"Should I read this ?"The Story of Annette, a Soul in Hell

[umamibella]

The idea of being immobilized forever is scary. Of course, in Hell, one is dead, and motion is life!

We are eternal, so if we land in Hell, we are still alive and our life is sustained by God, just as it is on earth, in Heaven , or in purgatory.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The author of the story identifies it as non-fiction, i.e. it isn’t presented as a make-believe account like the Screwtape Letters. There should be a charitable assumption that a religious sister in good standing with the Church isn’t lying, or at least that she is being truthful to the best of her ability. I’m sure she loved God very much.

I too read it years ago.

It’s a decently written moral fable.

While it may be charitable of you to assume it’s “non-fiction”, I have so far not been able to trace where it came from, who wrote it, who found it, were they really “a religious sister”, and while the Church gave its nihil obstat/ imprimatur because there is nothing contradicting Catholic teaching in it, that’s not a guarantee that the Church has in any way confirmed the truth of the stuff in the publication, or is saying it is true.

There are many, many stories about a soul in hell coming back to tell someone on earth something. If they are firsthand accounts by a saint or blessed, fine, it’s considered a private revelation to that saint. If the person who first related the story is identified, as in Sister Marie-Joseph Soandso of the St. Abacab Convent in Germany, then at least somebody can fact check whether the convent and the sister existed and whether she or her convent published or propagated the story.

However, “Here’s a letter from some anonymous dead girl that was passed on by an anonymous religious sister” isn’t exactly reliable. At the very least it’s “Go Ask Alice” territory. I’m not about to tell someone, “Oh, that’s nonfiction” on that basis.

The fact that (as written versions have pointed out) most of what the soul alleged to be in hell says seems to comport exactly with Summa Theologica further suggests to me that somebody may have made it up as a better way of getting the point across to an audience than having them read relatively dry Aquinas.

 

[TK421]

Even if it’s a fabrication, it is still non-fiction. The story self-identifies as a real account.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Even if it’s a fabrication, it is still non-fiction. The story self-identifies as a real account but a person is free to be skeptical about it (just speaking for myself, I don’t care much if it’s real or not).

I don’t think the test of “non-fiction” is whether “the story self-identifies as a real account”.

Again there has been huge controversy with this regarding the “Go Ask Alice” author and other allegedly “real” accounts of someone’s past life (usually dealing with addiction or dysfunction) that were later found out to be fabricated, in whole or in part. When the author actually insists these fabricated tales, or even someone’s real-life tale that the author embeliished, is real, then it’s called a literary hoax.

I stop short of calling the Annette story a literary hoax because we simply don’t know how it was intended or presented originally, as I have not been able to trace the source of the tale. It may have been originally intended as pious fiction. It’s become one of those tales that’s just passed around the Internet and occasionally used at some retreat.

 

[Anesti33]

GEddie:

The idea of being immobilized forever is scary. Of course, in Hell, one is dead, and motion is life!

We are eternal, so if we land in Hell, we are still alive and our life is sustained by God, just as it is on earth, in Heaven , or in purgatory.

God is eternal, having no beginning or end. Our souls are not, since there was a point in time that they came to be, and before that, did not exist. Our souls are immortal.

 

[umamibella]

God is immortal and eternal, God has given us the gift of being eternal. Immortal meaning not mortal. God is being itself, not like us, we are beings.
From the Apostles Creed
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Communion of souls, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

Our lives are eternal, even in hell. We are living our lives everlasting now, birth and death on earth is just one small part of that. I believe if more people really understood that, the secular world would not be so secular.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm
yes you are right that our souls are also immortal

Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification594 or immediately,595 – or immediate and everlasting damnation.596

1051 Every man receives his eternal recompense in his immortal soul from the moment of his death in a particular judgment by Christ, the judge of the living and the dead.

 

[TK421]

@Tis_Bearself

Yeah that sounds fair.

@(name removed by moderator)

I think the idea of the people being forever immobilized wherever they fell is that any hope of repentance or spiritual growth is dead from that point forward. Hope as a theological virtue only exists on Earth. In Heaven it is gone because it is replaced purely with love, and in hell it is gone because the person has already made up their mind to be their own god.

 

[ThomasMT]

Very well put, TK.

 

[JSRG]

Sorry, I’m little timid and ignorant, This is Story about a soul in hell. Should I read it? I am just concerned if it confuses me or misleads me, just want to make sure. I’m weak in theology and not in committed grace.

I have seen this story before; though I notice the text isn’t the same as the version I saw (found here). Initially I thought maybe it was just a different translation, but there are too many differences to ascribe it to that; it seems that one was a considerable edit of the other. For example, the version I read was clear about the fact the message was a letter that the woman read in a dream, but the one that the OP linked to leaves that part out and vaguely refers to it as a “vision” instead. Another example is differences in the ending; the version I mentioned had an extended quote from St. Therese, which is left out entirely in the version linked to in the OP.

I suspected that the one I linked was the one that better reflected the original French (as this was a translation into English from French), but I could not be sure without the French original to compare it with. This set me off to do something I hadn’t done before: Look for the original French version. I eventually found it, and it seems that I was correct–the version posted in the OP is rather edited, including a bunch of emphases added (bolding, all-caps) that were not in the original. One can see the text of the original French publication here, including extra material, like a preface by a priest and notes from the translator (apparently, the French was a translation from German!):
http://marie-julie-jahenny.fr/le-manuscrit-de-l’enfer.htm
(it can be found on other French sites as well, but this seemed to be the most complete version)

As noted, this backs up my belief that the version linked by the original poster is quite edited, leaving out some important things and also adding in some weird emphases, like all-caps or boldings not apparently in the original. But more importantly, the preface states that this was fiction. Seriously, it straight up refers to it as a fictitious letter (“lettre fictive”).

Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original German version of it. I wonder why the translation to English was apparently from the French rather than the German… is it possible it was the French version that got popular and therefore someone took that and put it into English?

But in any event, while it notes that the work is grounded in what it regards as sound theology–namely, the fact it takes so many cues from Summa Theologica, though the applicable parts of Summa Theologica seem much more speculative than other portions, perhaps because it’s largely from the Supplement which was put together after Thomas Aquinas’s death–the preface of the French publication, which is what received the imprimatur, states that is is a fictional letter.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I read it.
It’s real trippy.
I consider it in the genre “religious horror”.

But like the posters upthread said, there are more solid pieces on the subject matter written