A reader writes:
I'd like your take on something, if you please. I've heard many Christians (John Paul II among them, if memory serves) state that heaven and hell are states of being rather than actual geographic locations up in the sky and under the earth, and that everyone is in God's presence after death, but that the unsaved experience His presence as torment, while the saved experience it as joy. This seems to make sense since spiritual realities exist outside of space and time. Talk of "places" seems, well, misplaced. ;-)
On the other hand, we are taught that Jesus "ascended into heaven," indicating a place somewhere up in the sky, and that He "descended into hell," which indicates a place under the earth. We also read Him saying things like this: "Woe to you, Capernaum! Did you want to be lifted *up* to heaven? You will be thrown *down* to hell!"
So, is this somehow a case of both/and rather than either/or? Just something that I've been unable to resolve (Or is it even possible for our puny minds to resolve it?). Your input would be most appreciated.
Here is the relevant text of JPII’s remarks:
More than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: "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'".
The note on the translation of the Pope’s remarks says, “This suggests correctly that although hell is not essentially "a place," rather the definitive loss of God, confinement is included. Thus, after the general resurrection the bodies of the damned, being bodies not spirits, must be in "some place," in which they will receive the punishment of fire.”
What JPII is trying to get at is that the main punishment of hell is the loss of God (which includes the loss of the communion of saints), rather than the punishments of sense that hell also traditionally is understood to include. Our age—among both those who believe in hell and those who reject it—tends to think of hell primarily in terms of pains of sense and crude picture of people in a burning cave somewhere, not as the loss of God. (The proof of this is that JPII’s remarks were confusing to many believers and unbelievers instead of a humdrum restatement of what most people knew.) JPII aims to correct that wrong emphasis on the pains of hell by emphasizing that the main agony of hell is that the mortal sinner gets what he chooses: the loss of God forever. It’s the same thing that terrifies Dante: “Abandon hope all ye who enter”. John Paul does not aim to deny the resurrection of the body.
The reason it may seem to many post-moderns that he does aim to do this is that we tend to assume “spiritual” and “bodily” are opposites. It’s the same reason we are baffled by St. Paul when he speaks of the resurrection body as a “spiritual body”, which sounds to our ears like an “unmarried husband” or some other contradiction in terms. But when we think sacramentally, we find the contradiction disappears. The Word has been made flesh, so that we now encounter spiritual realities through earthly things. So earth has its place the economy of salvation. But because earthly realities are always secondary to spiritual realities they remain what JPII calls “penultimate” in relation to heaven:
In the context of Revelation, we know that the "heaven" or "happiness" in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.
It is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in describing these "ultimate realities" since their depiction is always unsatisfactory. Today, personalist language is better suited to describing the state of happiness and peace we will enjoy in our definitive communion with God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the Church's teaching on this truth: "By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has "opened' heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ" (n. 1026).
5. This final state, however, can be anticipated in some way today in sacramental life, whose centre is the Eucharist, and in the gift of self through fraternal charity. If we are able to enjoy properly the good things that the Lord showers upon us every day, we will already have begun to experience that joy and peace which one day will be completely ours. We know that on this earth everything is subject to limits, but the thought of the "ultimate" realities helps us to live better the "penultimate" realities. We know that as we pass through this world we are called to seek "the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Col 3:1), in order to be with him in the eschatological fulfilment, when the Spirit will fully reconcile with the Father "all things, whether on earth or in heaven" (Col 1:20).
Bottom line: the Incarnation and Resurrection make it impossible for the Church to “spiritualize” the gospel into something utterly non-corporeal, which is why JPII doesn’t attempt to do that. Rather, like a typical Catholic, JPII points us to visible, physical sacramental realities such as the Eucharist to remind us that the most important things about heaven and hell are union with God or rejection thereof. The most important facts do not, in the slightest, entail reject of the less important facts of the general resurrection when, as Jesus said, “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29). Nor does the existence of a new heaven jam packed with the redeemed entail in the slightest the rejection of a New Earth jam packed with the redeemed, nor a hell that does not include the pains of sense as well as the pain of the loss of God. How that will all play out, I don’t know, of course, and I pray that nobody wind up in hell as Our Lady instructed at Fatima and as the Church prays at every Mass for the salvation of all the world. But that, of course, is up to God and the free choices of human beings.
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Christian Order published an interesting and enlightening article on the topic of heaven being a place. Here’s a link: http://www.christianorder.com/features/features_2012/features_may12.html
Second to Veritas.I believe heaven and hell are both places and states of being. To emphasize only one is missing the total picture. Most agnostics and atheists don’t believe there is a God whose presence will be missed anyway. They picture themselves after death in bli
ssful harmony at one with the universe. We Catholics must continue to emphasize the punishment of confinement as depicted in Dante’s inferno. It may seem boring and pedantic to enlightened humanistic minds like ours, but not to warn them properly is tragic for their souls.
My theology teacher told us that the pain of sense in hell is actually almost a mercy, because it distracts from the overwhelming, unbearable, eternal pain of loss. An interesting idea.
Didn’t our Lady of Fatima show the children a vision of hell. It was described that souls were falling into hell like leaves falling of a tree
Hugh G.
Hugh, I understand the vision as human souls floating like embers in a sea of fire with demons looking like disfigured animals tormenting the human souls in the inferno. I think hell is a place and a state of being and should be discussed like That Hat Lady suggests because it might scare some people into seeking the Truth and to repent. I don’t think it’s a lie doing so anyway. Imperfect contrition is better than no contrition. And as Maggie suggests, it seems that being sent to hell may very well be the last merciful act a person may receive from God before total seperation. How else can a soul survive eternally without the grace, relationship and presence of God and in the presence of the devil and his demons? Thank you Mark Shea for writing this. If you had not quoted blessed JPII I would not have read it. I guess, if L’Osservatore Romano and EWTN had not published the catechesis by Blessed JPII you would not have wrote it either. Praise God! For He is Merciful! That’s one of the reasons He gave us Purgatory.
Regarding visionaries’ visions of people falling into hell, let’s remember Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s commentary (in Documents [of the CDF] regarding “The Message of Fatima”, June 26, 2000) on the message of Fatima, commentary indicating that the images which the Fatima seers and/or other seers saw of hell, etc., were by no means photographic representations, but were only symbolic, influenced largely by the seers’ own mental images, derived perhaps from “holy pictures” they had seen.
What, then, is the urgency of such visions of hell? Their urgency, it seems to me, is this: However few other humans may end up in hell, I myself will end up there (with demons pushing me around, to boot) if I obstinately refuse to love others as well as myself in accord with God’s commands (and at the same stroke, in accord with my own deepest God-given inclination, what Thomas Aquinas termed the “essential direction or order of the [human] will”).
After decades of thought,research & study I truly believe in the creation & existance of both heaven & hell in fact & in form.IF in the event they were not a reality,it would seem out of character for their names to be refered to so many times by all the characters within the Holy Scriptures especially our heavenly Father & His only Son.
I’ve witnessed no reference towards either place as being a metaphor to my mind, but of course this is in the eye of the beholder & reader I suppose.Again we are taught that God is perfect in every way & we also know that God doesn’t make idle statements OR threats to the human race or thru His Son Jesus Christ,so based upon these accepted concepts I find it completely unacceptable for one to believe heaven & hell are not real places with their locations yet to be announced by The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! To God’s Elect,I can think of no greater sorrow or pain than to be completely seperated from Him for eternity.
Lastly,as God’s faithful followers we are asked to accept the existance of a God & His Son we cannot see so the acceptance of a real hell & heaven should not be too great a leap of faith for most of us now would it? Amen “Laus Deo”
I don’t think Cardinal Ratzinger meant to say that children’s visions were a product of their own imaginations. The vision of hell was, after all, on the the 3 secrets of Fatima. Mary could have spared the seers much fear (they were only children) by describing things in more philosophical terms. But she didn’t. Bottom line, we don’t know how accurate the fiery cave images are. They may be quite accurate.
“Man cannot stand alone. If man (and this is the true nature of sin) refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to “be like God”, standing alone on his own two feet, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death. If a state of isolation were to arise that was so deep that no “You” could reach into it anymore, then we should have a total and terrifying loneliness; this is what theology calls “Hell”...a loneliness which is as inescapable as it is dreadful!”
Professor Ratzinger
Introduction to Christianity
How can the floor of hell be covered with the skulls of bishops if it is not a place?
Ben,
That was a totally pathetic explanation of hell from Fr. Ratzinger. That is probably the worst explanation of hell that I have ever heard. Stick with the old catechisms and avoid all of the modern garbage, such as the quote you provided from Fr. Ratinger. By the way, at the end of that horrible book he denies the resurrection of the body. He then says it is only a “resurrection of the person”. He also says that the heretic “Teilhard De Chardin was on the whole correct” in that same book. If you are smart, you will throw that book in the trash. It is a weapon of mass destruction for the Faith.
And another combox self-appointed bishop and inquisitor appoints himself Pope. I wonder how many reactionary dissenters think the truth will die with them?
@Veritas,
Did you actually read the whole book? Since our finite minds cannot grasp the afterlife perfectly, I see Fr. Ratzinger’s description from the 1960’s as ONE very good way to explain it, and sorry, I think I’ll keep the book and all my notes. Be not afraid my friend.
As much as this topic on the Pope’s first book as a middle age priest and another Pope’s speculation on the afterlife might intrigue people we got a more serious and pressing problem in the USA involving coming persecution from the federal government possibly. Here is what it is (I heard it first on EWTN radio this afternoon) and saw it on a more traditional and conservative blog site. A petition is being circulated on Whitehouse.gov to actually call the Catholic Church a “Hate Group” based on the Pope’s remarks before Christmas on the state of Marriage and the efforts to try to redefine it with so called same sex marriage. As a matter of Fact the Pope did not actually mention homosexuals in that address. Please forget about John Paul and Benedict’s past views on things like that and concentrate on the persecution are facing RIGHT NOW!
With all due respect, Joanie, you have things exactly backwards: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; * yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4-5)
Doesn’t mean you don’t fight for justice against an unjust culture. But it does mean you keep your priorities straight. Heaven and hell are *vastly* more important than this stupid petition.
When I read about hell I find lots of people saying that John Paul II contradicted what Lucia and the other two visionaries said about the vision of hell they and what the prayer of Fatima states. I remember once hearing a person talking about the apparitions of Fatima and this contradiction. He said that Sister Lucia, when was asked about this she said: The Virgin Maria was not particularly referring to the hell that comes when we do not died in God’s grace, but she said no more. Going for a trip in the wee hours of the day, I happened to pass by a sort of disco. It was five o’clock in the morning and I saw these adolescents and young adults coming out of it, still drunk or stunned, who had been there perhaps from late night on the previous Friday and the whole Saturday and Sunday, dressed in deep black clothes I said to myself; this is the hell Our Lady of Fatima was talking about. When Mother Angelica once talked about these people and others she said that the devil was on the loose: People stay awaken at night and go to sleep during at daylight, dress in the most outlandish, bizarre, slovenly and tacky, even for going to church. People claim for freedom and freedom is abortion, drugs, alcohol, do what I want; men want to be women and women men; you name it. People are fleeing from churches and running to malls which are the new cathedrals of the World today in pursuit of the happiness that only Christ can give, finding only despair. People are being driving away from God and are taken to this hell, hell on earth and later into the definitive hell from where there is no return. People are clamming for happiness and the devil cheat on them and the end they are in hell on Earth. They deeply suffer there. I am sorry I cannot express myself more clearly, but English is not my native language.
Karl.
Ben,
Yes, I have read that horrible book, which is why I responded the way I did. The books is a cesspool of heresies. It was originally banned in one diocese (I’d have to look up which one), because of its Modernist and heretical content. The books comes from a series of talks that were arranged by the heretic Hans Kung - Fr. Ratzinger’s friend. The talks were then published in a book. Since the book purports to be an explanation of the Creed, and since Catechisms are also an explanation of the Creed, you can read that book right along with a Catechism. That makes it easy to contrast the errors in the book with what the Church actually teaches. When I did that, I used the Catechism of Trent, which is available online.
Mark,
I spoke with a vey solid preist about the section of the book in which he denies the resurrection of the body. The priest was hesitant to believe what I was saying. Therefore, I scanned it and sent the entire section to him. He read it and was as shocked as I was. I would be happy to e-mail you the pdf that I sent to the priest. Or, you can just bury your head in the sand and blame me for pointing out the obvious. I expect that you’ll do the latter. It is much easier to ignore the evidence and attack the messenger when the evidnece itself is so troubling.
Amen, Mark!
The question raised in the original post is “if hell is not a place, then how did Christ descend into it”? But “descent” is simply to go from something higher to something lower, and “lower” and “higher” have more than one literal sense. It’s not a metaphor to say that a man descends from his ancestors or a society descends into violence. To go from heaven to hell is to go from something higher to something lower, but there is more than one way to do this than just by changing places.
That Bag Lady says that atheists and agnostics believe that after death they’ll enter a state of blissful oneness with the universe, but while that’s true of many ‘folk atheists’ who don’t think about the thing very much, it’s strictly speaking a view more appropriate to pantheism than to true atheism. I suspect it’s fairly common in cultures like the US, which seems to. Retain a much stronger foundation of popular Christianity than here in Britain. Among my peers, at least - that is, rather ‘intellectual’ British young people - the idea of any kind of continuing existence after physical death is regarded as bizarre and laughable.
And while the kind of aggressive, even threatening outreach she proposes may well be successful in recalling people who are still basically culturally Christian to their religious duties, I can’t see it working in a more dechristianised society. Threats of eternal damnation are likely to have little effect on those for whom the default position is eternal extinction. They didn’t convert the Roman Empire and they won’t convert modern Europe.
veritas:
Your “reasoning” boils down to “I decided I was holier and smarter than the Pope. I talked to some nameless (SSPX?) priest who told me what my itching ears wanted to hear. Case closed.” Welcome to Protestantism with smells and bells.
Hi, Bob—you wrote: “How can the floor of hell be covered with the skulls of bishops if it is not a place?”
Well, shouldn’t we first ask how the floor of hell can be covered with *anyone’s* skull before the Resurrection of the Body at the Final Judgement?
I think that’s what JPII was getting at in his quote above—hell must be “more than a place” if the *souls* of the damned are “confined” there, since the soul is noncorporeal and since “place” necessarily connotes the location of something “material” rather than spiritual. Notice he doesn’t say it’s *not* a place, per se, but that it’s “more than” a place.
God bless,
Deacon JR
Mark,
It wasn’t an SSPX priest. It was an FSSP priest. And it is not about personal holiness or who is smarter. It is about a basic teaching of the Faith (the resurrection of the actual physical body) that can be found in any Catechism. I understand that some people (you?) have a real hard time dealing with difficulties such as this, and therefore choose to shoot the messenger rather than facing reality. But if you have the courage to read the information, I will be more than happy to send you a scanned copy of the section of the book - the same pdf that I send to the Priest. But I doubt you have the courage to do so, because if you do, you won’t be able to blame me for what he wrote. You will be face to face with a reality that you will not be able to handle.
Hopefully I am wrong. Here’s the e-mail address: cathquestion@aol.com
Veritas:
The man is on record, countless times, affirming the Resurrection of the Body. He is a smart, faithful, fine theologian who has led the charge for an intelligent, nuance, *orthodox* reading of Scripture. So which is more likely? That he made a point you and your nameless priest misunderstand, or that you have found the one passage in the massive corpus of his works where he comes out and inexplicably denies everything else he has ever said about the resurrection of the body and you and your friend—alone—have caught him in his nefarious heresy. Grow some perspective.
There is no “body” in heaven. That’s why we have Theology of the Body here on earth.
I’m sure none of this was meant to be doctrinally binding on th eFaithful. Just another source for confusion. Nothing new.
Gerard:
“We believe in the resurrection of the body”. Jesus has—and we shall have—a risen and glorified body in heaven.
Kathryn:
None of this is new. Only the fact that Catholics are ignorant of their faith makes it seem new or confusing. Learn your faith and you won’t have to talk as though the Pope is at fault for “confusing” you by teaching you what it means.
Not to mention that when it is promised to St.Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” by Our Lord, the same is an efficacious divine prayer that keeps all his Successors secure in the faith. Pope Benedict XVI is there refuting the claim that bodies only return to natural life - like Lazarus did - at the Resurrection. That is false, in particular it denies the altogether supernatural properties of the Resurrected body as Christ had such as impassibility etc. Quoting St.Paul, who himself had an encounter with the Resurrected Christ, the Pope says, he was drawn to the powerful realization that “flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God”, “this perishable must put on imperishable” etc, he stresses that this immortality is in no way a natural characteristic but is something given immediately and supernaturally by God at the Resurrection.
Deacon JR. Actually, I was only quoting St. John Chrysostom. On the other hand, if what you say were true, how could our Blessed Mother show the Fatima children, a vision of hell?
May the Two Hearts bless you
Some thoughts:
1. Both Matthew’s gospel (Ch 25:31-46) and Luke’s gospel (Ch 16:19-31) record parables of Jesus telling about decisions that will send some individuals to Hell.
2. Dante’s Divine Comedy includes graphic descriptions of his 13th-14th Century understanding of appropriate “punishment fits the crime” for various levels of sin. Note that Dante judged that the actions and lives of some bishops and popes of his time would send them to eternal punishment.
3. No one gets to Hell by accident. By the same token, we should NOT presume on God’s mercy.
TeaPot562
Veritas:
You are aware that the semi-schimatic group FSSP has it’s origins in the SSPX, aren’t you?
OK, but hell is in fact a place with physical or sensual torment as well as separation from God, is it not? Whatever the “main” punishment of hell is, the fact is that it includes both. True or false? This phrasing you use, the physical torments being something hell “is also something Hell is traditionally understood to include,” is a little confusing. Do you mean Catholics traditionally understand it that way?
You are aware that the semi-schimatic group FSSP has it’s origins in the SSPX, aren’t you?
Whoa, there. Don’t look to me to defend Veritas’ claims regarding his readings, but bearing false witness is a sin. The FSSP broke from the SSPX because they wanted to be in union with Rome. There is NOTHING “semi-schismatic” about it. They are a Clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right. There’s nothing schismatic, semi- or otherwise, about that.
Hi, Bob—I recommend doing a little digging on the “Chrysostom” saying—don’t think you’ll find an authentic source for it coming from him. In any case, some iterations of it have to do with the “road to hell” rather than the “floor of hell”—it’s clearly not a saying that undoes the obvious truth that the span between the “particular judgement” of the soul at death and the “final judgement” involves the noncorporeal soul existing in whatever “state” of heaven, hell, purgatory, that corresponds to the “place” that the body-soul will be “in” forever after the final judgement. Hope you see what I’m getting at. God bless, JR
Deacon JR: I can’t prove the authenticity of the quote, but I will stand on the validity of the vision of hell given to the children at Fatima. I do understand what you are saying, but there is still a great deal of speculation in what you say as well. After retiring from an Air Force career in 1967, I began a writing career became a very active member of The Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima for about 30 years, until age and crippling arthritis became a factor. The Fatima message has never been more important than it is now. The peace the Mother of God promised if the world would do what she asked is no closer than it was in 1917. The world is well on the path to certain destruction, and the future if our nation has never been so bleak. Hope is possible only if the Son of god we seek.
I began a writing career and became… Sorry about the omission.
Veritas,
I just re-read the section from Introduction to Christianity on the resurrection of the body. I think you may have missed his point.
What then-Fr. Ratzinger denies is not the resurrection of the body, but the Greek concept of man as “composed of two intrinsically alien substances, one of which (the body) perishes, while the other (the soul) is in itself imperishable ....” In contrast, Fr. Ratzinger points out: “The biblical train of though, on the other hand, presupposes the undivided unity of man; for example, Scripture contains no word denoting only the body (separated and distinguished from the soul) .... The awakening of the dead (not of bodies!) of which Scripture speaks is thus concerned with the salvation of the one, undivided man, not ust with the fate of one (so far as possible secondary) half of man.”
What is professed by Fr. Ratzinger, then, is the resurrection of the complete man, body and soul—not “merely” the body. Hardly a heretical thought.
What does “semi-schismatic” mean anyway? Surely you either are or you aren’t.
Bad Person:
Ironically, what you say is truer about the first generation of SSPX priests than the latest. You won’t find any bad mouthing the SSPX and many hold the founder in High regard. Listen to Fr. Rippenger say emphatically that they are NOT in schism
From Fr. Ratzinger’s assertion as quoted in a comment shortly above, that “Scripture contains no word denoting only the body (separated and distinguished from the soul)”, the interesting semantic conclusion seems to follow that in Scripture, the word *body/corpus/sôma* usually refers to the embodied soul itself, somewhat as the word *fist* means “clenched hand”.
In other words, as H2O when frozen is *ice*, and H2O when vaporized is *steam*, and a hand when clenched is a *fist*: so a soul when enfleshed would be a *body*.
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