Does a person have to believe in literal burning hell to be Catholic

[Pup7]

You don’t care if what you believe is reasonable or not. Fine.

When you want to have a reasonable discussion let me know.

We are actually having one with you.

We’ve provided the CCC and much discussion.

What we believe is indeed reasonable.

 

[goout]

Like i said i do not reject the existence of hell. But i am not going to teach someone that love will burn you alive in fire for all eternity if you reject love. So teaching that people will burn alive in physical fire might not matter to some Catholics on here, but it does matter to me.

I’m curious how you would verbalize the consequences of the rejection of love. For instance if you had a child going astray who was using others or being cruel, what would be your description of those spiritual consequences for them?

 

[Pup7]

Like i said i do not reject the existence of hell. But i am not going to teach someone that love will burn you alive in fire for all eternity if you reject love. So teaching that people will burn alive in physical fire might not matter to some Catholics on here, but it does matter to me.

You’re missing everything you’ve been told, including by the CCC.

It is NOT love that condemns you. It’s your FREE WILL.

 

[IWantGod]

You are either not reading what i am saying or understanding the context of the OP’s qeustion, or you are ignoring what i am saying.

I never said that we don’t freely choose hell.

 

[vsedriver]

So teaching that people will burn alive in physical fire might not matter to some Catholics on here, but it does matter to me

And what Catholic teaches this? When it has been clearly stated that the fire will not be like the physical fire which exists in the world because that fire consumes whereas the fire of hell doesn’t consume. The teaching is that there is an actual hell where souls suffer for all eternity. How you illustrate that is not critical to the understanding. The understanding always comes first and then the illustration makes sense.

 

[Gorgias]

I could not live one minute of my life knowing that there are humans currently enduring that.

And yet, humans do currently endure mind-boggling suffering: wars and their effects, human trafficking, hunger, disease… how can you manage to live one minute of your life knowing that humans are currently enduring that?

(In other words, @laylow, hyperbole does not become you well. )

 

[misstherese]

I know it can be hard to think of God that way. But I take it with faith, knowing that God loves us enough to give us all the help we need to avoid it. It’s up to us to take it or not.

I think this is explained quite well in an excerpt of a book called “The Dogma of Hell” by Father Schouppe.

A woman was meditating on the justice of God. She couldn’t reconcile the immeasurable severity with the Divine goodness. “Lord,” she said, “I submit to Thy judgments, but do not push the rigors of Thy justice too far.”
“Do you understand,” was the answer, “what sin is? To sin is to say, God, I will not serve Thee! I despise Thy law! I laugh at Thy threats!”
“I understand, Lord, that sin is an outrage to Thy Majesty.”
“Well, measure, if you can, the greatness of this outrage.”
“Lord this outrage is infinite, since it attacks infinite Majesty.”
"Must it not, then, be punished by an infinite chastisement? Now, as the punishment could not be infinite in its intensity, justice demands that it be so at least in its duration. Accordingly, it is the divine justice that wills the eternity of the pains."

Hell as a literal place of fire has also been been shown to other saints. Hell is just because though a parent might chastise his child by placing him in time out, the God of all creation is infinite, and the penalties are thus greater than a slap on the wrist.

 

[IWantGod]

I agree it depends on how you interpret the concept of hell. If we suffer as a natural consequence of being eternally departed from God, that makes sense to me as i have already explained. But if God has constructed an artificial place of torture intended to cause eternal suffering artificially it would mean that God has a positive desire or need to torture people, to cause pain and suffering in those that reject him, and that i cannot accept for logical reasons because it contradicts his nature.

 

[Pup7]

You said love sends you there.

It doesn’t.

 

[IWantGod]

I didn’t say anything of the sort.

 

[IWantGod]

And what Catholic teaches this?

If its true that no catholic is teaching that in the name of Jesus, then great!!

There is nothing more to discuss.

 

[Pup7]

You seem to be asserting that very thing.

I am interested in truth and i am telling you that burning people alive in literal fire forever does not make logical sense of God’s nature.

Another quote - for some reason the quote isn’t working here: Like i said i do not reject the existence of hell. But i am not going to teach someone that love will burn you alive in fire for all eternity if you reject love

I Don’t think i can believe in a God that would do that as it would imply that God has need or desire to cause suffering, and neither could i teach such a thing to someone else and comfortably proclaim that God is love without feeling irrational…

You keep saying it’s contrary to God’s nature.

God has punished before, right?

 

[laylow]

And yet, humans do currently endure mind-boggling suffering: wars and their effects, human trafficking, hunger, disease… how can you manage to live one minute of your life knowing that humans are currently enduring that?

I have a hard time with it, believe me. The only solace I get is knowing that it will sometime come to an end.

 

[vsedriver]

But if God has constructed an artificial place of torture intended to cause eternal suffering artificially it would mean that God has a positive desire or need to torture people, to cause pain and suffering in those that reject him, and that i cannot accept for logical reasons because it contradicts his nature.

does it make a difference if it is a place or not? I do believe it is a place because we are made up of matter and as material beings we will need a ‘place’ to ‘be’. After the final judgment and the resurrection of the body, we will all be bodied beings. Some of us will share in the eternal beatific vision and some of us will be in a place where we don’t.

Fire is a poor description of the pain that will be for those who reject God. But, remember, they choose it willingly and God doesn’t force himself on anyone so he is bound by his own nature to honor the choices that people make as to their final place.

 

[IWantGod]

does it make a difference if it is a place or not?

I think i have made my position clear. In any case, in regards to the original qeustion of a literal burning hell, a Catholic does not have to believe in that concept of hell. It’s not dogma. A Catholic is required only to believe in hell in respect of its basic definition, and that is eternal separation from God and eternal suffering as a consequence… In fact i think the Catholic authority would tell you that we really don’t know what heaven or hell is really like as a literal experience. It’s beyond our comprehension. So if someone is going to argue to me that God is a torturer and is justified in being so because somebody chose it, that is not something i have to accept and neither do i think it reasonable to hold such a view or teach it…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

If God is the “ultimate example” and he tortures people when they are bad/unrepentant people,but we humans are meant to be loving,lay down our lives for others,love and forgive our enemies etc… then doesn’t add up.

You are grossly mischaracterizing Hell. Despite what you may want to believe, Hell is a choice, and everyone in Hell would rather be there than in Heaven. They would rather suffer the pains of the fire than submit to God.

Hell is not a place of torture because God actively delights int eh suffering of His creations. Hell is as awful as it is because it is literally cut off from the source of all that is Good (i.e. God.). It is terrible because there can be no good in it. No relief, no joy, no peace, no hope…

Also, and I know it’s not a great analogy,but a (loving) human parent would never harm their child by a literal fire no matter how disobedient their child was.
I understand that God is without sin unlike humans,but still.
The whole “be charitable,loving and forgiving or else you’ll physically burn for eternity” thing just doesn’t add up.

Again, This is the person’s choice. God doesn’t send souls there explicitly to punish them, they go there because it is the only place they can have their desire to be apart from Him. The terrible nature of it, again, merely a consequence of the nature of being completely separated from God.

Explanations Christians give such as that physical hell was created for demons and people choose to go there,God doesn’t send them" doesn’t really make sense either because then it renders God to like a “powerless figure” when the reality is God is all knowing so would have known when creating this “burning literal hell” that humans would end up “choosing” to go there.

Umm… not, it doesn’t. How do you get that God is powerless from this? God respects our choice. That is not a lack of power. If God had no power then He couldn’t save anyone, and we would all be cut off form Him eternally.

At the same time though,there are many stories from Catholic saints such as Don Bosco and nuns etc who detail seeing a literal burning hell.

That is because Hell is literally burning fire. Period. You cannot escape this reality, and all the Saints attest to it. Every last saint who has ever been given a vision of Hell agrees that it is a place of torment, suffering, and fire. Jesus himself clearly speaks of Hell as eternal fire and torment.

Your reaction against the nature of Hell is understandable. It is an unbelievably horrible place, a place of unending suffering and despair. However, Hell does not exist because God wants it to (actively), it does not exist so He can get rid of anyone who disobeys Him. Hell exists because the demons chose to reject God, and because we humans do to. It exists because He respects our free will enough to give us the choice of being separated from Him. The fact that that separation is so terrible is the just result of choosing to cut ourselves of from the literal source of everything good.

 

[laylow]

You are grossly mischaracterizing Hell. Despite what you may want to believe, Hell is a choice, and everyone in Hell would rather be there than in Heaven. They would rather suffer the pains of the fire than submit to God.

That sentence alone makes no sense and you know it. If it is a choice, then choice is not a one time thing. People change their minds, which, coincidentally, is what a good corrections system is about. I challenge you to find one person who would choose eternal suffering and burning over…well…anything.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

ProdglArchitect:

You are grossly mischaracterizing Hell. Despite what you may want to believe, Hell is a choice, and everyone in Hell would rather be there than in Heaven. They would rather suffer the pains of the fire than submit to God.

That sentence alone makes no sense and you know it. If it is a choice, then choice is not a one time thing. People change their minds, which, coincidentally, is what a good corrections system is about. I challenge you to find one person who would choose eternal suffering and burning over…well…anything.

Erm, sorry, I don’t know that because it does make sense. It’s certainly a hard reality to swallow, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

In this life we chose. We go back and forth. We can repent, then sin, then repent again.

In the next life, our position is fixed. We no longer have the capacity to chose. This is not because God doesn’t want the damned to repent, but because of the nature of the final choice that is made. The last choice, our particular judgment, is absolute. It is the result of how we have shaped our souls throughout our lives. We look at God, the source of all goodness and love, and we tell Him no. From that point on, we are cut off from all grace, and so lack the capacity for repentence, even if the desire were present.

Put simply, this is not a state we can understand because in this life, no matter how far from God we may be, God is not far from us. He is always calling us back to Him, which is why even the most terrible sinner is not without hope.

You should read some of the accounts of various saints. I recall at least one where the saint saw people literally running from God as fast as they could in order to try and escape the knowledge of the evil they had committed. They couldn’t stand to be in His presence, and so fled from Him. It has been said that the damned chose Hell because it is less painful to them than to submit to God.

 

[laylow]

Erm, sorry, I don’t know that because it does make sense. It’s certainly a hard reality to swallow, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

In this life we chose. We go back and forth. We can repent, then sin, then repent again.

In the next life, our position is fixed. We no longer have the capacity to chose. This is not because God doesn’t want the damned to repent, but because of the nature of the final choice that is made. The last choice, our particular judgment, is absolute. It is the result of how we have shaped our souls throughout our lives. We look at God, the source of all goodness and love, and we tell Him no. From that point on, we are cut off from all grace, and so lack the capacity for repentence, even if the desire were present.

Put simply, this is not a state we can understand because in this life, no matter how far from God we may be, God is not far from us. He is always calling us back to Him, which is why even the most terrible sinner is not without hope.

You should read some of the accounts of various saints. I recall at least one where the saint saw people literally running from God as fast as they could in order to try and escape the knowledge of the evil they had committed. They couldn’t stand to be in His presence, and so fled from Him. It has been said that the damned chose Hell because it is less painful to them than to submit to God.

Well hey, if any of that makes sense to you well, your mind works much different than mine.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

You’ve not actually said what’s wrong with it. I can understand you rejecting it because you can’t handle / don’t like the reality, but don’t claim I’m wrong without stating why.