It's Going to Be a Hot Week; Good Time to Think about Hell

The weather report for the next week is grim: in the 90s every day but feeling over 100. Fourth of July is expected to be a scorcher here in northwestern Virginia especially if the humidity is high. Thank God for it. Miserably hot weather invites us to reflect on the reality of hell. Despite the statement of Cardinal Fernandez that everyone will be saved, they won't. And no, Bishop Barron, we cannot have a reasonable belief that all will be saved. Why would God die on the cross for the salvation of souls if, in the end, He's the Candyman who welcomes everyone at the Pearly Gates with chocolate bars regardless of the way they lived. He didn't ignore the rebellion of the angels; why would He ignore ours? 

Bishop Strickland's Follow-Up on Bishop Elect Thomas Hennen

A number of Pope Leo's appointments are concerning. One addressed by Bishop Joseph Strickland is Bishop Elect Thomas Hennen to the diocese of Baker. Strickland recently tweeted:

@Hennen, bishop-elect, as bishop of Baker...instead of correcting...Francis, Pope Leo XIV is doubling down on it...Hennen...work with Davenport’s LGBTQ+ directive...Fiducia Supplicans green-lighted blessings same-sex unions...No more more blessings without conversion.

An article followed. Here's the beginning:

Sunday Meditation: If you want to go to hell, here's the Rx from "Dr." Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

It's hard to believe that anyone would actually seek to become an atheist and develop a program to turn belief into disbelief offering it as a prescription for hating God and His Church. Why? 

If you don't believe, why not just shrug and walk away? Why actively pursue hatred of the God in Whom you don't believe? Wouldn't it make more sense to pursue truth, goodness justice, mercy, etc.? Aren't those the most noble pursuits? And consider Voltaire's given name. His parents obviously dedicated him to Our Lady. His mother died when he was only seven. How sad that he did not turn to the Queen of Heaven.

To me, the idea that someone would desire and pursue hatred of a God in which he disbelieves is unfathomable. But that's what Voltaire not only did himself, but he advised others to do it as well. Where is Voltaire today one wonders in alarm. The loss of any soul for Whom Christ suffered and died is a tragedy. Let us pray that Voltaire, a brilliant but stupid man, repented in the end.

Somber Weather and Somber Thoughts

Another cold and gloomy day. I suppose one should fight the gloom with sunny thoughts. But my thoughts today center around the reality of hell. At least those are hot thoughts unlike the frigid temps we are facing in the coming week. Hell is usually depicted as the unquenchable file, but what if, instead, it's absolutely frigid. Which would be worse do you think?

But I digress.

More on Dignitas Infinita: Is It the Prelude to the Denial of Hell?

At yesterday’s press conference on “Dignitas Infinita”, I asked DDF Prefect Cardinal Fernández: “If man has infinite dignity, how can he be condemned to the eternal suffering of Hell? And why are original sin and its effects never mentioned in the document?” His response below: pic.twitter.com/6odajldIq7

— Diane Montagna (@dianemontagna) April 9, 2024

(To see the statement enlarged click on it and it will open in a new window. Then click on the text.) 

Years ago on a Cursillo weekend, I spent several hours in the stairwell late at night discussing hell with a young woman who didn't believe there was a hell or, if there was, that no one went there. At the end of the evening, she had changed her mind.

The Reality of Hell

“The national anthem of hell is, I Did It My Way ”

— Peter Kreeft

The doctrine of hell is not just some dusty, theological holdover from the unenlightened Middle Ages. It has significant consequences. Without ultimate justice, people’s sense of moral obligation dissolves; social bonds are broken. People who have no fear of God soon have no fear of man.

June Used to Be Devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus...

It was also the month of weddings and Father's Day as Robert Knight points out in his column yesterday. What does it stand for now in this age of secular wokism?

What Will Be Your Last Words?

If you were the bug in that chicken's mouth what would be your last words?

Browsing my email this morning, I came across a headline asking, "What will be your last words?" I didn't read the article, a sermon for the feast of St. Lawrence. I've avoided the author for years after his severe criticism of home schooling parents. 

Sunday Meditation: A Reminder of Death and Judgment

 I think it was St. Robert Bellarmine who said priests should preach on the four last things at least once a month. Pondering on death and judgment, heaven or hell, has a way of focusing the mind. What’s really important in this life after all? It’s to live in a way that leads us to our God-ordained destiny. As the old Baltimore Catechism put it. “God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world so we can be happy with Him in the next.” The big question is, “How am I doing, Lord?” The answer points to our final destination.

Deep Purple and llama Fetuses

Each Deep Purple video represents one of three stages of the Catholic Church - before Vatican II, after Vatican II, and now under Bergoglio for the past 6 years and into the future after his Synod on the Amazon.

Video I 

Before Vatican II

Deep Purple by Larry Clinton and his orchestra, with vocalist Peggy Mann, 1939

Lovely, beautiful, refined. Sung the way it's supposed to be sung.

If I Were The King of the Forrest

We say this often without expressing it in those terms when we imagine how we would handle a situation where we are not actually in charge. “Well, if I were the president,” or “well if I were head of the FBI, or the Justice Department, or principal of that school, or mayor of the town.”

"Life is Real, Life is Earnest and the Grave is Not Its Goal!"

This video talk got me thinking about Longfellow's poem on life. The last line, "learn to labor and to wait," makes me think of the Blessed Mother who pondered all things in her heart -- perpetually waiting on the Lord to reveal His will for her.

The Death of the Atheist

The second man lived and died here

Continued from yesterday's post: God and the Deaths of Three Men - One Protestant, One Atheist, One Catholic

THE ATHEIST

The second man to die was the atheist. How does an atheist die? Well, let me tell you. But it’s not a pretty sight, nor is the story of this man’s life one that is pleasant to tell. Cruel, arrogant, mean, unkind and egotistical are words that come to mind when I think of this man who was born on St Patrick’s Day long ago. He was married to my college roommate who was, and still is, a Godly Baptist innocent mathematical genius.

They were madly in love when we were in school. She dropped out of her Master’s (Math) program to marry him, then he was drafted into the Army and they moved to Oxnard, CA where they had a baby boy. He then went off to Vietnam for two years, had an affair and probably a child with an Asian girl, returned home (did he ever wonder about that child and his or her mother?) and went back to North Carolina where he told his wife he no longer loved her and divorced her. She was absolutely devastated that he had cheated on her and no longer loved her.

Fulfillment of the Prophecy that "False Teachers" will Arise Among Us!

Remember the Bible verse from Isaiah  offering a warning to those who call good evil and evil good? That same warning is recalled frequently in the New Testament. St. Paul writes in his second letter to Timothy:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. (2 Timothy 4:3)

Peter also blew the warning trumpet when he wrote:

Reflecting on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell

November is the month that Holy Mother Church focuses on the "four last things" -- death, judgment, heaven, or hell. I confess as I move closer to my 70th birthday I think about death more frequently. Not in a morbid sense at all, but in a realistic one.

I'm a practical person and realize that one of us, my husband or myself, will be left to deal with the death of the other. And so we've been talking about how we can make that painful ordeal easier for the surviving spouse. After we prayed a rosary in a local cemetery on All Souls Day, wee talked about buying burial plots now and perhaps planning our funeral Masses.

Sobering Meditation for Sunday: Have we made peace with evil?

Fall of the damned into hell - Rubens

Fr. Jerry Pokorsky offers a sobering article on the way "good" people make peace with evil in their lives. Death bed conversions are rare. As we live, so we are likely to die. If we have rationalized grave evils like abortion, contraception, "murdering" the reputations of others, etc. are we likely to even recognize them as evil on our death beds? If a personnel director makes sure abortion, contraception, physician-assisted suicide, trans gender surgery, etc. are covered in his company's health plan, well, how likely is he to see those things as evil? Even if he is personally against them, he is likely to rationalize offering "choices"  to others (even evil ones) as a necessary part of doing business. It isn't his sin, after all, if a woman decides to kill her baby or even herself. The fact that she might not have done it without the scandal of the company telling her abortion or physician-assisted suicide are acceptable "choices" will likely escape him.

We would do well to examine our consciences in the light of Christ's grace begging Him to reveal the sins we hide from ourselves. All of us have blind spots and just like missing the car in our "blind spot" on the road can lead to a disastrous accident, so can missing the serious sins in our lives have disastrous spiritual consequences. After all, what can be more disastrous than going to hell because we rationalized our gravest sins? Please Lord, don't let me blind to those things in my life that threaten my eternal salvation? Show me myself as You see me, so I can repent and turn to you with a clean heart.

I'll close with Fr. Pokorsky's question: 

"Have we ourselves – traditional-minded, pro-life Catholics made peace with some profound evil that has been buried somewhere in the tangle of our minds? What sins or patterns of sin are we overlooking or rationalizing when we go to Confession? If we could see ourselves with the eyes of others – through the eyes of God – what would we see?"

Yes, Virginia, There is a Hell and Some People CHOOSE to Go There!

The Church's Nasty Little Secret

The Church has a nasty little secret. And, no, I am not talking about the sex abuse crisis and all the homosexual priests shuffled from here to there, although that certainly is a nasty story. No, I’m referring to a doctrine of the Church, one that is rarely preached. Our shepherds: both priests in their parishes and bishops in their dioceses apparently don’t like to talk about it. Even the pope mentions it so rarely that he made headlines in 2007 when he brought it up and said it’s a real place and is eternal. You’ve probably guessed but I’ll give you a hint anyway. The place could use air conditioning even in the dead of winter because it’s as hot as…HELL!


The failure of our shepherds to preach about hell is ironic since Jesus talked about it so often.