The Catholic faith does have an insanely long list of things that will send one to hell and it seems the list just keeps getting longer. I kept getting from my confessor just got longer and longer an the way to salvation muggier and muggier.
I still have some fear of Death it comes from a what if the Catholics / Orthodox / Feenities / Atheists / sedevacatist Catholics / Muslims ect. are right?
What i’m about to say is based on my own experiences.
To start wiht I had the experience of my father turning up in my room the night he died. He started with an apology for 20 years of very cruel treatment, we argued and conversed, and then at the end he gave this terrifying scream whilst trying to ward something off. It was so frightening that I started to scream. Then he promptly disappeared.
It was another four days before I found out from human sources he had died, since his body wasn’t found for four days.
As far as I’m concerned he went to hell, so I hate to disillusion you, but the “Catholics / Orthodox / Muslims etc” are right when it comes to judgement after death.
On the other hand I sometimes get a sense of peace when people die, but they’re usually people who’ve had some sort of Christian allegiance. A few weeks ago my wife and I went down to the Gold Coast to discuss elements of my being an MC for a wedding for one of her relatives. We got back about 5pm. Not long after I said to my wife, “I’m getting that sense of peace. I think someone might have just died.” I then named someone whom I knew was in a bad way from emphysema. I wasn’t sure, but i thought it was a possibility.
Two days later a mutual friend rang to say this chap had indeed died. When I rang his widow to give my condolences, I asked her when he died. It was about 5.30pm, the same time I felt the “sense of peace”. The difference this time is that I had mentioned it to my wife, and received confirmation a few days later. So I had a witness so to speak.
As a pagan, you’re wrong. But to get back to the original OP, God doesn’t keep a long list of sins because He enjoys it. In the final analysis, sin hurts people, both ourselves and others. That’s why He’s hostile to sin. So the thing to do is to confess sins, and try to treat other people well. If you do that, you shouldn’t have much to fear from death.
That’s not to say there might not be any pain in dying. There could be quite a lot. But if you have a pretty clear conscience, you won’t have to fear what my father found, after he’d indulged his cruelty for 20 years without remorse. On the other hand, as I said, I get a real “sense of peace” sometimes when other people die. But
if I later find out who it was (I don’t always), they’re always basically good people with a Christian affiliiation.