Yes, in hell, but why forever

[Fauken]

In the case of this priest maybe he did not want God to separate his soul from his body while in a state of sin, why would God not listen to the priests petitions?

God listens to all our petitions. Just because we ask doesn’t mean we’ll get it.

why does God have to separate the soul from the body of a sinful but imperfectly contrite person? Who does it benefit?

I’m not God so I can’t say.

 

[oliver109]

Well I think the petition was a sane one, it was a good one with the intent that he would be saved, I am sure that God could have a way of honouring it.

 

[sudy]

If I stack up my sins against those of the priest, even though they’re not identical I can see a similarity. The difference, though, is that I am not a priest.

I once thought that I was powerless against my sins, especially habitual sin, because I’d tried and failed so many times… and then I came across the verse 1 Corinthians 10:13

No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.

and it changed everything. It’s not only possible to stop mortally sinning, but doable. It’s actually simple really. Its a decision. If you put God in his proper place, first in your life and before self, and you are aware of your weaknesses and become vigilant…as well as using the Sacraments properly, you really can overcome all of your sins and it gets easier with practice.

By presenting to us a priest, you’re showing us a wicked man who is paying lip service to God, putting himself first, choosing to commit grave sins with full knowledge and full consent, as he cannot claim ignorance.

‘Consequently, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.’ ~Romans 8:12-13

 

[vz71]

I would not make a new story as the one I have relates to so many people out there.

You are.
You have been throughout this thread.
Every time you find your fictional priest in trouble, you add to the story to try to change the result.

I have a suggestion for your fictional priest.
Grow up, quit blaming God for your failings, go to confession.

 

[Gorgias]

In the case of this priest maybe he did not want God to separate his soul from his body while in a state of sin, why would God not listen to the priests petitions?

So, you’re asking why God doesn’t answer the petition, “please let me keep sinning for a while, God, before I die”? Seriously?

why does God have to separate the soul from the body of a sinful but imperfectly contrite person?

He doesn’t. It’s a natural occurrence (so to speak). It’s part of what it means to be human – we live in this body, and this body dies. You’re making God out to be something like the old Greek idea of the Fates, who personally decide the length of life of each individual person. That’s not what Catholics believe. God doesn’t say “ok, you’ve had enough time, buddy… so, it’s time for you to die”…!

Who does it benefit?

Who says there’s some great “benefit/loss calculation” out there on a grand scale?

 

[oliver109]

Erm the petition is not asking God to let the priest keep sinning, the petition is to ask God to make sure he does not die in a state of mortal sin. God is in charge regarding the separations of our souls, are you suggesting that God is passive and just lets it happen?

 

[oliver109]

I am not blaming God for the sins of the priest, I am instead asking God to give the priest extra mercy, I mentioned that the priest goes to Confession every week, he is serious about avoiding sin but is a bit of an idiot and sins again.

 

[Gorgias]

Erm the petition is not asking God to let the priest keep sinning, the petition is to ask God to make sure he does not die in a state of mortal sin.

In other words, either to keep him alive while sinning, or to strike him dead as he walks out of confession… neither of which sounds like God’s modus operandi.

God is in charge regarding the separations of our souls

No, He’s not up there saying “hey, Michael! Harvest this one over there! Hey Gabriel, we’ve got a faulty separation – go fix that one down there!”

Yes… it just happens. God doesn’t act in order to “pull” a soul from a corpse.

 

[oliver109]

God is in charge over when a soul is separated from a body, he is in charge of everything is he not? or does he passively watch over the soul being separated from a body?

 

[sudy]

God willed us into existence but it doesn’t necessarily follow that he actively wills us to our death. The catechism speaks of the soul separating from the body, but not as an active act. God created us to be left in the hands of our own counsel… and to choose him freely while we live. Death came into the world by the sins of man, not because God willed us to death.

Now, going back to the priest…

1 John 3:4-10

Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him. Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.

 

[oliver109]

So it says that one who fails to act in righteousness does not belong to God, why would he bother instituting the sacrament of Confession, surely one who sins mortally may as well be abandoned and be taken care of by the devil?

 

[sudy]

God is giving us the gift of his grace all of our lives… sometimes we throw it away but that doesn’t make the gift ungiven. God continues to offer this gift to us and we have to accept it and to use it.

Edit: you’ll notice it says ‘no one who remains in him’… he won’t lose us, but we can jump from his hands. Therefore he offers us his grace and we can return to him. If we accept his grace, he offers more grace and our faith can grow.

 

[oliver109]

So the priest in my scenario, is he too far gone? has he jumped out of Gods hands so much that God has decided to call the whistle and declare the game is finished?

 

[sudy]

We really can’t say as we can’t determine any particular person will be going to hell. We don’t know at what stage he died… if he died in the act of committing the mortal sin, we can suppose that he wasn’t quite ready to return to God. The thing is though, God knows us inside and out and will search the heart and mind. We certainly can’t and won’t declare that he will end up in hell, just that mortal sin itself leads to hell. We would entrust him to the mercy of God, as this is included in his funeral rites.

 

[Magnanimity]

humans are unable to make a decision, based on free will and sufficiently reasonable, such that the consequence of ‘hell’ is unjust.

I just don’t know about these exchanges that you and I have Gorgias. The amount of misunderstanding between us is so pervasive that it gives me the feeling of being “lost in translation.” That is, although I would assume two Catholics could have a rational, charitable and engaging discussion on this (or any) issue, that is not what I tend to see between us—rational, charitable engagement. I see pervasive misunderstanding and a desire to merely defend the “right” side of this issue.

The above is a case in point. Somehow you took all that I said regarding a particular human not choosing her own existence, her IQ, the socio-economic status of her family, nation that she’s born into, her physical-expression as a human (eg, beauty, strength)—which I combined with the innumerable influences upon us over the course of our lives: our parents, our teachers/professors, our local clergy, our Church, our close friends, our bosses, our co-workers and even the powers and principalities themselves that war against us behind the scenes, and the Fall itself—all to produce this rather entangled amalgamation that results in this or that particular human. This was what I desired to point out—the complexity of all of us. And this complexity undermines some cheap and easy view of human freewill that might suggest that we are absolutely free at any given moment to choose ‘x’ or ‘not-x.’

And somehow, by accident or by being lost in translation, you reduced all of the above to the mere simplistic statement of “You’re claiming that the Catholic Church teaches that humans are unable to make a decision.” I honestly don’t know how such a thing happens, how my points get reduced to tidy, little expressions that a simpleton might utter—>humans can’t make a decision. But that reduction is so far afield from my original point as for me to be left with the opinion that you and I are too often and too easily talking past each other. Something is apparently lost in translation. If you approach me with good faith and your motives are charitable, then something else must account for the pervasive misunderstandings. I don’t know what it is that causes it, but I don’t suppose it much matters. I don’t think that I am persistently misunderstood by many others here on CAF. So it strikes me as a bit mysterious.

I just had to get this off my chest Gorgias, since these are troubling occurrences that make real dialogue between any two people to be nearly impossible. In the off-chance that any benefit might come from responding to your other points, I’ll do so below.

 

[laylow]

I think some users are indebted to strictly recite and clarify what they believe to be the Church’s stance on whatever issue is being discussed. On a Catholic forum, I can’t say that anyone should be surprised in any way, although I do agree that the discourse many times appears to lack serious intellectual honesty.

It reminds a bit of watching debates where a fundamentalist will defend their position at any cost or against any logic…or do I dare say a bit Trumpian?

 

[Magnanimity]

Please identify what you think you’re citing. I’m not finding this in my ST.

It’s ST I.23.3, response to objection 1. (Incidentally, you and I have covered this exact ground before in a separate thread. As I recall, you simply attempted to deny the Thomistic teaching that God reprobates some.)

unless God unilaterally intervenes, without even our consent:

Even without your initial consent, as in all interventions here on Earth, many examples of which I have above. Yes, I take it to be self-evidently true that some people at times cannot realize what is in their own best interests, and this can be attributed to many things—habituation in vice, deliberate alteration of brain-states with chemicals, etc. Yes, intervention is sometimes necessary.

Did I say “absent”? Or… did I say “separated”? … She chose. He accepted. That’s an expression of love

This is another distinction that makes no difference. Humans are made for beatitude, it is their final end. And to love another is to will and work for her good, for her own sake, not because to will her good serves some further end. To hold Sarah perpetually in an existence of suffering and torment and being forever thwarted of her final end, is not to will her good for her own sake. It would be to allow Sarah to persist in ruin for the sake of “justice.”

This act by god would not be loving Sarah, since it shows no evidence of willing or working for her good. It may be to love justice, which perhaps is a good that this god is subservient to—a transcendent good that the god must serve, even to the utter ruin of his beloved creatures. You could substitute “choice” for justice here with the same results—“choice” itself is the transcendent good that the god is beholden to and must honor no matter what. He must give Sarah the consequences of her choice because choosing (along with justice) are apparently the supreme laws of the universe. This is the vision of god as critiqued in Plato’s Euthyphro, correct?

 

[SteelArchangel]

I suppose that’s my issue.

I can’t fathom dying, then facing Christ and being in his presence and then him asking me to repent one last time…and I have the nerve to refuse? I was under the impression that seeing him and all the glory behind him that you’d feel compelled to ask for forgiveness and not spurn him away.

 

[Hanna]

We have all the chance to repent only while we are still alive. When we die, we cannot repent anymore. We will already be subject to either eternal happiness, eternal punishment, or temporary suffering in purgatory. That is why we need to be always prepared because we don’t know the exact time of our death.

 

[Gorgias]

So the priest in my scenario, is he too far gone? has he jumped out of Gods hands so much that God has decided to call the whistle and declare the game is finished?

Of course not. But, it’s in his hands whether he turns away from sin or not.

Somehow you took all that I said regarding a particular human not choosing her own existence, her IQ, the socio-economic status of her family, nation that she’s born into, her physical-expression as a human (eg, beauty, strength)

I passed on remarking on that. Diversity of experience doesn’t equate to inability to will the good, which it seems is what you’re trying to assert.

And this complexity undermines some cheap and easy view of human freewill that might suggest that we are absolutely free at any given moment to choose ‘x’ or ‘not-x.’

Here’s the way the Church looks at it: if you’re capable of a free will choice, you’re responsible for the decision made and action taken – which means that, if the action is sinful, then you’re culpable for that sin. If it’s a grave sin, and you know that it’s a sin, then you’ve committed mortal sin. On the other hand, if you’re not capable of a free will choice, then if the act is sinful, you’re never culpable of mortal sin (it’s venial, at best).

Now, if you’re pointing to the latter case, then great. We’re in agreement: those unable to make a free will choice aren’t committing mortal sin. But, if you’re pointing to the former, and trying to assert that I was born with brown hair and you with blonde hair, and therefore, our ability to make free will choices is fundamentally different – such that our environment takes away our ability to make a free will choice – then I’d say that you’re mistaken.

somehow, by accident or by being lost in translation, you reduced all of the above to the mere simplistic statement of “You’re claiming that the Catholic Church teaches that humans are unable to make a decision.”

No – what you’re claiming, it seems, is that the Catholic Church’s teaching that we do possess free will sufficiently to make decisions is mistaken. You don’t think that’s what your argument is? Let’s see…

I gave example after example above of all the various influences both within yourself and outside of you that constantly impose themselves upon you and thereby make you less “free.”

Yep. There it is. You’re arguing against human freedom to choose (in this case, to choose virtue over vice). Am I misrepresenting your argument?