Tough teachings : Hell

In today's Gospel reading, we read about the despair of the rich man who ends up spending eternity apart from God:

The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me.
Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
for I am suffering torment in these flames.'
Abraham replied,
‘My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime
while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;
but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go
from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’
He said, ‘Then I beg you, father,
send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers,
so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.'
But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them listen to them.’
He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham,
but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’”  (Luke 16:22-31)

The existence of hell is another teaching of the Catholic Church that many today find difficult to accept.  What is hell?  Why do we believe hell exists? Why would a good God send anyone to hell?

1) What is hell?  The Catechism, in paragraph 1033, defines hell as the "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed."   Hell is not necessarily a place; it is rather, a state of being.  It is a state of being permanently separated from all that is good.  We are permanently separated from God.  We are permanently separated from our loved ones.  We are permanently separated from our friends.  We are permanently separated from the Church.  We are permanently separated from heaven. We are permanently separated from all faith, hope, and love. We are permanently separated from food to quench our hunger, and water to quench our thirst.  We are permanently separated from all truth and beauty; there will no more great scientific or moral discoveries for the damned, nor any more beautiful scenery or works of art. 
Do not let certain popular hymns, like Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young", which infer hell is a place where "sinners cry together", warm you up to the possibility that hell is anything but awful.  There is no communion at all in hell, even with the other people in there.  It is all solitude and even worse regret, knowing we could have done something to prevent our being there, and despair, knowing there is nothing we can to do to change our state, and therefore, we will be there forever.
The torture of hell is so beyond what words can describe.  Imagine never being able to see your children or parents ever again.   Imagine never being able to be happy again.  And the worst part of all about being in this unfathomable state is that you realize your being there is all your fault, and it was totally within your power to avoid.  Now you regret it, but cannot do anything about it ever, and you despair.
  
Saint Alphonsus Ligouri classifies three specific "remorses of the damned."

1) Remorse arising from the thought of the little which he required to do in order to save his soul.
2) Remorse, arising from the remembrance of the trifles for which he lost his soul.
3) Remorse, arising from the knowledge of the great good which he has lost through his own fault.

I urge you to google his sermon on hell and read in more detail each of these.  Bottom line, you can see the pain of knowing how easily we could have obtained salvation will haunt us forever if we wind up in hell.  

Why do we believe hell exists?  Well, for one thing, Our Lord mentioned it often.   Matthew 25:41-46 (where those who did not give food or drink to the poor are told they did not give to Christ and are therefore condemned) is one place.  Others include Matthew 5:22, 29, 13:41-42, 50, 25:41 and of course, the passage from Luke above. 
Another reason we believe is that the possibility of a hell is a necessity if we believe in human freedom.  God wishes us to love him, other people, and all creation freely, not out of coercion.  He created the world freely, and out of love, not out of any external compulsion to do so.  Therefore, if man is indeed created in God's image and likeness, he (man), too, must be free, and cannot be compelled to do anything by anything outside himself.  He is free to choose how he lives his life both now, and for all eternity.  Therefore, the possibility of choosing not to love God, not to love neighbor, and not to love creation has to exist, and therefore, so must a place or state exist where one can go if he or she freely chooses not to love.  This is called hell.

Why would a good God send anyone to hell?  He doesn't.  We freely choose to go there based on our actions (sins of commission), and/or inactions (sins of omission [ the example of the rich man in the Gospel today was an good example of this] ).  The Church teaches that "God predestines no one to go to hell (p.1037)."

Before closing, let me just make a few other points that counter what I deem popular misconceptions today of hell.

1) People in hell are not dead, they are alive.  Everyone lives forever.  It is just a question of whether they live in heaven or hell.  Some people equate going to hell with dying.  No, souls in heaven are more alive than they would like to be.  They experience separation, deep regret (remorse), and despair, all too vividly.
2) The real torment of hell is not physical, it is emotional and spiritual.  There have been documented cases of saints living through fire, and keeping their joy through the process.  No, fire cannot really harm us if we are connected to God.  Any fire that exists in hell is not what really causes the souls there pain.   It is the aforementioned separation, remorse, and despair.
3) Hell is an easy place to avoid, but somehow many wind up there.  Numerous Scripture passages give credence to the idea that there more than a few people in hell.   Look up Matthew 7:13-14, Mark 20:16, Luke 13:23-24, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Peter 4:18.  As Saint Alphonsus Ligouri alluded to, people in hell see, too late, that it didn't require too much to save their soul, but they didn't even do that much, and instead, they went after trifling, passing pleasures like sex, power, and money, which never last long, and never satisfy. 

Heaven is not easy to get into.  We have to work out our salvation to get there.  The good news, is hell is not easy to get into, either.  However, just like heaven, many people still wind up there, despite the fact that many in and outside the Church say otherwise today.
 
We want to do good and avoid evil now to avoid going to hell.   We want to pray.  We want to serve Christ in the physical and spiritual poor around us.  We want to avoid indulgence in the passions and pleasures of this passing world.  If we do these things, we will avoid hell.  Yes, hell is easy to avoid, but somehow many people wind up there.  Let's not be one of them.

Joseph, terror of demons, and patron of the dying, pray for us.

Other sins against chastity and marriage

In our post earlier today, we spoke of the sin of homosexual sex, and the phenomenon of  "same sex marriage".  Both of these are offenses against chastity and true marriage.
In this post, we will speak of other sins that are also serious offenses against chastity, and/or true marriage.
We did mention chastity in a previous post, but let's recall again her definition, so we can see exactly what these sins go against:

Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.  The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift. (Catechism of the Catholic Church p.2337)

Therefore, any sin against chastity is a sign that our sexuality is not fully integrated in our person, there is not unity of man in our bodily and spiritual being, and we are not making a gift of ourself to another.   For example, those who practice homosexual sex, are going against how their bodies are designed.  This reflects disunity within oneself and lack of integration.  As we tried to show in the last post, people who engage in homosexual sex are really not making a true gift to each other, even if they sincerely think and/or say they are.

With that as a backdrop, here are the other sins against this virtue of chastity as described in Part Three, Article 6, of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

1) Lust   This is a desire for sexual pleasure for its own sake, not for any unitive or procreative purposes.
2) Masturbation   This is deliberate stimulation of the sexual organs in order to derive sexual pleasure.
3) Fornication  This is a carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman.
4) Pornography  This is displaying deliberately sexual acts to third parties, removing them from the intimacies of partners.
5) Prostitution   This is paying, or accepting pay, for sexual pleasure.
6) Rape  This is the forceful violation of the sexual intimacy of another person.

What is the common feature to all of these?  They take the natural sexual act (as described in the last post), which is ordered to the good of spouses, and to the generation of children, and distort it for purposes it is not created for.  These sinful acts are for sexual pleasure alone, which is not the ultimate goal of sex.  They are for purposes other than lasting intimacy between a man and a woman.  They are all unnatural acts, even though unfortunately, they may seem natural for those who fail to control their urges, and consistently give in to them.  They represent the actions of someone who, as we stated before, has not integrated his or her sexuality with his or her spirituality and morality, and whom is not therefore giving a total gift of him or herself to another, especially when he or she has sex with them.

In addition to these sins against chastity, the Catechism also lists sins that go directly against the good of natural marriage.  However, to a degree, each can be considered a sin against chastity, as well, for reasons that should be evident.

1) Adultery  This is sexual relations between two people, at least one of whom is married to another party.
2) Divorce   This is breaking of the the marital covenant the two spouses entered into, which states they will love one another until death do them part.
3) Polygamy  This is being "married" to more than one person at a time.
4) Incest  This is sexual relations between relatives or in-laws.
5) Sexual abuse  This is forced sexual activity by an adult on a child or adolescent. (The Catechism lists it here as it often connected to incest, but it can also be totally non-familial, as well.)
6) "Free unions"  This is sexual relations between people who have not made a commitment to each other (living together before marriage would fall under this category).

What do all of these have in common?  They go against the natural desire in the human heart of man for love that is exclusive, permanent, and life-giving, the kind of love that can only be found in natural marriage.  They go against the good of the family; the source, fruit, and sustainer of that kind of love.  They ultimately do not satisfy.

The degree to which an individual is culpable in all these offenses in both lists, as well as homosexual sex, can be mitigated by factors such as destitution, blackmail, or social pressure.  However, the acts in and of themselves remain seriously sinful.

Unfortunately, reading through both these lists, one can see that members of the Church have not immune from these by any means.  These sins, as well as that of homosexual acts, have unfortunately been committed by both lay and clergy in the Body of Christ. When a member of the Church commits these sins, they entice others to do the same.  This is grave scandal.  We must pray through the intercession of the chaste hearts of Joseph and Mary that these sins can be purged from the Church, so that she may once again shine in splendor before all the nations, and call others to a fully integrated bodily and spiritual life in Christ Jesus, the best life of all.

I offer final thought.  Some may see these lists and say, "How can you put two consensual adults having sex (be it heterosexual or homosexual) on the same list as things like rape and prostitution and child abuse?"  Well, besides the venerable saying that "a sin is a sin", I will also offer up the following:  If we want to get rid of these severe problems of rape and child abuse, the only solution is to recapture the entire holistic, uplifting view of the human person and sexuality that the Church teaches.  (There is more than what I spoke of in these recent posts, I encourage everyone to read the entire Part Three, Article Six of the Catechism, and/or summaries of Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body to find out more. )  The sex abuse crisis (which was mostly a crisis of homosexual priests preying on adolescent boys) occurred in the Church because her members were not living the fullness of her teaching.  The predators had disunity in their lives.  They preached and maybe lived social justice, but definitely did not preach nor did they live sexual morality.  Their spirituality was definitely not integrated!  Those who looked the other way (i.e. bishops and religious superiors) were not convinced that their sexual behaviors were sins; rather, they just thought they were diseases that could be cured medically, and didn't necessarily need moral and spiritual healing.  To root out what society deems serious sin, all sin must be called out and purged, regardless if society deems some sins not serious, or perhaps not even sins at all.  We have to learn from our experience what happens when we only call out some sin, and not others.

The virtue of purity is connected to chastity.  Those who are impure lust after others, which can lead to any or all of the sexual sins noted above.   Jesus condemns impurity as much as he condemns any of these sexual acts:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28)

Therefore praying for purity is important for us to do to help us in our struggle against the temptation to engage in any of these sins. I will close this post with this beautiful prayer for purity to good and chaste Saint Joseph.

Prayer of St. Joseph for Purity

Guardian of virgins and holy father St. Joseph
To whose faithful custody Christ Jesus, innocence itself
And Mary, virgin of virgins was committed:
I pray and beseech you
By these dear pledges, Jesus and Mary,
That being preserved from all impurity
I may with spotless mind,
Pure heart,
And chaste body,
Ever most chastely serve Jesus and Mary
All the days of my life.

Amen.

Tough teachings: Same sex marriage

Today we will discuss the third of three difficult teachings of the Church that many find difficult to accept these days.  In the first post in this series, we discussed contraception.   In the second, we discussed abortion.  Today, we will discuss homosexuality and same sex marriage.

This is by far, I think, the most sensitive of the three.   I think a lot of people today can at least appreciate or understand why the Church condemns abortion, even if they do not agree with her.  With contraception, a lot of people do not understand why the Church condemns it, and may think she is just naïve or something along those lines.  I do not think, however, in general that people get mad, angry, or militant towards her for this teaching. 
However, when it comes to this difficult teaching regarding marriage, many not only disagree with the Church, but turn violent towards her because of it.   In the opinion of this blog, there is truly a war going on these days regarding marriage.  Those who support traditional marriage, and therefore, do not approve of same sex "marriage", are often classified as hateful bigots, or even evil. 
Sister Lucia, one of the three children who saw Our Lady of Fatima (one of the approved apparitions of Our Lady) said this shortly before her death in 2005:

The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.  However, Our Lady has already crushed its head.

Other predictions at Fatima have come true, so there is good reason to believe this has or will come true, as well.

Despite this prediction of ultimate victory, right now, it does not seem the war is going the way of those who support traditional marriage.  More and more states are approving of "same sex marriage".  In general, homosexual behavior is generally looked at being morally equivalent to traditional heterosexual behavior, or, at least, the feeling is those who practice homosexual behavior should be left alone to do as they please. 

So, why does the Church teach that marriage is only between one man and one woman?  Well, to put it simply, she does not accept same sex marriage because she teaches homosexual acts are sinful.  Those who are in a same sex marriage are put in a position where the temptation is strong to perform such acts constantly.  Two men living together or two women living together who are attracted to each other will be tempted strongly to do those acts over and over again, and put their salvation in jeopardy.

So, the real question is not so much why the Church does not support "same sex marriage", but rather, why does she teach that homosexual acts are sinful?  Once we understand that, we can better understand why the Church teaches against same sex marriage. Let's consider a few things.  (Before we go any further, please be warned some of the material below is for mature audiences only.)

1) The homosexual act goes against the natural law. 

By the inner conscience of man, and the visible world of creation, man can come to know certain truths. We hinted at this when we discussed ways of coming to know God in a post earlier this year.  By those same powers of conscience and simple observation, one can see and feel that there is a fundamental ontological difference and meaning between sexual intercourse between a man and a woman and all other forms of sex.  Only one type of sexual activity corresponds with the parts of natural human anatomy and physiology that have been designed for sex.  That activity is sexual intercourse between a man and a woman that involves the penis and the vagina.

Consider the alternative forms of sex that a person must use if he or she is trying to have sexual relations with someone from their own gender.  Anal sex is one frequently used.  However, the rectum is clearly not designed for sexual pleasure as is the vagina.  The tissues in the anus, unlike those in a vagina, do not provide natural lubrication. It is painful without artificial lubrication. It is a high risk sexual practice.  It does not generally produce arousal.

Oral sex is another form frequently practiced. It involves the penis or the vagina, but not both.  Therefore, with oral sex, generally only one partner can get aroused.  In other words, one person is being used for another person's fulfillment. 

Finally, there are various forms of non-penetrative sex, which again, can create pleasure, but in no way brings two people together like it can in natural sexual intercourse.  Because it cannot do so, it lacks the meaning, and potential for fulfillment that natural sexual intercourse has. 

At the end, in all types of homosexual acts, there is nothing that is mutually shared between the two persons, no bonding, no unity.  In these acts, one person is using another person's body to get something for him or herself.  The pleasure is forced, not natural as it is in intercourse. The persons involved may not admit that using another is what is going on, and/or probably do not intend to do so, but it is the reality nonetheless. The only type of sex in which there is mutual giving and mutual receiving is natural sexual intercouse.  All other sex, to be blunt, is selfish, and it is also dangerous because it involves using body parts that are not designed for sexual behavior.

2) The homosexual act is not open to the gift of life. 

Besides the pleasure associated with the sexual act, which serves to foster intimacy and union, the sexual act is a way of cooperating with God the Creator.  Neither anal sex nor oral sex nor any form of non-penetrative sex can produce a new life.  There is no possibility of lasting fruit with any of them.

So, because homosexual acts are ultimately selfish (even if those who practice do not realize it, or intend it to be selfish), dangerous, and not open to life, the Church teaches that these acts are morally wrong, and those who engage in them must repent, lest their salvation be in jeopardy.  "Same sex marriage", by it's nature and meaning, celebrates these sinful acts, and therefore, cannot and will not ever be approved by the Church.

A few points, however, are now in order.

1)  As with the other two sins we discussed in this series (contraception and abortion), despite the seriousness of these sins of homosexual sex, there is mercy and forgiveness available from Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of Reconciliation for those who have practiced them.

2) Furthermore, the Church teaches that we must treat people who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies with compassion and respect.  I will quote paragraph 2358 of the Catechism in its entirety:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

3) There is hope for those who have these deep seated homosexual tendencies.  There is compelling evidence that no one is "born" this way.  Through the Sacraments, prayer, counseling, and disinterested friendship, people who suffer with these tendencies can experience the healing and freedom that comes with a life in Christ, be able to practice self-mastery, and may even be able to enter into a new life that includes the practice of sexual behavior that is satisfying, fruitful, and serves the common good.

If anyone is interested in reading Scripture passages that testify to God's view of homosexual behavior, and therefore the Church teaching against it, see the following:

Genesis 18: 16- 19:29 (the story of Sodom and Gamorrah)

Romans 1:24-27

Another word for homosexual behavior in Christian tradition is "sodomy" (named after the aforementioned city of Sodom).   One who practiced sodomy in the times of the Bible was called a "sodomite" and references to them can be found in 1 Corinthians 6:10 and 1 Timothy 1:10.

This has probably been the most difficult post in this blog's history to write because it is such a sensitive topic, and there are readers of this blog who practice homosexual behavior, and/or have friends and/or loved ones people who do.   This blog, as does the Church, truly strives to love every man, and every woman.  However, true love includes telling ourselves and those we care about when we are doing things that put our/their salvation in jeopardy, and engaging in homosexual acts is one such thing that can do just that. 

We referenced self-mastery above.  Part of the virtue of chastity is indeed self-mastery, a governing of our sexual passions.  All persons, including those who have homosexual tendencies, are called to chastity.  Any of us, when tempted with any sexual sin, can turn to Saint Joseph.

 

Remember, O most chaste spouse of the Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who implored your help and sought your intercession were left unassisted.
 Full of confidence in your power I fly unto you and beg your protection.
 Despise not O Guardian of the Redeemer my humble supplication, but in your bounty, hear and answer me. Amen.

Joseph, most chaste, pray for us.

In our next post, we will discuss other sexual sins.