M
Mintaka
Guest
- It was Jesus, in the Gospels, Who primarily taught us about Hell. Seeing as He’s God, I think you can trust what He says.
- Pope Benedict XVI didn’t “throw out” Limbo. He pointed out that the theology isn’t totally settled, that there isn’t any formal infallible definition, but that people had been wrongly teaching it as if it were definitely the doctrine. He said that there are unsatisfactory things about the Limbo theory. He then invited theologians to try to come up with a more satisfactory solution, while urging Catholics to pray for unbaptized children who die, and to trust in God’s mercy and love toward such children, while still working hard to get Catholics’ kids baptized as soon as possible after birth. (And he’s probably the greatest living Augustinian theologian, and no fan of modernism.)
- If you’re interested in the relationship of mystical visions from God to literal truth of supernatural events and places seen in visions, you should read St. John of the Cross’ book The Ascent of Mount Carmel, and its sequel The Dark Night of the Soul. He talks a lot about this very topic, as well as related topics such as sensory impressions caused by God versus actually seeing things God shows one with one’s own eyes; the interplay of mystical visions with mental impressions caused by God but seen with the individual person’s visual imagination; what a visionary should take from visions and what is totally irrelevant; and so on. These books are available free online in many places, such as Project Gutenberg.