The following might strike some as heretical. It might be, but I doubt it since it was propounded by St Therese of Lisieux who is deemed a Doctor of the Church. Rightly, then, I think it would be regarded as worthy of belief, but not mandatory.
She did not contradict what the Catechism says, but can be thought of as perhaps adding some detail to it. She believed that, at the moment of death, we are presented with all of our sins in all their horrific reality. The reality of them is much worse than we tell ourselves here. We are, upon that confrontation, at the edge of despair or anger and hatred against God for portraying us in that manner, even though we know it’s the absolute truth. We are then presented with God’s forgiveness, which we can accept (accepting the fullness of our guilt by doing it) or reject. We have as clear a choice as can possibly be imagined; not an emotional thing at all, but crystal clear. We can choose to accept forgiveness and God’s love or we can reject it, choosing our own “egos” and our own pride and elect to live with ourselves as “gods” forever, knowing as we will how utterly inadequate that is. But our hatred at being dependent on God’s mercy causes us to choose ourselves. And that is hell.
Hard to think anyone would ever choose to reject forgiveness and God’s love and choose hell, but she maintained that everybody in hell is a volunteer who chose self-worship and self love over the worship of God and of His love. We can sort of imagine someone doing that. We have seen how prideful people can get, and how self-justifying when they surely know they’re wrong. Some people, she would say, do it in the ultimate sense, and would not choose God even if they had a hundred thousand opportunities. Once their decision is made, it’s so clear they would never change. Hard to picture, but imaginable.
Worth thinking about, for sure, because in life we would really want to do as Jesus taught and “become as little children”; becoming accepting, purging ourselves as much as we can manage of pride and self-justification and ingratitude.
Now, about praying for the dead. Some might challenge this, but I don’t think anyone can really demonstrate that it’s wrong. One previous poster touched on it. For God, there is no time. No past, no future. Everything is immediately present to God. If we pray today, can it not perhaps result in God’s sending grace for a person whose life we think of as in the past? And could that person “in the past” not accept that grace and act differently at least
to the extent of not fully consenting to a sin that might otherwise be entirely blameworthy? If we don’t think God can do that, then we really are denying God’s omnipotence. We are encouraged by almost everything God or the saints ever said to us to pray, and to do so unceasingly. To say God would not answer as regards things as vital as the salvation of a soul is to question God’s mercy.
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