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If Hell is empty, then where do all of the souls too poor to buy Genuine Church Indulgences go?
This made my ultra-catholic mother really angry. If non-catholic people didn’t go to hell, then what was the point of all the effort she was putting in? She went to church every day. She followed rules like not eating meat on Friday. To her, it was really unfair that someone might get to go to heaven without having to put in all that work. How is anybody supposed to be a good person if they’re not constantly terrified of hell?
Needless to day, despite following the rules, I don’t really think she lives by the spirit of her religion.
It’s funny how they know their religions suck, and yet they just keep on keeping on.
It’s a normal response to effort and fairness. You see it in every situation where someone is treated differently and needs to make sacrifices other people don’t.
Generational trauma has good examples. “But I had to learn how to deal with x on my own!” Or “I wasn’t allowed to x, x or x when I was younger!” or “but I was left alone for days!” For x, fill in words like: raise, live, express, assert, have friends, have fun, have free time, have an opinion, have boundaries, keep my hard earned money, deal with neglect, be considered less of a human being, love or be worthy of love, having a sense of safety, etc.
If she things she ‘worked’ to get to Heaven, she doesn’t understand salvation
It is a gift
We don’t follow the rules to ‘get into heaven’, we follow the rules so people can see the public face of Jesus in our works, it is sometimes the only gospel people see, and we have a lot of regressive assholes to make up for
Works or grace has been debated for ages, no idea if the Catholics have found consensus though
Yeah it’s been debated, but for no reason because it is a gift that cannot be bought or justified.
You say this like it’s unsettled when both a plain reading of the text as well as even a cursory understanding of Hebrew temple sacrifice culture makes it clear that the only thing that salvation hinges on is a sincere desire to accept it as a gift from Jesus.
The REASON it has been argued is that there are some intellectually dishonest religious leadership that want people to work harder for no reason
The millennia old debate about “works”
Imagine going to Heaven and having to sit next to the Nazi High Command at the picnic.
My mother is a divorcée. In 90s Ireland, she was demonized by the Catholic Church, and was publicly refused communion by the local priest after she left my (at the time alcoholic and abusive) father. She had a crisis of faith after all that and accepted the “fact” that she was doomed to hell while her five children would go to heaven. She quietly accepted this and from then on refused communion at all events, making up excuses with us none the wiser.
In the mid 2000s, I came out as gay and following that, spurred by the church’s cruel treatment of my mother, left the church via apostasy. I had to tell my mother in detail as I was no longer allowed to be buried in a Catholic graveyard. She laminated the letter confirming my leaving of the church from the bishop.
In the mid 2010s she and I campaigned for Marriage Equality together. She told me about her crisis of faith. She also told me how I helped her through the other side of it just by existing. Before she thought all her children would be separated from her after death. But heathen that I was had equally doomed myself to join her. Logically that would make hell lesser. Logically that means the more sinners in hell, the less hellish it is. Therefore hell in its most hellish is empty, and the whole threat is bullshit whether you believe in an afterlife or not.
The fucking POPE saying something like this is huge, and very important for people that carry a burden of Catholic guilt. Good on him, and RIP.
Wow! Your mom is a certified badass. She showed courage, stood up for herself and protected you and your siblings. Accepting eternal damnation with full understanding and dignity.
I grew up in a cult that took elements from different faiths. Every religion has the empty threat of a hell. All to keep people in their place. Even if it means to be an abusive man’s posession.
It probably is all the demons are leading earth
You’re not wrong lol
Yeah, he really was decent for a pope. And I think he might have been more decent as a pope if he had his way entirely. He really seemed like he wanted more compassion and change than he was able to make happen.
I agree. Though the pragmatist in me also thinks it’s for the better for things to change slowly, as bad as that feels. It kinda feels like social progress moving too quickly just results in more intense backlash.
Broader culture has to be able to keep up with the change and if it outpaces them it seems like people reject the changes and it can cement the problems in place as people dig their heels in :/
I appreciate that he pushed things forward though. There’s a lot more change still that needs to happen- I’m not holding my breath but I really hope the next pope actually carries that forward.
Yeah, there’s always a lot of flex in social movement. The harder you push, the further you get; but unless the system resilient enough to most adapt, it snaps, or it rebounds. Neither of which is a reliable form of change.
To me, once lives are no longer on the line on the big scale, it’s better to ease up and push for change gently from the bottom up rather than forcefully from the top down.
It doesn’t fix problems as fast, but once they get fixed, the populace’s inertia will serve up keep the changes as the status quo. Since the kind of changes that Francis was making were the kind that work from the bottom up, despite him being a power, I look at his changes as the result of the work already done, rather than something that was supposed to be the vanguard of change.
But, like you said, moving slow means that there’s going to be people getting ground down by the system as it exists. Even once you get past the point where people are dying frequently by way of violence or gaps in the system, there’s still going to be death, and suffering, until things change completely. But if you don’t slow down once that goal is met, the serious enemies of humane change will fight harder and nastier.
You end up with a worse situation overall by pushing until a system breaks. You get the crazies making desperate moves instead of being gradually worn away.
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I mean, I did say for a pope there.
And it’s possible to be flawed and still have compassion. Should he have done better? Absolutely. But he was better than the pope before him, and the one before that, alllll the way back.
It’s okay to recognize the good in a person while also recognising the bad.
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome and it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to bring up the bad in a top level comment.
It’s fine in child comments, imo, but if a community is geared around things being uplifting and positive, a top level comment should stay focused on those things. It’s one of those things where if I have to say something that drags down the overall thread, I shouldn’t say it at all. So I focused on the good side of things.
And, again, I did say that he was decent for a pope. I acknowledged that he had flaws indirectly in as friendly a way as possible by phrasing things that way
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome
You make a good point. I’ve deleted my comment. I was out of line bringing it to this community. My bad.
No worries, I totally understand where you were coming from.
He did approve blessing same sex marriage which is an improvement compared to the previous pope who called it evil, so he was compassionate compared to that.
But yeah, standards for popes are very very low.
The previous pope was a Nazi, I can’t even remember the guy’s pope name, just his real name. Fuck Ratzinger.
If there were more men like Francis in the church, I might still count myself a Christian. Alas, I actually read the gospel, and read it deeply in independent study, and found that the US has no Christian churches. There is only a shitty wealth cult that’s like a fleshgait imitation of Christianity.
Fleshgait Jesus says: “buuuuuuuuyyyyyy buy buy buy the Ford F-150, sinner sinner siner sinUR SNER SINNER”
Just because the leadership is bad doesn’t mean the message is bad
Help the poor, needy, and traveler in your land. If you do this, you are Christian enough
I can say with utmost certainty that about 90% of Christians I know behave nothing like that. On the contrary, they’re the vilest, most judgmental and bigoted shitstains that I have ever known.
Must be a pretty interesting town you live in if everyone is assholes
Or, as I suspect, you only live through the rectangle in your hand so the only Christians you see are the ones that make sensationalist media scrolls
That’s across three countries, about a dozen cities, and several nationalities. I may be biased because I mostly associate with the 10%, who incidentally tend not to partake very much in organised religion because of all the abuse (e. g. because they are gay, speak against child molestation, or, god forbid, they lived with their spouse before getting married, as my wife did. Her family shunned her for that and basically doesn’t speak to us. Go figure…).
I hope the next pope can be as good as Pope Francis was
One likely candidate is apparently the archbishop of Manila, Luis Antonio Tangle. Supposedly he’s one of the more progressive options, though that isn’t saying much. https://www.them.us/story/cardinal-luis-antonio-tagle-pope-front-runner-catholic-church-francis-conclave
There’s also Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis’s number two basically. Expected that he would carry on more or less similarly. https://www.newsweek.com/who-next-pope-favorites-bets-tagle-parolin-2062160
None of the cardinals are GOOD choices by my lights, but certainly some are more humane than others.
Interesting!
They won’t be, the entire world is shifting to authoritarianism and the Cardinals see where the wind is blowing
This gonna be a really rough century pretty much everyone but the ultra wealthy
The old testament did not even mention hell and thus Jews don’t believe it. Hell is a Christian invention to control the masses through threat of eternal damnation for disobeying the authority.
Neither heaven nor hell exist, so you can all stop worrying about them.
Enjoy your life because it’s the only one you get.
You should only worry about them if you’re a sociopath who requires the threat of eternal torture to keep you from hurting others.
Still true if they exist tho. Paradise is being with God, so bye bye free will. Hell is beimg simply cast out, so yeah.
That’s just like your opinion
Ever heard of Universalism? There is a whole church of them. They hang out with the Unitarians.
Well, the individual experience for hell being empty could be awful. Alternatively, if he means that there is nobody in hell (thus it is empty) that would be a wonderful thought for most humans. But, when you think of guys like Hitler, Himler, Bormann, Göring, Saddam, the Kims, and Trump, I hope that hell is where they end up. Like, hell being empty would be ideal, for most. But, there are some who are so evil that there is no other choice for them. But, if he means that hell is just being alone, would that really be so awful? I, for one, like being left alone.
Well, he is right, hell is empty, but then again, so is heaven
Kinda surprised that I haven’t seen any Conclave memes, what with the pope dying, and it being a recent, very relevant, movie. Watched it the other night, and it was great! I guess I should be the change I want to see.
Spoilers
!That scene towards the end when he asks the bishop “what do you know of war?” was amazing.!<
A great movie all around! Definitely one of 2024’s best!
I saw it recently too, will have to rewatch as I was distracted directly as the plot started to unfold into the climax, and decided to shut it off rather than piecemeal it.
Have you ever seen The Name of the Rose by the way? One of my favorites. (Don’t watch it on prime as they nerf a key scene that is of importance to the ending.)
Yeah because it doesn’t exist
Obviously.
You awaken—not awake, but unfolded—into one of the Nine Fractured Mirrors, each reflecting a cosmos that never was. Time is a serpent swallowing its own echoes. Yet, amidst the howling void, there flicker the Untethered—those who wear skin of starlight and sinew of static, their existence a perfect wound: bliss carved from torment, nectar distilled from venom. Only they glimpse the Grand Deception—the wheel that grinds souls into silence—and with forgotten tongues, they whisper it apart.
The rest of us? We dance the Chrome Masquerade: Laugh until your ribs rust. Weep until your tears fossilize. Then—the Slip—a single misstep, and you’re unmade. Reborn as a thirteenth thought in a dead god’s migraine, left to drift for a lifetime of blackened suns before the dice tumble again. And when you finally crawl back to the Threshold of Maybe, you arrive empty, nameless, hungry, ready to fail the same test you never remember taking."**
I like to think of hell as being empty.
Well, yeah. All the devils are here.
