it is even based on an actual private revelation.
 
PetraG said:
Who put an imprimatur on it? I don’t even see the diocese it is from or the convent that is supposed to be the source.
I have read things on the internet attributed to all sorts of famous people that turned out to have been added to after the fact or just fabricated outright. This included things that sounded like maybe they would have said…only they did not.
I am not going to get disgusted over something I am not even sure has been faithfully transmitted, if it is even based on an actual private revelation.
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Based on an earlier post it received the imprimatur in 1953…while they were not as enlightened as us as far as psychology some red flags HAD to be going off regarding abused child’s adulthood sins.
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A letter from a woman in Hell Spirituality
Taken from this site: https://www.americaneedsfatima.org/The-Last-Things/a-letter-from-beyond.html This letter recounts the tragic story of the eternal damnation of a young woman named Ani. Both the narrative and the letter transcribed below were found among the papers of a deceased nun, who in the world was known as Claire and worked with the condemned woman. This letter was revealed to Claire in a dream shortly after Ani was killed in a car accident. The narrative received an Imprimatur fro…
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An imprimatur only means it is free of doctrinal error, not that it has been endorsed as a particularly good book. I can imagine that an apocryphal story of a letter that appeared in a dream would get through.
I just take the story with a HUGE grain of salt. Still, the message that it doesn’t take mass murder to wind up in a state of torment and eternal disdain of everything good is a valid one. We live in a time where presumption is winked at, after all.
 
PetraG said:
An imprimatur only means it is free of doctrinal error, not that it has been endorsed as a particularly good book. I can imagine that an apocryphal story of a letter that appeared in a dream would get through.
I just take the story with a HUGE grain of salt. Still, the message that it doesn’t take mass murder to wind up in a state of torment and eternal disdain of everything good is a valid one. We live in a time where presumption is winked at, after all.
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Culpability is a doctrinal matter…
 
Ok, relax. First, I did not post this on Divine Mercy Sunday. I posted this yesterday.

Second, culpability may reduce guilt but it does not mean a person can’t commit mortal sin in their lives. The woman repeatedly refused God, going so far as to reject the entire Catholic religion. Unless she was mentally handicapped, she made that choice. We may not know all her motives, however. As Tis_Bearself says, I suspect, if it’s true, that not all information was given.
 
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@Xanthippe_Voorhees I agree, she didn’t display much culpability for most of the sins described… I think it is reasonable to doubt whether any human being is obstinate enough to reject God FOREVER… But if there is (or was) such a person, he/she would sound exactly like the narrator this letter.
 
I think it’s more of a rejection with the will. Her will was formed by bad inclinations and naturally she chose what she knew. There’s also that saying, “You send yourself to Hell.”
 
In any case, it is a very helpful reading for spiritual reflection
 
The purpose of this letter confounds me. Why would God order a letter from someone that the nun barely knows to tell her that all of her efforts to convert this person to Catholicism fell short?

Can you pray someone out of hell?
 
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I’ve been following this thread with interest.

First, this is a private revelation which we are not obliged to believe it.
Don’t like? Don’t read.

It’s hard for us who come here to CAF to imagine being so hateful and obstinate to God, and it seems fantastical, but if you’ve ever spent any time in an internet combox, (assuming that people are representing themselves authentically), there are a great many people who actively resent and hate God, His authority, they hate Jesus. I’ve seen some truly ugly blasphemies that I wish I could forget.

When I was a kid, I never heard a blasphemy. Never ever. I understood the concept, but it was something that was never said in polite society.
Even people who rejected religion and didn’t believe in Christ’s divinity would still concede that Jesus was a pretty okay guy who got a raw deal.

Now God is openly mocked and insulted on TV and in print, and believers are openly scorned.

Yeah, there are people who reject God, and they may very well do it at deaths door too (a truly terrifying thought to me, but…)
 
Have you ever read Father Schouppe’s book called The Dogma of Hell? It’s filled with stories of people from Hell coming back to tell others about it. Of course, by the command of God.

I would say that book definitely led me to take my faith more seriously
 
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