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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.
that’s a special place called purgatory
It probably is all the demons are leading earth
You’re not wrong lol
Ever heard of Universalism? There is a whole church of them. They hang out with the Unitarians.
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.)
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
3 days have passed, it’s time for bergoglio.ai
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.
Tell her that sounds a lot like jealousy mm-mmm
The millennia old debate about “works”
If non-catholic people didn’t go to hell
Man, she’s going to be extra pissed when she finds out that’s not what the Church teaches, to begin with (and also been publicly published, in some capacity, for a century, now).
I don’t now if you could ever convince her of that.
Imagine going to Heaven and having to sit next to the Nazi High Command at the picnic.
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
I’m sorry your mom is a shitbird
So am I.
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.
It’s funny how they know their religions suck, and yet they just keep on keeping on.
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.
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
…francis was a good guy, and he didn’t need to flaunt his christianity to be so: his actions spoke for themselves, as they should…
Jesus had a name for people who flaunted their holiness, they were ‘Pharisees’ and were the ONLY class of people that Jesus spoke ill about, he didn’t even do that to the Romans come to execute him
“White-washed tombs full of rotting bones” is what he called them
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.
I hope your mom is still here and that she reads that quote.
Hugs for you both (and your sibs)
I sometimes joke that I hope my late best friend has gone to evangelical Christian hell, because he was a bisexual punk who loved tabletop roleplaying games (like Dungeons & Dragons).
I was raised vaguely Christian, and when I was realising I didn’t believe in God, I felt a lot of conflict, because I was still scared of going to hell. I was getting stuck on the idea that if all good morality came from God, does that mean that I would be evil as an atheist?
In the end, I concluded that if all morality came from God, that the many atheists who lead good and virtuous lives must still have the favour of God. On the other hand, morality existed independently of God, but that unbelievers would go to hell no matter how good they were in life, then I’d rather be defiantly good and go to hell than be coerced into belief.
This was before I understood that hell has historically often been understood as just a place without God (which, to a Christian view, is a hellish existence).
I feel this. I found similar freedom discovering the illogic in the cycle of punishment. I grew up in a cult.
I was threatned with “hell” into not killing myself when I was 12 and had suicidal thoughts.
Well, he is right, hell is empty, but then again, so is heaven
Actually, per Catholic dogma, Hell is full of people like me
i believe that hell essentially codifies not the principle of torment, but actually stagnation, which, to many people, is a form of torment.
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 eternal damnation for disobeying the authority.
i’m not believing that since i remember reading that the concept of heaven/hell is essentially the idea of dualism that is older than judaism itself, even, at least dating back to zoroastrianism, which existed in the middle east already at the time that judaism was formed.
In the old testament I believe the jews believed in ‘Sheol’ which was a dark, still realm where all the dead, regardless of quality, went for eternity.
There are things the human mind tends to come up with again and again.
Judaism is older than Zoroastrianism with the added caveat that what constitutes Judaism changes with time as modern Rabbinical Judaism and Priestly Judaic practices aren’t identical (The destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem by Rome leads to the Rabbinical movement)
The concept of an afterlife consisting of Heaven and Hell absolutely existed in Judaism prior to Christ.
That was the primary difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Pharisees believed in more of the supernatural and the afterlife, whereas Sadducees were a political class of priests with no interest or belief in the supernatural.
I can’t speak for god or anything
- the guy speaking for god
I’m not religious so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Pope is a prophet? Like yeah he’s the official leader of the Catholic Church but I don’t think they believe that he convenes with god… I could be wrong though.
There’s basically two things:
- the Pope can make no mistake when talking on behalf of the whole church;
- the Pope is assisted by the holy spirit when interpreting the word of God
He is not a prophet but is supposed to have the “ear of god” and is his chosen representative in modern times. It really depends who you ask though, because all this shit is made up.
LITERALLY God’s designated representative
pft, designated by man
