HELL AND HOW TO AVOID IT WITH THE SSPX

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An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch

The thing about hell is, believing in it means taking the means to avoid it, by avoiding sin. And by avoiding sin you lead a much happier life on earth and an extremely happy life in heaven when you die, to boot. It's a win-win situation, is it not?

The other thing about hell is, it's for ever. And ever. And ever. About 40 women (and one Russian wolf hound) on retreat with the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) last week spent a fair amount of time dwelling on that, and on other somewhat less than charming aspects of eternal damnation. Not because the three beautiful, young, funny priests running the show thought the retreatants were in immediate danger of fire and brimstone, but to prepare them for a "general confession" i.e. all the sins of their past life. 

Hell was balanced with God, with His infinite goodness and lovableness as an even better reason for avoiding sin. At least one retreatant is boring friends and family with her repeated assertion that the decision to take this retreat was the best of her entire life. 

However: 

Modern Catholics live under the assumption that Hell is mostly empty, writes Eric Sammons for Crisis Magazine. But doing so radically impacts our ability to fulfill the Great Commission.

That is, in a word, to evangelise. But wait on - hasn't 'Pope Francis' cancelled evangelisation? 

His 2021 Epiphany video opens with a Catholic woman praying the Rosary. It swiftly switches to a Muslim woman with a hijab prostrating on her prayer mat and offering prayer to Allah. It then zooms in on a young Jew wearing a kippah and ṭallit and in the act of prayer.

"When we pray to God following Jesus, we come together as brothers and sisters with those who pray according to other cultures, other traditions and other beliefs," Francis declares in a voiceover.

In a glaring contradiction of the Epiphany message, the pope goes on to limit the gospel to Christians — implying through word and image that, while Christians have Jesus, people of other religions have equally valid paths to salvation. https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/popes-epiphany-video-amplifies-masonic-heresy

That would seem to be quintessential indifferentism. In other words, heresy. 

Francis wants us to unite with Anglicans - never mind same-sex marriage and women's ordination

Cardinal George Pell RIP wrote a few years ago about his evolving views on the question of how many will be saved. In the 1970s he subscribed to a broadly inclusivist view of salvation; as he put it, “I expressed the hope, perhaps expectation, that few would be consigned to hell.”

He was not alone. During the time following the Second Vatican Council (although the trend began before the Council), a movement arose within the Church to downplay any talk of Hell, and specifically to assume (and even affirm) that most people would end up in Heaven.

St Teresa of Avila and St Benedict Joseph Labre are just two of the saints who would have contradicted that '70s silliness.St. Benedict Joseph Labre reported having, when he was in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament,  a vision of eternity — and the vision turned grim. Afterwards, St. Benedict Joseph said, "I was watching souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist."

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was said to have been granted a similar vision in which she saw souls falling into hell "like snowflakes."https://prayforsouls.org/library/articles/horrors-hell-greatness-god 

The little shepherds of Fatima, Lucia (St) Jacinta and (St) Francisco, were also shown hell - by Our Lady herself: 

"We saw something like a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were the demons and the souls, as if they were red-hot coals, transparent and black or bronze-colored, with human forms, which floated about in the conflagration, borne by the flames which issued from it with clouds of smoke falling on all sides as sparks fall in great conflagrations without weight or equilibrium, among shrieks and groans of sorrow and despair that horrify and cause people to shudder with fear….

The devils were distinguished by horrible and loathsome forms of animals, frightful and unknown, but transparent like black coals that have turned red-hot."  https://catholicstand.com/fatima-and-hell/

Vatican II itself appears to support this movement (the belief that most people will end up in heaven - ed) by declaring “those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (Lumen Gentium 16).

While the council’s language leaves open the question of who qualifies under these conditions (what exactly does it mean to “sincerely seek God” if one is not baptized?), the assumption by the majority of theologians, pastors, and laypeople was that most qualify. Thus, all the circles of Hell were swept out, making the pit of eternal fire the destination of only the worst men in history. Essentially, Hell was the home of Hitler, Stalin, and a few others. But definitely not your Hindu neighbor or your fallen-away son-in-law.

This movement to empty Hell found its primary spokesman and theologian in Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wiirote the (in)famous book, Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, which argued that it was within the Christian’s purview to hope not only that your neighbor and son-in-law would make it to Heaven, but that in fact everyone would eventually be saved (yes, including Hitler and Stalin).

While some critics wrongly accused von Balthasar of the heresy of apocatastasis—the belief that all will (definitely) be saved—his belief that we can hope for this outcome surely moved the needle of the average Catholic’s view of how many will be saved. After all, if we can reasonably hope that all will be saved, then worst case scenario, surely most will be saved, right?

In recent years Bishop Robert Barron popularized von Balthasar’s teaching, making it more accessible to the Catholic world, and Barron’s own loose evangelization methods (such as saying Christ is the “privileged way” as opposed to the only Way and not encouraging Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, to convert when given the chance) have only strengthened the assumption among modern Catholics that most will be saved.

Yet in his article from 2020, Cardinal Pell reflects on the consequences of the inclusivist movement within the Church. As he notes, until the 20th century it was assumed by the vast majority of Catholic saints and theologians that most would not be saved; they believed that if one were not a baptized practicing Catholic one would almost definitely not be one day united to God in Heaven (yes, theologians would acknowledge the “loophole” of “baptism of desire,” but until the middle of the 20th century that was assumed to be a very rare occurrence). 

 

St Ignatius of Loyola evangelising (when Jesuits were Jesuits)

During those centuries of an exclusivist view of salvation the Church was driven to missionary work—she tirelessly evangelized the known world from the 1st century to the middle of the 20th. Further, Catholics were more diligent about receiving the Sacrament of Confession regularly, for fear that they would be one of the excluded on that final day.

Yet when the inclusivist viewpoint became predominant in the 1960s—and was essentially endorsed by Vatican II—missionary work crashed and participation in the Sacrament of Confession dramatically dropped, disappearing into the mists of history. Pell’s question is a fair one: aren’t all these things connected?

Of course they're connected! In the final analysis of course, all things are connected - our God is a God of simplicity - but forgetting eternal damnation and forgetting your own conversion (through confession) and the conversion of others (through missionary work) are more intimately connected than most.  

Pondering its consequences, he (Pell) came eventually to question the dominant inclusivist viewpoint in the Church.  

It’s important to note that the exclusivist vs. inclusivist divide isn’t exactly a theological debate as much as an attitude debate, although one’s attitude can impact his theology. For example, two men, Thomas and Robert, could both believe what the Church teaches about salvation—that there are three “baptisms” (water, blood, desire) that can lead to salvation. But they could have completely different attitudes about the practical application of the teaching.

Thomas could acknowledge that baptism of desire is possible, but assume that anyone who is not a practicing baptized Catholic is in serious (even likely) danger of damnation.

Robert could also recognize baptism of desire, but assume that most, if not all, unbaptized people fall into this category, and so most people will be saved in the end.

Our first assumption might be to think that we’d rather hang out at a party with Robert than with Thomas. But that’s because we picture those who believe Hell might be densely populated as dour, miserable (and miserable to be around) people. Yet consider a saint like Isaac Jogues: he believed many would likely go to Hell, but he was also filled with joy. Considering just about every saint before the 20th century operated under this assumption, we might want to rethink our assumptions about this viewpoint.

Further, don’t you think Thomas and Robert would act very differently, not only about the salvation of others, but also about their own salvation? Their conception of a “loving God” is likely quite different, and this would have significant implications to how they lived. Which, for example, would likely take sin more seriously and thus attend Confession more frequently? Which would be more likely to lead his loved ones to the Church?

Thus, two men with technically the same theology would live their Catholic Faith in radically different ways. And since how we live impacts what we believe, it would not be surprising to find years later that Robert is no longer practicing his faith at all. Why go to the trouble if he’s going to Heaven either way?

So does this mean that Catholics need to assume every non-Catholic (and non-practicing Catholic) is in serious danger of Hell? Dare we fear that most men be damned? 

Well, yes.

Before I elaborate, let me just acknowledge how discordant this sounds to our modern ears. I myself have always been an inclusivist at heart, even though I think being an exclusivist is the correct Catholic attitude. My natural inclination is to assume a heavenly destination for others, believing that they can’t be so bad that God would send them to Hell for all eternity.

Yet I keep coming back to the fact that this attitude is in the extreme minority when it comes to Catholics over the centuries. In the “democracy of the dead” it loses in a landslide. We have almost 1,960 years of the vast majority of Catholics—including the greatest and smartest and holiest saints and theologians—assuming only few will be saved vs. 60 years of mostly ill-formed Catholics believing the opposite. If I’m honest with myself, I have to acknowledge that my instinctive presuppositions are likely formed far more by modern culture than by the Catholic Faith.

Thus I would argue that Catholics should return to assuming the damnation of non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics. Yes, it’s possible for God to save them, but He gave no indication of how many such people would be saved, and He gave every indication that He wanted us to convert everyone to Catholicism. So our duty isn’t to speculate on the salvation of those outside the visible bounds of the Church, but instead to assume we must do all we can to bring them into those visible boundaries while here on earth.

Again, some might argue that such a “negative” attitude could lead a person to become condemnatory and harsh toward others. But I see it in the opposite fashion. Remember all the saints who had this attitude over the centuries and were filled with joy and love for their neighbors. If you know someone is trapped in a burning building, do you condemn him for being there, or do you do all you can to rescue him? If you have even a drop of compassion, you focus on getting him out of his dangerous situation rather than concern yourself with how he got there in the first place. (And conversely, if you erroneously think he is somehow fire-proof, you will do almost nothing to bring him out of the burning building, thus consigning him to a horrible fate.)

As Catholics we must trust in the justice and mercy of God when it comes to judgement. God will not make any mistakes when it comes to our eternal destination: everyone in Heaven will deserve to be there, and everyone in Hell will also deserve to be there. Whether the proportion of the former is greater or lesser than the proportion of the latter is not up to us.

But what is up to us is to do all we can to help our loved ones one day enter into the heavenly joys of union with God. Our Lord has made it clear that Catholicism is the path one should follow to make that happen, and we would do well to not only follow it ourselves, but urge others to do so as well.

Note: I dive deeply into the history of Catholic theology—and attitudes—regarding salvation in my book Deadly Indifference.

"Let us, therefore, foresake the vanity of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the word delivered to us from the beginning" - St Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr (January 26). .