Are most people going to hell?

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outfctrl said:
Dont even talk like that. I am a nobody. I have sinned my whole life and didnt think twice about it. I have even read books on devil worshipping when I was young. I can never make up for what I have done in the past. Never.

All I can do now is pray for forgiveness for my wretched life. I still sit near the back in Church and I am still scared to go into that holy room where the Eucharist sits.
My first day after 35 years, walking into the Church to go to Confession, was one of the scariest days in my life. I swear lightning was going to strike me. I got there like a half hour early and sat in the last row, staring at the Cross. Tears rolled down my face. Looking at the suffering our Lord went through for us and here I am, rejecting him for so many years, committing sin after sin and laughing about it.

I dont deserve to go to Heaven just because I repented.
I probably will be lucky if I make it to Purgatory. How can you be forgiven so easy? How can the Priest tell me to say 5 Hail Mary’s after what I confessed? What kind of Pennance is that? I at least deserved to say 50 Rosaries or something.

I look around at Mass and see people praying, saying the rosary, eyes closed and giving their entire being to Christ. Then I look at me. It’s funny how small you feel at times.
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Our penance earns us nothing except remission of temporal punishment in Purgatory.

Remember, forgiveness is a free gift of God for those who repent. Jesus paid for our sins on the Cross. Nothing we do can earn forgiveness, but all we have to do is ask.

God Bless
 
Mary Magdalene was a woman of ill-repute; St. Augustine was a philanderer and many, many others with similar decadence.

But what knocks us off our feet is Jesus CHOOSES the MOST UNLIKELY to carry a mission. St. Paul persecuted the Christians…and yet, Jesus CHOSE Paul as an apostle.

This is what redemption is all about. Isn’t there a saying that "all the angels in Heaven rejoice when just one sinner repents… "?

A good example was what Jesus said, “…the good shepard having one lost sheep will leave the remaining 99 while in search for the lost one…”

These words are not just rhetoric…it describes Jesus and His infinite forgiveness and mercy.
 
boppaid said:
I am confused by this. I am Catholic, too, but doesn’t scripture tell us that we can know that we are saved, even though we are sinners? Your post really bothered and confused me because it went against what I always believed. So, I did a search of scripture online for assurance of salvation to make sure it was biblical. This is what I came up with:

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

It sounds to me that God WANTS us to KNOW if we are saved. It doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to be a guessing game. help :confused:
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You always have free will and God does not take away your ability and choice to turn away from Him. This can be by through acts of comission or acts of omission. Because of this, we have the hope of salvation and not the assurence.

Its not about guessing it is about hope. But always, judgement belongs to God. Many who call Him Lord, Lord and perhaps they even know they will be in Heaven will not make it.

If He decides that I belong in hell then by definition it is His Justice. If He decides that I belong in Heaven, this would be a sign of His Great Mercy.

If it were possible I would like to say that I would praise His Holy Name even from the depth of hell, but I don’t believe it is possible to praise God from hell. Not mine, but His Will be done.
 
The souls of the damned in Hell hate God and curse Him in their eternal hatred and suffering.
 
To my great dismay, I read a qupte by St John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops!😦
 
Shoshana said:
To my great dismay, I read a qupte by St John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops!😦
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Only of those who taught wrongly.

Keep in mind, there are also many priests and bishops who made it to Heaven - St. Robert Bellarmine, whose feast day we celebrate today, is an example of a Bishop whose skull is not on the basement floor of Hell. 🙂
 
jmcrae said:
Only of those who taught wrongly.

Keep in mind, there are also many priests and bishops who made it to Heaven - St. Robert Bellarmine, whose feast day we celebrate today, is an example of a Bishop whose skull is not on the basement floor of Hell. 🙂
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Code:
This is true…and we must also think that this a statement of priests and bishops in all of time. So, I continue to pray for priests et al passionately in my perpetual prayer thread!:yup:
 
outfctrl said:
What?
Hate God? The souls in hell yearn for God, but have no chance of being with him. That is Hell!!
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I heard a commentary that they hate God because He sustains their existence in hell and they know it. If God did not sustain our existence we would stop existing and the same is true for those in hell.

This leads me to another question that I was thinking of starting a thread on.

Why does God sustain existence in hell? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning His Judgement and decission, but I don’t understand it. Usually when I don’t understand something there is a mystery there that I can’t understand or I am missing some truth or meaning.
 
cynic said:
because he’s makng sure they are punished for not loving him.
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I don’t deny that this may be true. But, love is a gift. By our nature we require loving God. Without loving God the ultimate result is hell. For some reason, I have difficulty understanding why God would sustain eternal punishment just for the sake of punishment. Perhaps it has to do with the gift of existence, that He has given us which is a gift He is does not Will to do away with. He wants us to be in existence even if we completely reject Him. Maybe this is a part of what Love is. Is Love to give completely even when it mean eternal sorrow for the gifted and eternal loss for the Giver. His ways are far above my ways and understanding.
 
do you know that if you willfully miss mass just once you are in mortal sin and unless you confess you go to hell when you die?
 
That is not true. If one dies with an unrepentant mortal sin on one’s soul, then one goes to hell. In one’s final moments, a person can make an PERFECT act of contrition and have their mortal sins forgiven. Of course, if circumstances permit, one should go to confession since acts of PERFECT contrition are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make.
 
God sustaining existance in Hell?

The answer is souls do not die.

Hating God?

In Hell there is NO love.
 
Sir_Knight said:
That is not true. If one dies with an unrepentant mortal sin on one’s soul, then one goes to hell. In one’s final moments, a person can make an PERFECT act of contrition and have their mortal sins forgiven. Of course, if circumstances permit, one should go to confession since acts of PERFECT contrition are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make.
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How far do you extend the “Act of Perfect Contrition?”

Is it only when one is in imminent danger of death?

Does the sinner need to expunge his sins through Confession as soon as possible if he survives?

Are their other times an act of “Perfect Contrition” allows a soul “safe passage?”
 
outfctrl said:
What?
Hate God? The souls in hell yearn for God, but have no chance of being with him. That is Hell!!
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I have to disagree with this statement. If the souls in hell yearned for God, they would not be in hell. They are in hell precisely because they did not yearn for God, but rather for the things of this world.

I think it is the souls in purgatory who yearn for God. And after being purged and made ready, they will be with God.

Mary
 
The notion of a ‘massa damnata’ comes from the theology of Augustine. Augustine believed that the fall of Adam had deprived the entire human race of justice and grace, so all humans are bound for hell. (Other church fathers developed rather different theologies however). Because along with Aquinas Augustine is the pre-eminent theological doctor of the Latin Church, his ideas had very strong influence, especially on Luther, Calvin, and the Jansenists. For Augustine the damned included unbaptised infants and presumably, everyone and anyone outside of the few who were saved in the church by the grace of God. By theological logic then, in Augustine’s thought most of humanity will end up in hell, and it will be eternal, as God’s justice demands eternal punishment, not only for personal sins but also for the fall itself.

Anselm developed this line somewhat further, though he developed into the notion of why the incarnation was necessary; Adam’s sin offended the infinite majesty of God, and any sin which goes against the law or will of God is so bad, it should not be done in any actual or possible world (and the evil of one sin is worse than all possible finite worlds being destroyed). The only way this could be set right was the incarnation, which was both an act of God’s mercy and love (allowing a way for man to be restored to his original friendship with God) and also an act of his justice; the God-man satisfied God’s demand for justice which man himself could not give (as original sin itself required that man make infinite atonement, but that was not possible for fallen man). Thus in a stroke God satisfied his justice and also showed his overwhelming love for mankind (even in its fallen state) in the incarnation. In my view, Anselm’s solution is brilliant (though not perfect).

Personally I think it is lopsided to see only the harsh justice of God. There is often a lot of bleakness and morbidity in Christian theology (especially Catholic theology) if overly-focused on damnation. A more reasonable view is to see the justice of God is satisfied by and in the incarnation, as Anselm recognised. After this, we Christians are saved or damned depending on how we respond to God’s love; if we reject it again and again at the end of life we close the door on ourselves forever (as Kreeft used a good analogy, locking a prison door in on ourselves for eternity and tossing away the key, but God always loved us). We should not use our salvation to arrogantly set limits on God’s mercy just because we ourselves are unwilling to show mercy and compassion to others, even those who seem lost. God’s ways are not necessarily ours.
 
Brooklyn said:
I have to disagree with this statement. If the souls in hell yearned for God, they would not be in hell. They are in hell precisely because they did not yearn for God, but rather for the things of this world.

I think it is the souls in purgatory who yearn for God. And after being purged and made ready, they will be with God.
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I’ve heard it said that if the gates of hell were opened, not a single soul in hell would walk out because those in hell become one with hell.
 
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