The more responsibility you have the more your smallest errors commit you to greatest judgement.
To say the Church doesn’t officially say anyone in Hell is normally misleading – Whenever I hear it I just shake my head. The fewness of the saved, and Popes speaking about particular people in Hell is established fact. So they don’t declare this or that person is in Hell as a dogma of the Faith – Why would they? That doesn’t mean it isn’t well established.
One could easily say that Judas being in Hell is in fact, doctrine, both from scriptures as well as the constant tradition of the Church. Undefined perhaps yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t established. Plenty of immutable truths are that, and it at least flirts with heresy to go against them.
St. Catherine of Siena warns Pope Gregory XI that his salvation is in danger. Because he does not use his office to punish and discipline malefactors in the Church but instead treats them gently. . . Think of any other Popes like this? She says it would be better for him to step down than be Pope if he is not going to properly exercise his office and that God Himself requires her to tell him this.
:’. . . Pardon my presumption in what I have said to you and am saying; I am constrained by the Sweet Primal Truth to say it. His will, father, is this, and thus demands of you. It demands that you execute justice on the abundance of many iniquities committed by those who are fed and pastured in the garden of Holy Church; declaring that brutes should not be fed with the food of men. Since He has given you authority and you have assumed it, you should use your virtue and power: and if you are not willing to use it, it would be better for you to resign what you have assumed; more honour to God and health to your soul would it be.’
‘Oh, sweet and true knowledge, which dost carry with thee the knife of hate, and dost stretch out the hand of holy desire, to draw forth and kill with this hate the worm of self-love – a worm that spoils and gnaws the root of our tree so that it cannot bear any fruit of life, but dries up, and its verdure lasts not! For if a man loves himself, perverse pride, head and source of every ill, lives in him, whatever his rank may be, prelate or subject. If he is lover of himself alone – that is, if he loves himself for his own sake and not for God – he cannot do other than ill, and all virtue is dead in him.’
- from the Letters of St. Catherine of Siena to Pope Gregory XI
This is tough stuff to a Pope directly. There’s more than just Pope Gregory XI who should’ve listened to it.
As if St. Catherine did not say God himself required her to say it, we have the words of Our Lady to St. Bridget of Sweden warning about what would happen to a Pope who did one single but significant thing wrong.
"Know this too: that if some pope concedes to priests a license to contract carnal marriage, God will condemn him to a sentence as great, in a spiritual way, as that which the law justly inflicts in a corporeal way on a man who has transgressed so gravely that he must have his eyes gouged out, his tongue and lips, nose and ears cut off, his hands and feet amputated, all his body’s blood spilled out to grow completely cold, and finally, his whole bloodless corpse cast out to be devoured by dogs and other wild beasts. Similar things would truly happen in a spiritual way to that pope who were to go against the aforementioned preordinance and will of God and concede to priests such a license to contract marriage.
For that same pope would be totally deprived by God of his spiritual sight and hearing, and of his spiritual words and deeds. All his spiritual wisdom would grow completely cold; and finally, after his death, his soul would be cast out to be tortured eternally in hell so that there it might become the food of demons everlastingly and without end. Yes, even if Saint Gregory the Pope had made this statute, in the aforesaid sentence he would never have obtained mercy from God if he had not humbly revoked his statute before his death."
So… just think about what some popes have done and how they performed… and you can see the odds are bad for some of them. Very bad.
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