What is hell?

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This is something that comes up a lot in my conversations with others. What do the people here think or what is the Catholic position on this-

Is Hell a place where people go or Is Hell a state of being separated from God for eternity?

I always believed the second but then when you read visions of the children of Fatima Hell does seem to be a place which exists to be seen.

Answers on a postcard!!
 
From Jesus’ cry on the cross ‘Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?’, as a Christian I can get some idea of what sharing man’s mortal fate meant for him…What descending into Hell meant. In his last prayer on the Mount of Olives, what we see is the innermost heart of his Passion. It is not any physical pain but radical loneliness, complete abandonment.
When you think carefully about it, you can see that this lonliness is in fundemental contradiction with the nature of man, who cannot exist alone; he needs company. That is why lonliness is the region of fear, which is rooted in the exposure of a being that must exist but is pushed out into a situation with which it is impossible for him to deal.
Hell for me is such a thing as a lonliness that could no longer be penetrated and transformed by the word of another; if a state of abandonment were to arise that was so deep that no “You” could reach into it any more, then we should have real, total, lonliness and dreadfulness, what theology calls “hell”. For me then, this word denotes a lonliness that the word love can no longer penetrate and that therefore indicates the exposed nature of existence in itself. For Christians Christ strode through this gate of our final lonliness. The good news is that Hell is no more. Love dwells in the midst of it.
 
ocuinn said:
This is something that comes up a lot in my conversations with others. What do the people here think or what is the Catholic position on this-

Is Hell a place where people go or Is Hell a state of being separated from God for eternity?

I always believed the second but then when you read visions of the children of Fatima Hell does seem to be a place which exists to be seen.

Answers on a postcard!!
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HELL

CCC 1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”

CCC 1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,” and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”

CCC 1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.” The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

CCC 1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”

CCC 1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:
 
To be separated from Love is hell. To be alone with self and from self - for self is hell. To believe yours is the only suffering is hell.
To settle for sleep and status quo is hell. To spend a week at my inlaws is hell. The odds of avoiding all of this in a lifetime are impossible. Always carry marshmallows.
 
Hell is a place, just like heaven. There would be no reason for the resurrection of the body if eternity was not a physical place. I think that hell is like solitary confinement, where you are deprived not just spiritually and emotionally but also physically of love, a place where you are rotting within yourself with no one to help pull you out.

This is why it is a good idea now, when you see someone hurting, to give them a hand, to comfort them. Don’t let them think that that misearble place that they are in is where they belong. Likewise if you are all alone and hurting, don’t recoil from others. Accept their help and their concern, otherwise surely you are preparing your own place in hell.
 
Hell exists. Sometimes it seems to have expanded to my parish church with its dancing priest:(
 

HEAVEN, HELL AND PURGATORY
Pope John Paul II​

In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.
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“Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.” [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]
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ewtn.org/library/PAPALDOC/JP2HEAVN.HTM

Follow link and scroll down, much too long to post here.
 
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