St. John Bosco's Vision of Hell- "Grave" sins

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To our readers who may be unduly alarmed by the visions reported by St. John Bosco and St. Leonard in this thread, it is imperative for sound spiritual health to hear the words of Doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross:
With respect to all these there may come, and there are wont to come,** to spiritual persons** representations and objects of a supernatural kind.

With respect to sight, they are apt to picture figures and forms of persons belonging to the life to come – the forms of certain saints, and representations of angels, good and evil, and certain lights and brightnesses of an extraordinary kind.
  1. And it must be known that, although all these things may happen to the bodily senses in the way of God, we must never rely upon them or accept them, but must always fly from them, without trying to ascertain whether they be good or evil; for, the more completely exterior and corporeal they are, the less certainly are they of God.
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The homily of St. Leonard was repeated second hand, and was not an experience that he was given personally. In fact, nobody knows who the alleged “archdeacon” was who supposedly had the vision, or whether it was determined by the Church to be true or false. Yet many today have repeated the story, putting full credence in it and scandalized many of the faithful needlessly. I’ve seen people adamantly claim, “but St. Leonard is a canonized saint, so it must be true!” Not so fast.
The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, “*Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, **thirty-three thousand ***people also died. Out of this number, **Bernard and myself **went up to heaven without delay, **three **went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell.”
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We all know that St. Catherine of Siena is a Doctor of the Church. However, we have these words from Fr. Groeschel in Still Small Voice:
The editors of the works of St. Catherine of Siena have been accused of changing her testimony on the denial of the Immaculate Conception. In the archives of the Dominican order there is a manuscript dating from 1398 that contains the account of this ecstasy which occurred in 1377. Pope Benedict XIV, examining all of the materials relating to this apparent mistake in St. Catherine’s apparitions, at least suggests the possibility that she may have been deceived by her own preconceived ideas. Who knows?
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Many such instances could be recounted here, but the incidence of a saint having a vision is NOT part of the Deposit of Faith, and as St. John of the Cross teaches, we should never rely upon these, if we do not want to be deceived.
 
EWTN just announced that Part 1 of St. John Bosco’s life will air again on Wednesday at 1:00 PM EST, for those who missed it and are interested in viewing it. Part 2 will be Saturday 8:00 PM EST.

The only problem, and it is a slight one, is that the audio has a slight delay with the video, but it is in English, unlike some of their films which are dubbed.
 
Sirach2 said:
Nah, I didn’t even give a clue. What do you believe happened with the Prefect?

Incidentally, now that you have seen the movie, do you see any possible way that St. John drew these young street delinquents to the Lord by scaring the beejeebies out of them, telling them they will burn in hell? If that was truly a vision he had, it was certainly NOT the way he loved those boys, nor the method he used to draw them to Christ. It simply doesn’t work.
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When evangelizing, I don’t believe anyone should be approached that way. But if we, as Catholics are discussing heaven and hell, we should certainly be able to agree on theology.
 
What has happened to the citations from Fr Urs Von Balthasar that appeared in this thread?
 
Joseph Kemp’s posts seem to have disappeared. :confused: Maybe he changed his mind about sharing the quotes?
 
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