"If you take hell out of that equation, if any religion officially took hell out of the equation, then you would, in a psychological, maybe even a realistic sense, you would eliminate one of the greatest deterrents to living a moral and just life that there is in religious life today. If it makes no difference, if there is no eternal life, if there is no heaven, if there is no hell, then what difference does it make what you do in your life?"
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” — Aleister Crowley
Free Will without consequences? Without Hell, I’m not sure there’s any reason to use restraint in life.
And Christ would have died for nothing.
, the Vatican then began an immediate race to correct this and to suggest the pope was not saying this officially as pope.
Why do other people have to “scramble” to “correct” the Pope?
After all HE IS THE POPE, shouldn’t HE ( emphasis ) be the one providing guidance on Catholic faith and practice?
LET HIM SPEAK AND CLARIFY instead of outsourcing the job to others. Otherwise, what’s he good for?
If this sounds murky, well, it IS murky.
Here's how it fits this situation. I think Bergoglio is stealthily putting doctrinal deviations out there in rudimentary form (call them "heresy seeds") to see how they'll play out, to gauge people's reactions, to plant little parasitic worms of doubt.
To change the metaphor, he thinks it's more effective to plant a lot of hidden depth charges now, which will slowly play out later, than to straight-out try to officially change a doctrine ("There is no hell") which would provoke a strong immune reaction and cause outrage throughout the Church.
Because there is not one Pope nor one Canonized Saint over the past 2,000 years who would agree with "There is no Hell."
But if he can immunize people with these tiny pin-pricks of doubt, if he can simply insinuate something and then half-deny it, and then re-assert it (again in an unofficial and equivocating way), he figures that in time people will be desensitized, and the heresy will become first, non-shocking, then non-surprising, then somehow ho-hum and mainstream, just another theological opinion. In time.
I trust I have made myself sufficiently obscure.
It's insidious. Deviltry, really.
Umm . . . Jews don't believe in Hell
But... He's the Pope. EVERYTHING he says he says as the Pope. He gave up his right to express "personal opinions" regarding religious matters when he accepted the position.
It’s not a very far leap to ——: If God does not exist then all is permitted ( including perhaps this pope—? ( along with nazism/ communism/Muslim terrorism/ obama/ HilLIARy/ sorozNazi/ BLM/ OWS, pelousy/ and all the rest of the leftist dictator- wannabes). Dostoevsky
The heresy of Liberation Theology has morphed itself into Snowflake Theology.
What did he actually say?
My understanding is that he was quoted by someone who doesn’t take notes or recordings of what was actually said. Is there any independent confirmation of what he said?
I’m not catholic, but I’ve never seen someone misquoted and taken out of context as much as this pope. I long ago quit following the stories on this pope, because it takes to much time to dig to the bottom. And frankly, it’s a catholic problem.
The great news about popes is that they’re completely replaceable.
Maybe Bergoglia takes a tumble down the altar stairs. Maybe he falls off the balcony. Maybe the brakes fail on the popemobile.
There must be somebody close to the pope that can make that happen.
Whereas I don't dispute that there is a hell, and I do believe in eternal life, I don't think avoiding hell or living forever should be what ultimately motivates us to do good, and to do the right thing. If it's all about 'winning the prize' or 'avoiding punishment', we are just doing what we do for our own sake. Christ didn't need to die on the cross to save his own soul. He didn't need to die on the cross to avoid hell. He sacrificed for us, because of love and because it is what he believed was right. At the very least we should do good things because good things are good. If when I die there is no afterlife, at least I will have tried to live my life in a way that means something - and not waste this gift of life, even though I've made so many mistakes and failed to do the right things along the way.
That said, I have often wondered about how a lack of belief in an afterlife affects your actions in this one. For those who believe this is all there is to their lives, and that there will be no more after they die, a focus on making ones life more comfortable in this world could definitely lead to being a bit more selfish and willing to fight for worldly things, like wealth and power.
It's a fundamentally important contributor to how you see life.