On the Number of Sins which God Pardons No More

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TheTrinitySaves said:
Why would the church allow us to kill extremely evil individuals on very rare ocassions if their not already past the point of no return in terms of repenting?
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Because they may pose a grave threat to society. In fairness there;s not much scope for this given the fact that they could be detained in prison indefinitely.

Also, if a person was executed with the idea in mind that they would go to hell and suffer for eternity, I imagine that would be a mortal sin in and of itself, because it essentially amounts to desiring hell for a person. We are not supposed to wish for someone to be in hell.
 
Based on the OP’s logic, we should uncanonize St Paul. He committed some pretty heinous crimes preconversion, including assenting to the death of Stephen. One or one million, why should it matter? Or is there some actual number of murders committed where God simply can’t bring himself to be merciful anymore? And where does the Church teach that?

-Fr ACEGC
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Will anyone post a shred of evidence for their viewpoint?
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I cannot seem to copy and paste from the online Catechism on my tablet, but here are some paragraph references to the CCC that should provide the requested evidence:

Paragraph 982 (no sinner is beyond the power of forgiveness that God has shared with the Church)

Paragraph 1861 (on judging acts but never souls)

Paragraph 1864 (the mercy of God has no limits save the final impenitence of the sinner)
 
Hello, and Welcome to the Forum TS!

I want to thank you for making this thread a very interesting read. There have been a lot of very good points made from many directions, and I hope to bring a new angle into this, something we are not considering up to this point.
TheTrinitySaves said:
Ok lets take a look.
  1. You claim Hitler repented and confessed, and is now in heaven because of it. I highly doubt his confession/repentance was sincere, but more in the fact that he feared the firey pits of hell. Just because he was washed of his original sin at baptism and may have repented does not give you a ticket through the gates.
  2. I am aware, but it is the “official” way of having your sins absolved.
  3. Hitler commited millions of deadly mortal sins, he died in a state of mortal sin. I know what happened to his soul based on his souless actions when he was alive on earth.
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First of all, I want to commend you for including Hitler’s victims as part of the loved people of God. It is obvious that you care about the atrocities, and your conscience is well-formed in that you detest what happened. Because of this well-formed conscience, you would emotionally shun any of such hurtful acts, and you are compelled to correct such wrongs.

What I would like to add to this thread is that it is part of the human condition that we project our own feelings and views upon God. Therefore, the question of “Does God forgive Hitler?” is centered on the question “Do I forgive Hitler?”.

Of course, one may have a tremendous revulsion to the latter question. “I have no right to forgive him”, “He does not deserve forgiving”, “It is none of my business”, “some people are unforgivable” etc. But the Gospel is very clear on the issue:

New International Version
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Mark 11:25

So, if we hold anything against Hitler (and anyone of informed conscience should!) we are called to forgive him. But how do we forgive?

There is more to be gleaned from the Gospel on this issue, but I have written enough for now. It is worth noting the story of Eva Kor, who though Jewish has taken a more Christian approach to Hitler and the Nazis than the majority of Christians.

Thoughts? 🙂
 
OneSheep said:
Hello, and Welcome to the Forum TS!

I want to thank you for making this thread a very interesting read. There have been a lot of very good points made from many directions, and I hope to bring a new angle into this, something we are not considering up to this point.

First of all, I want to commend you for including Hitler’s victims as part of the loved people of God. It is obvious that you care about the atrocities, and your conscience is well-formed in that you detest what happened. Because of this well-formed conscience, you would emotionally shun any of such hurtful acts, and you are compelled to correct such wrongs.

What I would like to add to this thread is that it is part of the human condition that we project our own feelings and views upon God. Therefore, the question of “Does God forgive Hitler?” is centered on the question “Do I forgive Hitler?”.

Of course, one may have a tremendous revulsion to the latter question. “I have no right to forgive him”, “He does not deserve forgiving”, “It is none of my business”, “some people are unforgivable” etc. But the Gospel is very clear on the issue:

New International Version
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Mark 11:25

So, if we hold anything against Hitler (and anyone of informed conscience should!) we are called to forgive him. But how do we forgive?

There is more to be gleaned from the Gospel on this issue, but I have written enough for now. It is worth noting the story of Eva Kor, who though Jewish has taken a more Christian approach to Hitler and the Nazis than the majority of Christians.

Thoughts? 🙂
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Actually, the Church doesn’t teach unlimited and automatic forgiveness as you say. You can forgive someone before they seek forgiveness alright. And that is noble. But Jesus only actually commands us to forgive when the offender comes seeking forgiveness. Only then are we under the obligation to forgive.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Why would the church allow us to kill extremely evil individuals on very rare ocassions if their not already past the point of no return in terms of repenting?
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For the very reason it states in the part of the paragraph you omitted from your post. The first part of CCC 2267 reads:

“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”

The Church permits us to kill the “guilty party” if it “is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives”, and not because the guilty party is, to use you words, “past the point of no return in terms of repenting”. Indeed the part of the paragraph you quoted in your earlier post makes it quite clear that the guilty party still has the potential of “redeeming himself” and that by not exercising the death penalty we are not taking that possibility away from the guilty party–it says: “without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself”. You cannot take something away from someone that they do not possess–so it is clear that even those guilty of crimes that get them the death penalty still have the ability to be redeemed.

The peace of Christ,
Mark

The peace of Christ,
Mark
 
edward_george said:
Based on the OP’s logic, we should uncanonize St Paul. He committed some pretty heinous crimes preconversion, including assenting to the death of Stephen. One or one million, why should it matter? Or is there some actual number of murders committed where God simply can’t bring himself to be merciful anymore? And where does the Church teach that?

-Fr ACEGC
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Can you honestly not the differentiate between killing 5 million and one person? And do you honestly think it takes the same amount of evil? No. Killing 5 million innocent lives is 5x worse then killing 1 innocent life.
 
Judgment of Condemnation:

Judgment in this passage is referring to condemning (“pronouncing” judgment on a person’s soul). We are not the “Judge” to pronounce condemnation on anyone (not even ourselves). Only God can do that. The Church, for example, never pronounces “anyone” in hell. And even in the assessment of a person declared a saint, it is done by special dispensation granted to the Church by her authority of the “keys”. But even with this authority, we need to note that it is never applied to judging a person in hell. If the Church, who has the authority of the keys will not judge a person to condemnation, how can we? We are never to judge a person’s state of soul. Jesus tells us that we will receive ourselves the judgment of soul that we place on others if we attempt this usurpation of God’s sovereignty.

catholiclifeministries.org/2014/10/30/heaven-hell-purgatory-and-adolf-hitler/

They will not judge anyone specifically, but they do have the power to announce hitler in hell, they just do not want to go down that road.
 
fbl9 said:
I understand your opinion, it just that your opinion, to my knowledge, does not confirm with the teaching of the Church.
Do you agree with the fact that one mortal sin separates one from God?
You seem to imply there is a limit to the number of sins that can be forgiven, but it grossly large in number. Correct?
If so is there a reference from the Church that teaches this?
Who else to do you believe is one on the list of the few evil ones.? i ask so that we can get some kind of range regarding the number.
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  1. Yes, but this is not absolute, obviously mortal sins are to a degree depending on how evil the sin is. (SSM vs Murder)
  2. Yes, there is a amount of sins that is very large that will put you over. specifically murder as the sin though, not just any type sins. only murder and other heinous acts.
  3. No there is no reference, but its what she believes.
  4. Hitler is the only one I have determined to be there.
 
AdamPeter said:
Actually, the Church doesn’t teach unlimited and automatic forgiveness as you say. You can forgive someone before they seek forgiveness alright. And that is noble. But Jesus only actually commands us to forgive when the offender comes seeking forgiveness. Only then are we under the obligation to forgive.
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Yes, your are referring to obligation. I am referring to an invitation to holiness.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Ok lets take a look.
  1. You claim Hitler repented and confessed, and is now in heaven because of it. I highly doubt his confession/repentance was sincere, but more in the fact that he feared the firey pits of hell. Just because he was washed of his original sin at baptism and may have repented does not give you a ticket through the gates.
  2. I am aware, but it is the “official” way of having your sins absolved.
  3. Hitler commited millions of deadly mortal sins, he died in a state of mortal sin. I know what happened to his soul based on his souless actions when he was alive on earth.
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1 (a)I do not claim that Hitler repented and confessed. I say that IF he repented then God forgave and saved him. I have no idea* whether *he repented.
1 (b) Being baptized does not ‘give you a ticket though the gates’.
2) What do you think is the ‘unofficial’ way? For absolution you genuinely repent. Period.
3) Hitler committed many mortal sins. I would not presume to try to put a number on them.
Whether he died in mortal sin is not known to us, though I have no problem saying there was a high probability of it.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
If hitler is in heaven after murdering millions, but my athiest neighbor is not because he did not have time to “repent” after dying immediately in a car crash. If hitler is in heaven because he repented and is catholic, but the ones he killed are not for not being “catholic” or repenting to jesus before they died (which most of his victims did not believe or did not have time to repent before being killed). That sort of rhetoric is absolutely wrong and agaisnt church teachings. I do not believe you are trying to be harsh, but you are inadvertantly failing to connect the dots in your prior arguements.
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‘That sort of rhetoric’ is not the teaching of Mother Church. You are engaging in the Straw Man fallacy; invent wrong claims, pretend they are what your opponent is saying, then refute your own words in the other guy’s mouth.
If Hitler was saved it was not because he was Catholic (supposing he was). It was because he repented. If your atheist neighbor is in hell it is not because he was atheist but because he committed mortal sins and refused to repent.
And it is part of the teaching of Mother Church that those who do not know of Jesus or who mistakenly rejected what the thought He is, may still be saved because they followed the best they knew and would have accepted Jesus had they known.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Yes I did and I agree with you. However they are saying that if you’re an atheist and don’t repent before you die you go to hell
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And if you are a Catholic and don’t repent you go to hell.

Further: repentance for an atheist does not have to mean the atheist declared a belief in Christ before the moment of death. He has to be repentant of his sins. That can happen even if he thinks there is no God right up to the moment of his death.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Yes I believe in true repentance. True repentance is realizing that your prior actions were truly wrong and asking god for forgiveness out of the bottom of your heart. True repentance is not begging for gods mercy out of a fear of going to hell. The benifets of true repentance apply to humans in ALMOST all situations. Repentance gives us hope and awe of Gods tremendous mercy for us. However there are some situations where the sinner has gone to far or it is to late. Even if he does repent he has caused to much pain and ignored suffering for two long for it to be considered valid. Hitler is that example (Very rare, only a handful of the worst have acheived this)
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…What is the difference between asking God’s forgiveness and asking God’s mercy?

God does not play gotcha with us. If we repent He forgives.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Hello,
Thanks for having this discussion. I will provide some evidence.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely **taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."68 **

And

Nahum 3:19
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So the Catechism notes that If you kill someone he is no longer able to repent once he’s dead.

And the passage from Nahum is a prophecy against the kingdom of Assyria. It has nothing to do with the redemption of human souls.
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
Why would the church allow us to kill extremely evil individuals on very rare ocassions if their not already past the point of no return in terms of repenting?
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What do you do with a prisoner already sentenced to life in prison who keeps attacking the guards and fellow prisoners?
 
TheTrinitySaves said:
  1. Yes, but this is not absolute, obviously mortal sins are to a degree depending on how evil the sin is. (SSM vs Murder)
  2. Yes, there is a amount of sins that is very large that will put you over. specifically murder as the sin though, not just any type sins. only murder and other heinous acts.
  3. No there is no reference, but its what she believes.
  4. Hitler is the only one I have determined to be there.
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To Point 3: If there is no reference then how do you know?
 
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