- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: Hell exists not despite God’s love but precisely because of it.
‘The Narrow Gate’ (photo: Public domain)
When my siblings and I were very young and incorrigibly misbehaving, my mother, as a last-ditch effort to get us to listen, would occasionally pick up the rotary phone and inform us that she was calling “Mr. Meaney” to come to get us in his big car and cart us away.
She would carry on credible one-way conversations with the imaginary sadist, explain to him our delicts, ask details concerning the fearsome backseat of his “terror mobile,” and agree with him about the length and severity of our detention.
With creativity evocative of Stephen King and Oscar-worthy acting, my mother would invariably get the four of us begging for mercy and resolving never to repeat our infractions. She was always able to persuade the barbarous Mr. Meaney to let us off each time with a stern warning, while committing to call him back immediately if we didn’t keep our end of the plea bargain.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the fictitious Mr. Meaney, however, after a recent papal interview. When Fabio Fazio of Italy’s Channel 9 asked Pope Francis on Jan. 14 how he understands hell in the context of Divine Mercy, the Holy Father replied with words that captured international headlines: “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”
The Holy Father is not the first to hope that no one will end up eternally in hell. Bishop Robert Barron, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Sts. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor all have expressed, in one way or another, a similar hope, as did Origen.
It’s certainly not heretical to have this hope, while it is to believe with certainty that hell is vacant (“universalism” was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 543).
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
When my siblings and I were very young and incorrigibly misbehaving, my mother, as a last-ditch effort to get us to listen, would occasionally pick up the rotary phone and inform us that she was calling “Mr. Meaney” to come to get us in his big car and cart us away.
She would carry on credible one-way conversations with the imaginary sadist, explain to him our delicts, ask details concerning the fearsome backseat of his “terror mobile,” and agree with him about the length and severity of our detention.
With creativity evocative of Stephen King and Oscar-worthy acting, my mother would invariably get the four of us begging for mercy and resolving never to repeat our infractions. She was always able to persuade the barbarous Mr. Meaney to let us off each time with a stern warning, while committing to call him back immediately if we didn’t keep our end of the plea bargain.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the fictitious Mr. Meaney, however, after a recent papal interview. When Fabio Fazio of Italy’s Channel 9 asked Pope Francis on Jan. 14 how he understands hell in the context of Divine Mercy, the Holy Father replied with words that captured international headlines: “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”
The Holy Father is not the first to hope that no one will end up eternally in hell. Bishop Robert Barron, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Sts. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor all have expressed, in one way or another, a similar hope, as did Origen.
It’s certainly not heretical to have this hope, while it is to believe with certainty that hell is vacant (“universalism” was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 543).
Continued below.
The Reality of Hell and Divine Mercy Sunday: ‘Enter Through the Narrow Gate’
COMMENTARY: Hell exists not despite God’s love but precisely because of it.
