“Be Not Afraid”:
Mine does, too, and he talks about taking care that he doesn’t fail in his duties so as to deserve it. He also talks as if none of the rest of us think about eternal life as if we feel entitled to it, but that we see it as a great gift that can be foolishly squandered. If that is not talking about Hell, I don’t know what. (He was ordained in the mid-1970s, too.)
I wondered when or how long it might take until I’d see reply like this. Ok let me rephrase to say, in my humble opinion speaking strictly of my own limited observations and discussions with fellow Catholics not meant to convey I mean all Catholics world wide. Is that ok now?
The good news is that we are redeemed and have hope of heaven if we choose to follow the way of Christ.
Well, it is IN the Gospel, there is no disputing that:
The fire part is in the Gospels. To be blunt, though, I think that debating about the exact nature of the eternal torment that awaits the damned is splitting hairs. What difference could that possibly make? We must admit it: we are far too naive to have words for eternal realities. Suffice it to say that serious metaphors are used for serious realities. We should not think that hell is one bit less tormenting than Holy Scriptures make it out to be. Maybe tormenting in a way that we cannot have described to us exactly in the light of our limited comprehension and limited experience, but we ought to believe that general nature of what the texts are getting at is spot-on.
Yes! Purgatory is so often neglected or misunderstood. One of our catechumens this year started out really confused about purgatory because of the entirely incorrect way other Catholics had explained it to them.It also surprises me how many Catholics are unaware that Universalism has never been rejected by the Church.