Has a church ever officially said whether or not someone went to hell?

[pnewton]

It is not a heresy to hope that God has a way around this, which is why folks like Von Balthasar don’t count as heretics. If you keep it speculative instead of teaching stuff as certain, you can say a lot of things as a theologian.

I had forgotten about him. I did think of Bishop Barron when I saw this thread. Such people are a rarity in Catholic theology, but not non-existent. I think you gave a good description of where the line is drawn between what is acceptable. Such things are for theologian.

My own view, not being a Catholic theologian, is to cling to the theological virtue of hope, hoping no one goes to Hell, while at the same time, living, and teaching those I know to live, so as to take nothing for granted, living an assumption that if we are not saints, we may not make it. Hope for the best (theological possibility); prepare for the worst (theological possibility.)

 

[HomeschoolDad]

There’s no way the Church can “canonize someone as being in hell”.

To canonize a saint, the traditional method has been to verify a number of miracles, not explainable in any other way, as having taken place due to the intercession of that saint.

That doesn’t work the other way around. The only thing we have is private revelations, and those cannot bind as being mandatory to believe. Not even belief in Fatima or Lourdes is required of a faithful Catholic. You could reject Fatima as having been a total fraud, and remain a faithful orthodox Catholic. I don’t, and I don’t recommend this, but you could.

The words of Our Lord regarding Judas are pretty strong stuff, and difficult to interpret in any other way, but note that He said “if he had never been born”, not “if he had never been conceived”.

 

[Vico]

For example has she ever officially said that Apostle Judas went to hell?
Or anyone else?

Catechism of the Catholic Church
1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.614 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,"615 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!"616

Matthew 23

13 But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for you yourselves do not enter in and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter.

Matthew 25

41 Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.

2 Peter 2, 4:

God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments, to be reserved unto judgment.

Council of Valance (855 A.D.) Canon 3, (see Denzinger 322):

… faithfully we confess the predestination of the elect to life, and the predestination of the impious to death; …

Fourth Lateran Council (1215 A.D.)

Indeed, having suffered and died on the wood of the cross for the salvation of the human race, he descended to the underworld, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. He descended in the soul, rose in the flesh, and ascended in both. He will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their deserts, whether these be good or bad; for the latter perpetual punishment with the devil, for the former eternal glory with Christ.

St. Pope John Paul II

Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of which human beings are effectively involved in it.