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Rau
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People cannot commit themselves to hell by an act to which “they wouldn’t give second thought”.
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anon67074017
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No one should ever have to feel like this. Life is precious and death is not the answer. There is always hope with God.
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Bonnie
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But sometimes that hope is in the next world, not this one. As several of us have mentioned, chronic pain can be hell. The girl isn’t committing suicide - she is simply letting go.
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fladreamer
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Then you’re entering the blurred territory of "invincible ignorance’’, ‘‘willful blindness’’, ‘‘malformed conscience’’, ‘‘feigned ignorance’’, ‘‘presumption’’ etc. What I meant, though, by second thought, is basically not giving God the time of day, not factoring him in their decision-making. I think it was obvious from early and not so early Christian writers that Original Sin qualifies one for hell, that is, unless one is regenerated, born again, through baptism. So much so that the Church does not state that babies who die without baptism are in Heaven, she says we have reasonable hope that they are, and that she entrusts them to God’s mercy. My point? Our ways and views aren’t God’s views, and God takes sin supremely seriously. Charles Manson could end up in Heaven if he had a last-minute genuine conversion whereas someone that everybody would deem kind and decent could miss Heaven because he missed Mass once for frivolous reasons and did not realize how grave it is in God’s eyes.
If the girl does decide to go ahead with her plan, I hope and pray God receives her in Heaven.
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Rau
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Far too much is made of the baby without baptism scenario. It is plain, at least to me, that God goes not condemn the innocent to Hell. What happens beyond that, i do not know.
Nor is one condemned to hell if one did not know the graveness of one’s act.
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fladreamer
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My heart bleeds for people who exit this life drained and at the end of their rope hoping to find peace and joy only to realize hope has forever escaped them. I only know God through what the Church teaches. If I went by feelings I’d want this girl in Heaven. One thought in closing: I’ve always thought that some people are just given a hand that makes it almost heroic for them to love and trust God and be saved. Homosexuals or instance. If a heterosexual is promiscuous he can always decide to find a woman, get married and have a family. A homosexual man or woman will have to face the prospect of living life asexual and without the many benefits of having a romantic partner. How many heterosexuals could not bring themselves to such an ascetic life, which is the condition to go to Heaven for homosexuals? Likewise if this young girl had perfect health, the thought of dying and leaving her family behind would not even cross her mind.
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fladreamer
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Limbo (natural state of happiness wihtout the Beatific Vision) has been discarded as an option if I’m not mistaken. We’re left with hell (which is not monolith: there are varying degrees of pain and torment just like there are degrees of glory in Heaven), Heaven and its antichamber, i.e. Purgatory.
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Rau
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Limbo was ever speculation AFAIK. A Kind of hope and trust in God. You do NOT know the disposition of infants dying without baptism nor does anyone else. Stop making this stuff up.
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Rau
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Your position that our observations of the actions of others is sufficient to enable the disposition of their souls to be known is simply wrong. You are making this stuff up.
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ConfusedLucy
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I guess this is why we pray not to be led into temptation. I don’t know how much pain my faith could take or what I would do in her situation.
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Bonnie
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Best post here!
I never understood the power of pain until I had to deal with my own chronic pain over a number of years. I had thought that those who asked, “Why me?” were whiners. But when the pain went on for days & weeks at a time, I found myself asking “Why me?” And there were times, had I been able to move, that I might have ended it all.
Now I pray not to be put to that test again.
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Rosebud77
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Rosebud77
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Many of us know this. it is why we must help folk to get past and through crises, hold them until things ease for often suicide in whatever form is an overwhelming impulse …Best post here!
I never understood the power of pain until I had to deal with my own chronic pain over a number of years. I had thought that those who asked, “Why me?” were whiners. But when the pain went on for days & weeks at a time, I found myself asking “Why me?” And there were times, had I been able to move, that I might have ended it all.
Now I pray not to be put to that test again.
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zamyrabyrd
Guest
I don’t think it is easy for anyone who lived a promiscuous lifestyle to suddenly change and settle down. Habits are not so easy to change. Likewise a person who is so steeped in sin, defining his character as it were, would not be amenable to last minute conversion if he rejected it all his life. You wrote:
“God takes sin supremely seriously. Charles Manson could end up in Heaven if he had a last-minute genuine conversion whereas someone that everybody would deem kind and decent could miss Heaven because he missed Mass once for frivolous reasons and did not realize how grave it is in God’s eyes.”
Justice is tempered with mercy, ignorance is an extenuating circumstance. We cannot put ourselves in the Judge’s seat but Jesus did ask forgiveness for those who did not know what they were doing. I would speculate if the same applied to those who really did know what they were doing, such as the religious establishment at the time and Pilate himself who was most probably consumed with guilt more than doubt.
What I am saying, is that our experience is multi-dimensional, not *flat out, boom, you made a mistake, so down you go. *This bothered me as a kid because I did take what was taught literally as it was presented to be in that way. I must admit that it caused me a great deal of pain and anxiety that a young kid should not have to go through since we were not taught so much the mercy and love of God, but rather his wrath.
By way of example, it pains me that a close relative who has turned 86 will simply not give up the bad attitudes that for decades hurt her and other people around her. These habits have painted her into a corner of loneliness and despair but she will not give up her game playing and manipulation. In fact, her denial and lying has become worse because she cannot face what she did. This is the point, somewhere there has to be recognition of what a person does in order to change and make amends. If these don’t exist, even at the moment of death, I find it hard to believe that she or Manson can escape a nasty fate.
I really do hope that somehow she will come to a realization that she must change in order to mend her life even at this late date. Maybe that is why people like them get to live so long, they still have enough time to clean up their acts. However, its probability, although it can happen, is very low.
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fladreamer
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fladreamer
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Infants can’t sin before the age of reason, which is around 7 years. So I don’t know what you mean by disposition. But obviously we are all conceived in Original Sin, that alone, without the regeneration of Baptism, seems enough to deprive one of the Beatific Vision. Limbo would have been a sort of compromise offered by God: you don’t get the full benefits of Heaven, you get a natural state of happiness, but you don’t suffer the pains of hell, including the pain of separation.
If you don’t believe the supreme gravity of sin, look what one sin (by Adam and Eve) did to what was once a paradise where the first couple enjoyed a close, loving relationship with God, with one another, the 3 preternatural gifts etc. What we have is massive abortion, massive suicide and suicide attempts, war and rumours of war, political unrest, corruption, poverty, hundreds if not thousands of children dying every single day from preventable diseases or conditions, despair, suffering, abandoned children etc. If we’re to believe various saints and private revelation from the Blessed Mother in approved apparitions, if we’re to believe that Jesus meant what he said when he mentioned that ‘‘Broad and easy is the way to destruction’’, then we can logically conclude that many people who die are lost. And the Catholic Church teaches infallibly that just one unconfessed mortal sin (ex. missing Mass once with the 3 conditions for a sin to be mortal) deprives one of Heaven. Our finite mind can’t comprehend how one apparently harmless sin can earn the one who commits it an eternity of despair, anguish and torment.
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fladreamer
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You’re right to say it’s wrong because i never said such thing. But I’m not naive enough to think that, say a promiscuous homosexual who has been vocally anticlerical will effectively rest in peace after his death. While I hope God had mercy or that he had a last-minute conversion and confession (or perfect contrition), I know he’s most likely in hell. At the very least, it doesn’t bode well for him. Same could be said of Dr. Morgentaler. I hope God has forgiven him and he’s in Purgatory for a million years, so to speak, but I think it’s not very likely. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgentaler
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Rau
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You have spoken error in the posts to which I responded. You do not know the disposition of the souls of the infant unbaptized, not those of any other person. You can only speculate.
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Rosebud77
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Ask a busy mother and housewife if she would like time out alone and watch her face!f
Yes for years I was crippled with lonleiness. as being wrongly diagnosed as mentally ill I was a pariah,
Always lamented that wherever I was I ended up alone in a room weeping.
With the correct diagnosis came freedom Now I use the solitude for prayer and for others, Folk out there are horrifeied at the thought of anyone living alone like me.“are you not terrified?” I say no; it is people who scare… then I lighten it by saying I have good locks and a LOUD DOG
I would nto go through life yearning for what might never be, Such a waste. I have deep friendships now , in the old “anamchara” way,
And I can be more to more folk than if I were married…
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