Mortal sin, death, repentance and salvation

[Robert1111]

Apparently then you’d maintain that every child rape and torture was directly willed by God. Personally I wouldn’t want to spend a moment of eternity with such a “god”.

Latin is a universalist, so he apparently believes. that God will bring every single child molester and torturer to repentance with his infallible Efficacious Grace. I don’t agree with him right now, because i believe that free-will is more important in the grand scheme of things, but at least he wasn’t saying that God would allow an unrepentant torturer in Heaven.

 

[fhansen]

But if salvation is universal, why would a good God allow all the atrocious evil that has prevailed thruoughout the years? Why not just stock heaven with the elected all?

 

[Latin]

But if salvation is universal, why would a good God allow all the atrocious evil that has prevailed thruoughout the years? Why not just stock heaven with the elected all?

This is a very very good question and deserves the answer.
.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence answers the question.
.
All things are created and governed with a view to man, to the development of his life and his intelligence, and to the satisfaction of his needs (Aristides, "Apol.", i, v, vi, xv, xvi.
.
His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.
.
That end is that all creatures should manifest the glory of God, and in particular that man should glorify Him, recognizing in nature the work of His hand, serving Him in obedience and love, and thereby attaining to the full development of his nature and to eternal happiness in God.

It extends to every individual, adapting itself to the needs of each ([St. John Chrysostom] Hom. xxviii in Matt.", n. 3 in “P.G.”, LVII, 354),
.
The universe is a system of real beings created by God and directed by Him to this supreme end, the concurrence of God being necessary for all natural operations, whether of things animate or inanimate, and still more so for operations of the supernatural order.
.
Yet all things, whether due to [necessary] causes or to the free choice of man, are foreseen by [God] and preordained in accordance with His all-embracing purpose.
.
Hence Providence is at once universal, immediate, efficacious, yet all alike postulate Divine concurrence and receive their powers of operation from Him (I, Q. xxii, a. 3; Q. ciii, a. 6); efficacious, in that all things minister to [God’s] final purpose, a purpose which cannot be frustrated (Contra Gent., III, xciv);
.
In spite of sin, which is due to the willful perversion of human liberty, acting with the concurrence, but contrary to the purpose and intention of God and in spite of evil which is the consequence of sin, He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

Sin is not ordained by the will of God, though it happens with His permission.

.
Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father traineth up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:2-10;
.
Nor would God permit evil at all, unless He could draw good out of evil (St. Augustine, “Enchir.”, xi in “P.L.”, LX, 236; “Serm.”
.
Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in; P.L.

.
[God] is the sole ruler of the world ([Job 34:13. His will governs all things; [Isaiah 40:22-6] [44:24-8]; [Sirach 16:18-27]. He loves all men, desires the [salvation]of all ([Isaiah 45:22], and His providence extends to all nations.
.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm

As you see Fhansen we have all the answers.
.
God Bless

 

[fhansen]

Well, you failed to answer the question. God allowing sin and directing evil for His purposes is simply not the same as His directly willing and causing it.

And, BTW, the authors of the CE were not coming from a position of universal salvation.

 

[Latin]

Well, you failed to answer the question. God allowing sin and directing evil for His purposes is simply not the same as His directly willing and causing it.

And, BTW, the authors of the CE were not coming from a position of universal salvation.

I’m sorry Fhansen, I have written an answer for you but when I tried to send it to you I get the message that I’m not free to send it to you in this thread because I already sent 3 posts to you.

God bless

 

[fhansen]

I’m sorry Fhansen, I have written an answer for you but when I tried to send it to you I get the message that I’m not free to send it to you in this thread because I already sent 3 posts to you.

Hmm, haven’t heard that before. Why would this last one now come thru ok then I wonder?

 

[Latin]

Latin:

I’m sorry Fhansen, I have written an answer for you but when I tried to send it to you I get the message that I’m not free to send it to you in this thread because I already sent 3 posts to you.

Hmm, haven’t heard that before. Why would this last one now come thru ok then I wonder?

I will see you Fhansen another thread.

God bless

 

[MT1926]

I don’t think that this is what you would do. If you truly love your daughter, you would beg the government to take you and let her free.

To be quite honest with you Robert this is what I would do. As a father of 5 I am surprised that you are so willing to allow your other children to suffer the same fate? Because like I said it is known for certain that the other 4 children would be damned as well. The thing you are forgetting is even if you allow the daughter to stay in your house she is still suffering. This is why I asked you if it would be torture to the person allow them into heaven with their sins still attached. So not only does your decision allow your daughter to continue to suffer but now by your decision here you are making your other 4 children suffer a fate that they shouldn’t have had to suffer.

This is what love means: being willing to suffer for your loved ones sake. This is what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

I don’t think you can use this and apply it to what we are talking about. Jesus suffered on the cross to free us from sin and death, he did do this to give us a free pass. What you are talking about here is penal substitution atonement when you compare the innocent father substituting himself for the guilty daughter. The Church does not agree with this. That would mean the guilty daughter gets off Scott free and enters house still stained.

Don’t get me wrong here I do agree with St. Faustina. As you already pointed out she says “IF THE SOUL IS WILLING”. The other point that spoke to me was when she says “God’s mercy SOMETIMES touches the sinner”

If the soul is willing and sometimes are the key here. To me if the soul isn’t willing when they are alive my hope that they will be willing at death is kind hard to grasp. If you didn’t want to spend time with God in this life it is hard to believe you would choose to spend all of eternity with him. I believe even if God were to let these people make their own judgement they would choose eternity in Hell because the thought of having to follow the rules for all eternity is to much to bare.

Good Stuff,

God Bless

 

[oliver109]

Thing is we can never be certain about whether our soul is willing or not in this life, for example i right now do not know if i am doing of what God wants for me or not. God appears to abandon people and they never hear whether he is pleased with them or not until they meet him at the particular judgement. It would give me a lot of solace just to hear from God about what he thinks of my life at the moment. The other problem is that i have willingly committed over 20 mortal sins a week for the past 7 years so i am constantly preparing for the very long confession i am going to give to the priest.

 

[MT1926]

As you can see, it is the same concept explained by Saint Faustina when she said “The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that IF THE SOUL IS WILLING, it has the possibility of returning to God."( diary 1698)

I have no problem with this because as you say “IF THE SOUL IS WILLING.”

I truly believe that word “IF” can often be the most understood or ignored word in the Bible. For 2 little letters it sure does convey a ton of meaning. Not saying you are doing it here just saying some people read this as a guarantee where as I read the words straight from the page that it is a possibility.

I like this from the other text…

It’s pride and we won’t tolerate its deflation. We choose ourselves instead of God, and we “cocoon up” in self-worship forever

Totally, agree pride is the problem. For me if someone has too much pride and choose themselves all of their lives I don’t really see them being capable of choosing God when they are given this one last moment of clarity.

And if we understand it properly, how could we fail to repent”?

I see where this guy is going but I don’t really agree with it. My reasoning is free will. Unless God removes our free will at judgement I don’t see how we could overcome our own desires for our own understanding and all of the sudden “understand it properly”.

Jesus left us a Church to help us “understand it properly” and yet here we are discussing, agreeing and disagreeing on how we should understand it. Jesus came in the flesh to help people understand it properly and yet they refused to His face. I believe there are a great number of souls in Hell at this very moment who still refuse to “understand” what sin really is. After all they were both consenting so what’s the harm right?

God Bless

 

[MT1926]

Thing is we can never be certain about whether our soul is willing or not in this life, for example i right now do not know if i am doing of what God wants for me or not.

Yes this can be very difficult. Not a day goes by when I second guess if I am doing the works that God has prepared for me. Something that I try to do…

In the Book by Matthew Kelly - “Perfectly Yourself” - He says…

“In each moment, just do the next right thing and your life will begin to flood with joy.”

Just Do the Next Right Thing

Just do the next right thing. Whether you are struggling to overcome a pattern of defeat, yearning for
inner peace, trying to create lasting happiness, wishing to succeed in your career, desperately trying to
overcome procrastination, or are battling with an addiction, this lesson holds the key for you. Just do
the next right thing. In each moment, just keep doing the next right thing.
You cannot think your way out or talk your way out of these problems. You acted your way into them
and you must act your way out of them. You must act in the sense of action, not in the sense of pretense.
It is purposeful action that will lead you to become a better version of yourself, and action is the key to
progress.
When you get into a funk, just do the next right thing. And keep doing the next right thing. You will be
amazed how quickly you work yourself out of the funk if you approach it in this way. Don’t worry about
next week, next month, or next year. Just do the next right thing and keep doing the next right thing,
and gradually you will act your way out of destructive patterns… you must act your way out of it, one
moment at a time.
One moment at a time, by simply doing the next right thing, you will move from confusion to clarity,
from misunderstanding to insight, from despair to hope, from darkness to light, and discover your
truest self.
~excerpt from Perfectly Yourself: 9 Lessons for Enduring Happiness

Hope this helps,

God Bless

 

[MT1926]

God appears to abandon people and they never hear whether he is pleased with them or not until they meet him at the particular judgement.

This made me think of Mother Teresa or should I say SAINT Teresa of Calcutta.

I remember reading once that she felt the calling from God to found the Missionaries of Charity only to be followed by decades of spiritual “dryness”. Not hearing another word from our Lord if he was pleased with what she started or what she should do next.

It would give me a lot of solace just to hear from God about what he thinks of my life at the moment.

Same here.

The other problem is that i have willingly committed over 20 mortal sins a week for the past 7 years so i am constantly preparing for the very long confession i am going to give to the priest.

JUST DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING.

God Bless

 

[oliver109]

I like what you sent, doing the right thing is of course our purpose in life and even though we may have done as many wrong things in our lives we can always be hopeful that our futures will be better than our pasts. I just hope that as long as we do not despair and go to confession as often as we can God will not condemn us when we die even if we have committed a mortal sin and not been able to get to confession in time before death.

 

[Robert1111]

To be quite honest with you Robert this is what I would do. As a father of 5 I am surprised that you are so willing to allow your other children to suffer the same fate?

This is not what i wrote. I wrote that if you truly love her you would offer yourself to suffer in order to spare both your daughter and your other sons. This is what i would do.

The thing you are forgetting is even if you allow the daughter to stay in your house she is still suffering

This is true only in the case of the beatific vision, but you proposed a real life scenario.

You said that i should choose to either consign the man my daughter had consensual sex with to extreme and endless suffering or accept him in my house.

I said that i would accept him because i wouldn’t want him to suffer that fate. Than i said to you that if i should be willing to consign that man to endless suffering (perhaps inflicted by the government in this scenario, who knows) i should be willing to do the same to my daughter, if she had consensual sex with him and she isn’t repentant maybe because, you know, she loves him. And the fact is, i’m not ok with that.

With Heaven things are different because the beatific vision is truly incompatible with mortal sin, this is where all my thoughts about the ability to repent when you are about to kick the bucket come from.

 

[MT1926]

This is not what i wrote. I wrote that if you truly love her you would offer yourself to suffer in order to spare both your daughter and your other sons. This is what i would do.

You must have been thinking it. Here’s the post we are talking about.

I SAID…

From a worldly view if it just affected her, as an infallible human, my answer would be no. However, I have 4 other children at home. If I knew for certain that it would also damn the other 4 then I would have no problem letting her suffer the fate that I forewarned her that she would suffer

I’m not seeing anything in here that you responded to my second scenario, which included her siblings. Which was the bases of both of my comments.

Also, I brought only brought the other siblings into the picture state that you would have full knowledge that allowing the first daughter into the home would lead them into sin.

This is true only in the case of the beatific vision, but you proposed a real life scenario.

You said that i should choose to either consign the man my daughter had consensual sex with to extreme and endless suffering or accept him in my house.

I don’t know how else to discuss this subject Robert. I try to give you a real life scenario which is as close as possible to what I think equates to heavenly judgement, yet obviously not perfect, and you reject it saying this doesn’t happen in real life.

Then you change the rules and expect me to accept your real life scenario that includes making someone endless suffer for premarital sex. Which is something that doesn’t happen in real life. And want it equated to heavenly judgement.

I don’t know how else to discuss this on equal footing?

With Heaven things are different because the beatific vision is truly incompatible with mortal sin, this is where all my thoughts about the ability to repent when you are about to kick the bucket come from.

Well like I already said earlier repentance has to come from the heart not just the lips. If your heart isn’t repentant about sin prior to death I don’t see it changing at the time of death.

God Bless

 

[Robert1111]

Well like I already said earlier repentance has to come from the heart not just the lips. If your heart isn’t repentant about sin prior to death I don’t see it changing at the time of death.

Again, this is not necessarily true, the realization that death is near may give you the willlingness to open your heart to God and allow him to enlighten you with his Grace, so that you will achieve perfect contrition.

A lot of people commit lots of sin in this life, but not all of them are that hardened.

 

[Robert1111]

I’m not seeing anything in here that you responded to my second scenario, which included her siblings. Which was the bases of both of my comments.

Also, I brought only brought the other siblings into the picture state that you would have full knowledge that allowing the first daughter into the home would lead them into sin.

Every parent who has sons and/or daughters is likely to have all or some of his sons/daughter who aren’t a monument to catholic virtue. Do you see these parents casting their children out of their houses, despite the fact that they could lead their brothers into sin with their own bad example?

I don’t know how else to discuss this subject Robert. I try to give you a real life scenario which is as close as possible to what I think equates to heavenly judgement, yet obviously not perfect, and you reject it saying this doesn’t happen in real life.

Then you change the rules and expect me to accept your real life scenario that includes making someone endless suffer for premarital sex. Which is something that doesn’t happen in real life. And want it equated to heavenly judgement.

I don’t know how else to discuss this on equal footing?

Ok, you are right, let’s just stick to the “wordly” scenario. Let’s say that the guys gets simply deported to North Corea where that dictator will consign him to a North Korean version of Joseph Mendele.

Would you be ok with that? I wouldn’t. Much less it it involves my daughter. I’d rather consign myself to that fate than thinking that my daughter is going to have to go through that s**t.

 

[Robert1111]

Totally, agree pride is the problem. For me if someone has too much pride and choose themselves all of their lives I don’t really see them being capable of choosing God when they are given this one last moment of clarity.

Robert1111:

As i said, these kind of persons exist, but they are certainly not your run-of-the-mill sinner.

Let me quote Pope Benedict XVI from his encyclical Spe Salvi

“ There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].

To be continued…

 

[Robert1111]

Continue 46 Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians , gives us an idea of the differing impact of God’s judgement according to each person’s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” ( 1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.”
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedi...uments/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html

 

[Robert1111]

I see where this guy is going but I don’t really agree with it. My reasoning is free will. Unless God removes our free will at judgement I don’t see how we could overcome our own desires for our own understanding and all of the sudden “understand it properly”.

Jesus left us a Church to help us “understand it properly” and yet here we are discussing, agreeing and disagreeing on how we should understand it. Jesus came in the flesh to help people understand it properly and yet they refused to His face. I believe there are a great number of souls in Hell at this very moment who still refuse to “understand” what sin really is. After all they were both consenting so what’s the harm right?

I think that you misunderstood what Padre Pio said. Padre Pio was far from being a universalist. He said “not a great number of soul” he didn’t say “nobody”.

When he said “how could we fail to repent” he was just saying that unless someone is really corrupted he will probably accept God’s gift, open his heart and let God guide him to true repentance.

This is also kind of what Ratzinger implied (even though he never mentioned the final Grace) when he said that “ yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God”.

What i believe and what the saints i quoted believe is that can use that “ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God” in order to bring these persons to repentance.