Question: If Hell is populated with many damned souls, should this be a consideration for bringing children into the world?

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It is understandable. There has been a great deal of teaching from the standpoint of scarcity of God’s grace and salvation.
 
That’s just you reading into the text your own theology, and it’s not what the text says. The quote is a plain, one-to-one correspondence. Again, it reads,

“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." 1 Cor 15:22

I’m not sure how St Paul could have made it any clearer. Adam brought death to all. Christ makes all alive. The word used there is all, not some. A-L-L. Who is the exception to all? Who lies outside of the category of all?

Still waiting on those clear, ecumenical conciliar quotes, Thomas.

And no, not by any means are we confined to Origen. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the list of great intellects/hearts in the church who have advocated for the love of God drawing all men to Christ is not a short list: Maximus the Confessor, Scotus Erigena, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Clement, Gregory Nazianzen, Mechtilde, Angela of Foligno, Julian of Norwich, St Therese, Adrienne von Speyr, Edith Stein, Karl Rahner, Von Balthasar, De Lubac, Walter Kasper, etc.
 
Lots in that post!
Paul uses the term En Christu some number in excess of 100 times. ( It is a large number being my point).
You say all are not in Christ ( En Christu) but I think in one sense this is not obvious or perhaps true at all.
Take a look at Colossians 1:15-19. And John 1:1-17 while at it. THE WORD, and Logos is what is described by Paul and John in these passages.
" Cosmic Christ" is the common description. In John, Described in John 1-13, becoming flesh( Christmas day) at 1:14. In Colossians, an immense Cosmic being. Where all fullness dwells within.
Temporally, this being is first identified with the birth of the Genesis creation.( In the beginning)
Well our Universe is 13.5 billion years old? Roughly. While the incarnation of this being, son with THE FLESH, JESUS,is 2000 years old. This fully man, fully God being is the joining of spirit and physical, and Jesus Christ is mystery in incarnation. ( Paul predominantly uses CHRIST JESUS)
The Logos via Trinity, is transcendant but also imminent in our Universe. Responsible for being of all things. Hence, the teachings of Saint Francis found God permeating and interconnecting everything. Including us. Our Divine Indwelling. The real presence as examples. En Christu is reality not an exclusive club.
 
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Maximus1 said:
You must do this often. Lol. I enjoy reading your posts
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Haha, thanks Maximus. I appreciate your posts too. Every now and then I do allow myself to get sucked into these discussions. I continue in them if my interlocutor shows any sign of openness on the issue. Without genuine openness, there is no possibility of dialogue—it just turns into two people making their own points for no real purpose. It seems that my exchange here with Thomas has turned into this same phenomenon. But it’s ok.

Thankfully, God’s love and grace and mercy extending to all has nothing to do with our beliefs (or disbeliefs) about it. 🙂 Good luck Max!
 
I appreciate the exchange, but I’ll have to leave it here, Thomas. Peace be with you in your ongoing, unfolding understanding of who God is.
 
Our Lady of Fatima revealed this to the public. Hell has many damned souls in it. It is a know fact or are you implying that Jesus’ mother would lie to people about that?
 
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Tbh, I’m just confused how you are confused when I said we should make babies for our Lord.
 
Magnanimity said:
I would only revise this to make it a little worse–Catholics seem perfectly OK accepting their own value and basking in the reality of being a child of God. But, the disturbing fact is that too many Catholics seem reticent to believe in the value of the “other.” That all humans bear the image and likeness of God is a plain enough teaching (and something that we intrinsically recognize about ourselves). But, we’re somehow OK with “the other” being cast into an unending Hell, as long as we escape that fate?!? So very bizarre…
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I see people talking about the universal Imago Dei on these forums and in Catholic writings all the time.

Plus, Christianity/Catholicism has never been intended to be a small and exclusive thing. We’re supposed to bring everybody in eventually, or try to (just as God wills to bring everyone to Heaven).

Hell is a warning. Again, accepting it as a real possibility doesn’t meant we want it to happen to anyone — it’s a failure mode we’re supposed to be fighting against.
 
Maximus1 said:
Then there is the Church mission. And my own desire to love God. Divine Union. The intimacy shared by mystics like John of the Cross, Song of Songs, and many others. A pretty consistent body of intimate experience reported. Being made fearful of an all powerful being who hated us , but then could love us once Divine Justice was satiated killing his beloved, is scary. And it didn’t sit right and still doesnt. The consistent picture from our Saints and mystics is a consistent and intimate love.
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Neither Scripture nor Tradition nor the Church teaches the part you find scary and off-putting. God loved us “while we were yet sinners,” and the death of Christ was not to satiate His bloodthirst but to un-break what we humans broke. Western Christians may like our legal metaphors for the atonement (as contrasted with the more medical metaphor I believe the East prefers), but Catholics have never been big on penal substitution.
 
CarmeliteKnight said:
Our Lady of Fatima revealed this to the public. Hell has many damned souls in it. It is a know fact or are you implying that Jesus’ mother would lie to people about that?
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No. There is a current thread here at CAF where many acknowledge (even on different sides of the Hell issue) that your statements here are incorrect. See here as an example.
 
Usagi said:
I see people talking about the universal Imago Dei on these forums and in Catholic writings all the time
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Good, it’s an important bedrock of any decent understanding of human nature. Most fundamentally, humans possess intrinsic dignity/worth/value/sanctity/sacredness. The book of Genesis just provides a metaphysical foundation for this truth (that it is derived from being a divine image-bearer). As such, a human can never be simply a means to an end. All humans are, as Kant recognized, ends in themselves and would be treated as such by any good agent acting in the cosmos (especially a divine one).
Usagi said:
Plus, Christianity/Catholicism has never been intended to be a small and exclusive thing. We’re supposed to bring everybody in eventually, or try to (just as God wills to bring everyone to Heaven)
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Sure, I would rather the whole world were Catholic (or Orthodox). That, however, is exceedingly implausible, so lumen gentium 16 was wise to acknowledge other possible routes of salvation (epistemically speaking).
Usagi said:
Hell is a warning
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Perhaps. But I find that only a low-level relationship and perhaps a low-level consciousness would find such a warning effective. I need no threat from my children, parents, siblings, best friends, etc in order for me to love them and act for their good. Why would one need a warning from a Heavenly Father?

I have no problem with hell, as such. My only problem is with the bleak and frankly repulsive vision of hell that has come down to us from the pen of Saint Augustine.
 
Your interlocutor does not argue in good faith. But he’s very practiced in condescension in a pitiful attempt to obfuscate it. As you’ve noticed he never refutes the councils, he just ignores them and pretends you never posted them. He’s remarkably brazen about it all.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6…
 
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I can’t change your level of consciousness, Thomas. And I can’t make you have an open mind on this issue. If, at this moment in your own spiritual journey, you can only see God as a conditionally-loving and vindictive Judge, then so be it. I hope that one day you’ll see God as infinite Love itself, as Abba, as One whose “mercy endures forever,” as the psalmist says. But, until that day arrives, peace be with you.
 
Magnanimity said:
I can’t change your level of consciousness
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Lol. It’s enough to know we’re in the presence of a higher consciousness. What a privilege. Thank you sir for being so kind as to swim in our muck.

🤣🤣🤣

Posts #87, 114, 176 and 180 are absolute gems full of wonderful teachings about consciousness. Do you have gray hair and a pony tail?
 
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I’m watching the Adams family as I read that. That makes me chuckle.
Do you think yourself blameless?
 
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