In this episode, the DXPs reluctantly revisit the topic of murdering our children: Christian makes it clear that he does not encourage this, while Jason entertains the idea on grounds of annoyance rather than religion. We then seek to get to the bottom of the sinister satisfaction that many fundamentalists seem to display at the idea of hell involving eternal torment (they give the phrase “Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom” a whole new meaning). Christian then observes that Catholics and Muslims seem to be having a culture war “baby-off,” which worries him significantly regardless of who wins (Jason is rooting for the saintly Westerners against the filthy war-mongers). Christian is biebered by bottles and buttons, while Jason’s bieber involves bothersome boxing bouts (our biebers this week are brought to you by the letter B).
Also, we’re considering a Drunk Ex-Pastors / Glee crossover, because in this episode we just sing our little post-evangelical hearts out.
Links from This Episode
- Summer of ‘69
- “Fire! Fire!”
- Gran Turino
- “What is your glitch?”
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Capote
- Lost in Translation
- Drop Zone
- The Art of War
- “I think I ordered the large cappuccino?”
- “With our hands lifted high…”
- Your Love Broke Through
- Keith Green Collection
- Vision Forum
- The Fall
- Bloodline
- The Killing
- “There’s no ‘Beat Generation…’”
Podcast #339: Mindfulness, Body-Shaming, and the Exodus from Christianity
Podcast #288: Dan Koch
Podcast #423: Christmas, White Lotus, and “Pastor” Jack Hibbs
Podcast #363: Debt Collectors, Bible Porn, and the Great Resignation
I just loved this one, guys. Harkened back to good times of listening to Keith Green, and thinking of good times coming watching “Howl” for the first time. Just sending along a thumbs up today.
Bit of a rant here, but I wanted to scream when you played that voicemail because it pains me how unintelligent so many of your listeners seem to be. Is it a religious thing that does not allow people to understand that you were making a point about the logical conclusion of an idea and not actually encouraging that action? I understood your point the first time you made it a few weeks ago because you were very clear about what you were saying. This isn’t the first time either, Christians seem incapable of understanding Christian just because they don’t like what he is saying. It’s not that they disagree, it’s that they simply refuse to even attempt to understand. Is there a name for this phenomenon?
Thanks, Susan! I actually listened to a couple Keith Green songs last night. Makes me very nostalgic.
Brad,
I’d like to call the phenomenon being anti-Christian, so that we have “anti-Christian Christians.” 🙂
I hate “I could sing of your love forever”. No, you can’t. You have to eat, drink, sleep, and poop at some point.
Also the song that has any sort of line like “I feel like dancing…” No… no, I don’t. And I never have. Ever.
Also, the song with the line “Do you feel the darkness tremble, when all the saints join in one song…” If Satan exists, he’s probably pretty damn happy that people outside the church walls are suffering, while we’re doing nothing about it and singing happy songs.
Also, if you’re watching a lot of Netflix shows, you should definitely check out Daredevil if you haven’t already done so.
Daredevil’s on my list for sure. I dug that guy in Boardwalk Empire.
comrade,
you should definitely check out Daredevil
I watched the first episode and it was entertaining but didn’t totally grab me, and then I got distracted by The Fall and Bloodline. I may give it another go.
Comrade,
“I hate “I could sing of your love forever”. No, you can’t. You have to eat, drink, sleep, and poop at some point.”
Maybe glorified bodies don’t poop.
“you should definitely check out Daredevil “
You’re not the first person to suggest this, I may have to take you up on it. My wife and I just started watching 30 Rock, hilarious.
Jason,
In your mind is there a difference between saying:
“I’m not claiming that universalism dedinitely is true, I am just saying that there is a reasonable hope that all men be saved”
And
“I am not claiming that original sin did not pass to us from Adam, I am only saying that it is reasonable to hope that it did not?
Or
“I am not claiming that we can do good without God’s grace, I am only saying that it is reasonable to hope that we can.”
Aren’t you just subscribing to heresy without getting your feet wet?
Kenneth,
I think the question is moot since for those Catholics who hold to “hopeful universalism,” no one’s salvation happens either (1) because they didn’t inherit original sin or (2) without God’s grace.
Jason,
Thanks, but I think I failed to communicate the question in a clear way. Isn’t it true that in all three statements the person is in fact advocating a defined heresy, but while juuuuust pulling short of affirming it?
Also, what do these infallible condemnations mean to a person who subscribes to said view? From Pope Pius syllabus of errors….
15) That every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.
16) That man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.
17) That good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.
18) That protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.
I meant to bold the entire section…. it arbitrarily just highlighted two points lol
Being a web developer, I’m certain you did it wrong. HTML doesn’t work “arbitrarily.” 😉
Haha well, being a quasi professional obnoxious blogger…. I’m certain I only put in two html commands and not four. Weird.
Jason,
I tell Calvinists often that if it’s true that one can fall away, teaching otherwise is evil. Teaching false hope might lead to people’s ruin. I think teaching universalism as a truth (which I don’t think you are doing) can be similarly dangerous If done improperly.
However, I’m with you (and the Church) in so far as I think we can have hope for non-Christians, people exposed to very little true Christianity, to be saved. In fact I want no one to not be saved. If I get to heaven and I find it full of people no one expected to be there, I will not be sad. If I find that hell is nearly, if not completely, empty, I will be delighted!
I, like you, hold out a small hope for some sort of universalism (maybe with long stays in purgatory for some). However, I have to be careful not to render the warnings in Scripture void when talking to others. The warnings service some purpose. I need to find a balance. I especially don’t want to comfort people who may be perishing by their own free choices. I look forward to your book, to see how you strike this balance between hope and presumption.
I’m not saying it’s legal to drink and drive. I’m only suggesting that it’s reasonable to hope that it’s legal to drink and drive. LOL
Maybe more like… I’m not saying you will necessarily kill someone when you drink and drive. I’m only suggesting that it’s reasonable to hope that you won’t.
I especially don’t hope that they will kill someone. Or will I be sad if they don’t.
Lane,
Nice! That’s a great one. I just think that Balthazars idea is one that is genius only because it tiptoes heresy without affirming it. You could play that game with any doctrine. “I’m not saying we are saved by faith alone. I’m only saying there is reason to hope that men can be saved by faith alone”. See? Works with anything. I can affirm whatever I want without getting my hands dirty.
Kenneth,
I know what you are saying, and I agree to a large extent. However, I think of orthodoxy as a playground with defined heresies as fences. I’m allowed to play in the whole playground. Especially, if I think I have sound theological reasons to be in that part of playground. Exploring ideas is a Catholic. If the Magisterium tells me to stop playing there and moves the fence, I will of course obey.
Hi, guys,
Look forward go your posts and now I get notices of a new one through my email but it won’t download into my “DXP” Podcasts. I was able to listen to #43 but only through the email link. Any ideas?
Thanks, Sha
Jason,
I’m sitting down to listen to the podcast now, but I just noticed Netflix series being mentioned in the comments. Have you checked out “Rectify”? It’s the best series that I’ve seen since “Breaking Bad,” and I saw that as a *huge* fan of BB. “Rectify” is about a guy who was sent to Death Row based on inaccurate information, and who has now been released, and is trying to adjust to the outside world. Really, really good show!!
I mean, I *say* that, not “saw”.. Typos!
Christopher,
I will check out Rectify. Been looking for something new to watch since I finished Bloodline (which was excellent, by the way). Is Rectify a Netflix series? How many seasons? Thanks!
I’ll check it out, Christopher!
Jason and Christian,
2 seasons so far (I’m hoping that more will be made). It’s a Sundance Channel series, but it’s streaming on Netflix. I really think both of you will love it. (I could be wrong about that, but I think it’s amazing.)
I’m going to check out “Bloodline” too.
If anyone is looking for a really good artsy drama (movie), check out Calvary. It came out last year and stars Brendan Gleeson as a priest; he is awesome in it. It confronts some of the impact of priest abuse scandal. It was very good; it was dark, yet strangely funny in places. I ended up having to watch it twice. It haunted my thinking for quite awhile. I don’t think it is on Netflix; I got it from Red Box.
Just listened to the podcast. Can’t wait to read the book, Jason!
The first thing I want to say is that I *seriously* hope no one who reads my comments here thinks that I am gleeful about the thought (and the possible reality) of anyone going to an eternal Hell. I do believe that the reality of the *existence* of an eternal Hell is what Scripture teaches, but I don’t presume to know how many people will be there. I hope that even Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and I all end up in Heaven– by which I mean, I hope that all of these people didn’t (and don’t, in my case) die in a state of unrepentant opposition to God.
The Catholic Church teaches that everyone who is saved is saved by Christ. Many of them, I would logically think, will be professing Christians. (Hopefully, me among them, but I’m not presuming on that!) The Catechism also clearly teaches that it is *possible* for people who don’t have explicit knowledge of the Christian Gospel to be saved by following the moral light that God has given them. It’s not certain, but it is possible.
I still strongly believe that the Gospel should be shared to the ends of the earth, partially because I strongly believe that *with* the Gospel, when it is understood well and healthily, and applied radically in one’s life, there is greater joy and peace and fulfillment, and more positive transformation of the world, than there is without it.
I also believe in spreading the Gospel because it is *not* certain that all non-Christians (or professing Christians!) will be saved. Also, there is the small matter that Jesus *tells* His followers to spread the Gospel, verbally, and by living out its logical, radical implications (and I don’t believe these logical implications include killing one’s children, but I digress)! 🙂
As I written here many times before, I don’t subscribe to the seeming fundamentalist Protestant view of Hell as an eternal torture chamber. I don’t think that it’s “eternal waterboarding.” I do think it’s a freely, willfully chosen, eternal separation from God by those who, however few or many they may be, say to God, in effect, “I didn’t like you, much less love you, when I was on earth, and I don’t like you, much less love you now, and I don’t want to be in your Presence for one minute, much less for eternity!” I am not happy at all that some people *may* say this to God with every fiber of their beings. I want to see as many people as possible in Heaven. I hope that I’m there.
I think that God has done, and continues to do, all that He can to see that people have every opportunity in this life to accept Him and His love. This goes for Christians and non-Christians. (How much am *I* doing to help others come to a place of accepting God and His love? Not nearly enough. I admit that. I should and must do more, if I really claim to love people as God loves them.)
After every opportunity that God gives people though, if they just refuse and refuse Him and truly *don’t want( to be with Him eternally, I do think that God will respect that choice. Yes, God can do anything– anything which is consistent with His character. Forcing people, eternally, into that which they truly don’t want, is not consistent with His character, because God may allow people to be *apart* from Him eternally, but He will *not* rape their wills eternally.
I could give the many Scriptural examples for why I believe in an eternal Hell, and for why, while I *hope and pray* that for a very, very populated Heaven, like Lane, I fear that many will actually *choose* eternity apart from God (i.e. Hell). Jesus teaches more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible, and what He teaches seems to say, to me, that it is eternal, and that it will be populated– by how many, I don’t know. I know, though, that no matter how many Scriptures I post, other people will have other Scriptures which, to them, seem to teach universalism.
Ultimately, either way, as a Catholic, I don’t go with my own private interpretation of the Scriptures, whether on Hell, or any other serious subject. (I used to be a Protestant but not anymore.) Therefore, I will quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church and defer to the Magisterium:
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”610 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.611 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.612 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,”613 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”614
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”615 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”616
Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”617
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell;618 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:619
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.620
(Source: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P2O.HTM)
Hell is real y’all Christopher Moltisani went there, and it sounds like Dante’s Inferno. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c5NWMi2zKI
Oh, Marone (crosses self)!
All this talk of Keith Green got me onto Google. I think I have found the next church for Jason (assuming Christian does not lead him further astray and into unbelief).
This chruches write up on Keith Green is deeply touching (as in fingers down the throat type of touching).
http://www.atruechurch.info/keithgreen.html
I don’t think it’s satire, hard to tell sometimes. There has got to be some material at atruechurch for a fun podcast,
Thinking about Keith Green and his music reminded me of Don Francisco, another performer I used to listen to a lot and very much appreciated.
Bob
So useless theological question of the day: if you believe in some concept of a heaven, will there be any disagreement or conflict with other people who are there? Obviously, there will be no evil in that place, so no violent disagreements or schisms or breaks in fellowship, but do you think that would preclude the idea of discussion of ideas?
Does disagreement necessarily break unity and harmony or is it our response to being challenged by others that does so?
Semi-related, do you think there will still be opportunities for learning new things and growing as a person or do you automatically reach your zenith as an individual when you die and cross over?
Without getting back into a whole thing, one thing that occurred to me while listening to the latest podcast and related to comraderead’s questions above, for those who do believe in hell/eternal damnation, how is it fair that our sins, and let’s just say that I’m extra shit so I sin for 60 plus years, how is it fair that 60 years of being a dick equates to an eternity of damnation? Even the part where Christian mentions that after a period of suffering the sinners are annihilated seems more fair than hell for all time.
I think it would be fair for God to punish someone the exact right amount for the sins they committed while in this life. That’s very different from him banishing a non-elect dead infant to eternal hell after imputing the guilt of Adam’s sin to him.
I have a question for Greg and Jason! If sins were continually committed in hell would that then justify an everlasting punishment? Let’s just say that we granted the idea that a finite number of sins only deserve a finite punishment. Fair enough, but what if the number of sins is also in fact infinite? What if those in hell just continue to curse God and hate Him? Since we all like to give examples from our real life fathers…. let’s say your kid did something that merited a weeks worth of being grounded. For the sake of argument let’s suppose that the entire week your son was constantly flipping you off, refusing to eat with you, refusing to answer you, kicked over furniture and breaking everything he or she could get their hands on. 1 week layer would the grounding be over? I don’t think soooooooo lol
There is actually biblical evidence for this idea too. In the book of Revelation the bowls of God’s wrath are poured out in judgment upon mankind, and those judged are not repentant but curse God all the more: “men were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give Him glory. . . . men gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores, and did not repent of their deeds. . . . and great hailstones, heavy as a hundredweight, dropped on men from heaven, till men cursed God for the plague of hail, so fearful was that plague” (Rev. 16. 8-11, 21). Whether in this life or the next, to hate and reject God is to sin, for we are morally obligated to worship and love God. Sin cannot go unpunished, since God is perfectly just, and so these sins in the afterlife must also be punished. Hence, because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment. Boom.
It’s starting to get a bit unseemly how happy you seem to be in trying to shit on the idea that maybe God’s mercy will eventually triumph in everyone’s hearts.
Dammit Kenneth. I keep telling myself to stop responding to you but I can’t help myself (even if you weren’t talking directly to me)!
Morally obligated (whatever that means)? Doesn’t sound like much of a choice. So much for freewill.
On a personal note, I have a young daughter and I think you’ve said you have a little one too (right?). How are you planning on telling your child that there is something inherently wrong with him or her and what they deserve when they die is to burn forever unless they accept heyyzeus christo into their hearts? Since I don’t believe that nonsense and will never teach that to my daughter as absolute truth, I really am curious how you are going to spin that in a way that can even resemble something that is not psychologically harmful to a young child.
So I take it that no one objects to infinite sins deserving infinite punishment? @comrade it’s only unseemly if I’m wrong. If person x is in danger of hell and you are telling said person all is good…. I would say that is… unseemly.
Kenneth,
This might be the difference between purgatory and hell. Maybe they are both punishments for temporal sins. However, the person in purgatory has a repentant disposition and their punishment becomes penitential, willful/voluntary. The person in hell is not repentant and their punishment is in fact punishment, not willful. If the person in hell never has a dispositional change towards God nor becomes repentant for their sins, hell becomes never ending – thus it is hell. This is reminiscent of the view presented in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, where people who are in “hell” and in “purgatory” were in fact in the same place.
However, the person in purgatory has a repentant disposition and their punishment becomes penitential, willful/voluntary.
Mark me down for purgatory then. Thanks.
Mike,
I’m sorry to lure you back in! Haha I realize that I’m the odd man out in this crowd and that’s OK. I appreciate the dialog and enjoy hearing perspectives that differ from my own. I’ve never really spoken with flaming liberal Christians and agnostics before so it’s new territory for me. Challenging other people’s worldviews and ideas (that differ from my own) is one of my favorite hobbies.
If I make it to purgatory I’m gonna be in there for soooooooo long.
I don’t know. Can anyone still sin and get kicked out of Heaven? Can I get kicked out of Purgatory for saying, “God damn that flaming whip hurts like a bitch”?
Or am I good in heaven and I just have to live with the smell of grandma’s flesh roasting while I’m trying to sing praise songs or recite a mass or whatever I’ll be doing in your idea of heaven to the God roasting her flesh?
Will I get extra time in Purgatory if I say, “For the love of You, would You just knock it off and put Gramms out of her misery?!”
If people in hell can stop sinning, thereby making it purgatory, can people in heaven start sinning? Can you just kind of go between the three places based on your mood? I like to have options.
Jason,
I agree that would be a fair thing to say. The possibility of an infant that dies going to hell makes Calvinism on its face disgusting. I’ve had Calvinists, while uneasy (somewhat to their credit) with this possibility, still argue that it “makes sense” because we all sinned in Adam! I think the Catholic idea that an infant simply can not sin being much more palatable given what I know about God and what I know about Justice.
Obviously their is speculation to what to do with unbaptized infants who die. Limbo, being a state of maximum natural happiness – which is most people think of when they think of heaven. Heaven minus access to the beatific vision. This is where Catholics think the righteous pre-Christ people went before heaven was opened – the “bosom of Abraham” (Luke 16:22).
So, I think speculation about a range of different states of afterlife is fine within Catholicism.
I’m just happy everyone agrees that if people continue to sin in hell everlasting punishment is just. So we can now all finally agree that there is no logical contradiction between an all loving and perfectly just creator and hell. Big step forward 🙂
Ha ha. Not sure making fun of an idea is the same as agreeing with it. 😉
It’s also not *disagreeing* with it either. Making fun of something isn’t an argument, and that’s at least a half step forward!
No, Kenneth, because if it were possible that people continued on sinning in hell thereby earning more punishment in a NEVER ENDING CYCLE, it would be far more merciful for God to recognize that there was no hope for these people and simply annihilate them, allowing them the peace of oblivion and allowing their loved ones in paradise the opportunity to let go and find closure.
Perhaps if there is a just and sane god and any concept of a life after this one then the religions we know of are just tests to see which humans are both capable of believing the major precepts of those religions and at the same time believing that their God is good. Being able to maintain both is a fail and marks the individual down for either some serious remedial; work or as fundamentally flawed.
Is there wine in Purgatory? Cause if babies are there I’m gonna need wine.
Kenneth, as the rest of these assholes (tongue in cheek y’all!) here have pointed out, I think the premise of your question is kind of flawed. As comrade mentions, it would really be a hateful god if you could sin eternally and therefore be in hell eternally.
I really should just outsource all my comments to comraderead. He writes better on this stuff than I ever would.
comrade,
Sure, that sounds a lot nicer. Yet, would an all good and perfectly just God be obligated to do so?I don’t think so. All that is required of Gods justice is that He give every free creature an honest to goodness fair opportunity to have eternal life. If they reject His love and continue doing so for an everlasting period of time that is no failure of His justice because the damned only get what they deserve. As no one has denied an infinite numer of sins deserves an infinite amount of punishment. It is also not a failure of His mercy because God owes no creature mercy. As Romans 9 teaches very bluntly;
14 What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.
How can man say to God “You OWE me forgiveness and annihilation”. No. The only thing owed is justice which is exactly what the damned receive. Perfect justice.
OK now I know for sure that something is weird about the bold commands on this cite. Christian Kingery your html functionality is glitchy!!!! 😉
site*
Nope.
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion”
And now that I’m out of it a quote like that sticks out for its demonstration of how far from any meaningful concepts of just and holy the god of the bible is.
A perfectly just god? No. But a good God? Yes. A good God would not continue to inflict suffering just because someone in pain responded poorly to the one inflicting it. A good God would recognize the futility of it and end the torture.
How is eternity in hell perfect justice for 60, or hell, even 80 years of sinning?
Comrade,
Awesome! So then how does scripture describe God? As a Father right? Yet also as a master of “slaves” or bond servants. As a potter. There are many analogous images of God. It would be irresponsible to arbitrarily pick one as the and all be all over the others. In the same way, I think it is erroneous to arbitrarily pick out God’s goodness and say that this somehow trumps his infinite justice. There must be a balance.
Back to the Sopranos analogy. If you watched the show, you know the whole series was basically Tony vs. his conscious. He knew what he did was not only wrong but evil, his conscious was causing him to experience depression and panic attacks. But towards the end of the series he chose not to change his ways and went head on into his darkness. The Catholic Church believes non-Christians who are true to their conscious can enter heaven. Tony was not true to his conscious, he turned his back on it. Do you think Tony and Co., went into hell kicking and screaming? They all seemed resigned to the fact that hell could be the result from the path they had chosen. I think that is what the Church means that people chose hell. You know what you are doing is wrong or even evil, and you do it anyway because you enjoy the temporal pleasures and rewards of your acts despite what it does to others.
And what if hell is not eternal physical torture? How can you be physically tortured if you are not in a physical place and you do not have your physical body? I know the Jewish tradition on hell isn’t formulated as the Christian one, but Jewish “hell” is a place where you feel intense shame and regret for your actions. Does that make hell more palpable?
I think agnostics and atheists are being true to their conscious. They reject or deny religion because of what their conscious tells them vs. the tenets of religious beliefs (although many seem to reject Christianity based on the Fundamental and Evangelical theology). If people are in hell they all turned their back on their conscious/God. I think most atheist and agnostics are all wrestling with God, which after all is what “Israel” means, “one who wrestles with God.”. The actress Mare Winningham was raised Catholic become an Atheist as an adult. A friend told her if she is rejecting all religions she should know what she is rejecting; she agreed and she started off studying Judaism, and Judaism is where she stopped. The part that stuck a chord with her was the tradition of wrestling with God, which she realized she had been doing the whole time. Christianity has the tradition of the “anonymous Christian”, do the atheists and agnostics on here think they could be Jewish with a small j?
And yet, you pick out God’s Justice as the trait which will trump mercy and goodness.
It is justice that says, “Every man will be repaid according to his deeds”
It is mercy that causes God to sit on the porch and long to welcome the prodigal back to the fold.
It would be goodness that saw that the suffering of an irredeemable person (if such a thing exists) was no longer serving a good purpose and should come to an end, even if it meant the end of the person. Goodness does not inflict pain needlessly.
Comrade,
The pain is not needless. It is a just consequence of the sins of the wicked. I would say that my view strikes a needed balance between God’s justice, mercy and goodness. His perfect mercy and goodness are on display to the elect. Those who have been chosen from all eternity to be saved from their own sin and wickedness. Perfect goodness and mercy for all the world to see. The justice is shown to those who recieve punishment for their sins. The consequence to their actions is exactly proportiinate to the sins that have freely embraced. All of God’s divine attributes are on display for the universe.
Christian,
You can mark your own ticket by practicing being repentant now. Being repentant is a required step, no good news without repentance.
Jesus: “the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Christian,
This all rides on whether or not one can change their disposition after their particular judgment following death. The people in purgatory, traditionally, have the same disposition towards God as those in heaven. They just need their attachments to sin to be “burned” away to be able to enter heaven. Noting that sin isn’t just bad because it will be punished, it is bad because it inherently damages who you are as a person; who were meant to be. That damage will need to be fixed prior to heaven, thus purgatory.
Those on their way to heaven (purgatory) or in heaven, have chosen God freely (by evidence of their life) and are completely willing to have their free will limited by entering into the presence of God. Those in hell have (by evidence of their life) chosen freely to not limit their free will, and therefore will not enter into God’s presence.
I personally would like to hope that those in hell can change their mind and thus turn their experience of hell into purgatory. For those so harden by their choices in this life still have the option to choose to have their experience of hell be hell forever. The goal is to not allow yourself to get this harden, to love God and neighbor – now.
Postal Wino,
lol, you may have just determined your penance in Purgatory! Taking care of babies while stone cold sober.
Kenneth,
I may not be an expert on evangelism, but I don’t think bringing up Romans 9 and the “reprobate” are the best approaches to evangelism! lol 😉
Yeah, it sort of is.
Let’s say you’re in a foreign nation and you’re arrested for jaywalking. The penalty is 5 lashes with a cane. Before the sentence is executed, you are told for every time you cry out, you will be beaten once more, and for every time you say a profanity, you will be beaten with five more stripes, so that it would never end. You’d realize the system was rigged and less about justice and more about being a dick or sadist.
Or like an abused child who is beaten more when he lashes out at his abuser.
You say this as if this isn’t a horrific image. An image of millions of folks with Stockholm Syndrome who barely managed to escape unimaginable pain who probably have friends and loved ones who weren’t so lucky groveling and praising the one who is torturing their friends and threatened to torture them.
I mean, if that’s the sort of deity you wish to worship, that’s fine by me, but that is not good by any stretch of the imagination.
Comrade,
Lane,
Don’t worry about inducing positive responses. I have confidence that we can all just speak the truth and let the Spirit of God do the rest. No hidden scriptures, no bait and switch. Doctrinal honesty is best.
Kenneth,
Hey now, I was being facetious. I didn’t mean you should lie nor hide things! Just that there is a logical order to things. For example, you don’t try to convince the finer points of Catholic doctrine to an atheist; she needs to be convinced of God’s existence first. You know what I mean? Should a Calvinist open with the fact he thinks that some babies are going to hell for eternity when doing evangelism? – Ha! Just kidding! – A Calvinist doing evangelism…HA! lol
Lol!
Do the sober purgetory nannies have fabulous fashion? If I can’t be drunk in Hell than I need to look fabulous. Come on guys, do you really think I am a drunkard to the extent you think I am? I am baiting you. Dumb asses. All this deep theology talk becomes quite boring. It needs a little spice sometimes. Carry on…..
Being mindwhammied into accepting the torment and suffering of your loved ones as not only inevitable, but a benevolent act by God sounds a lot like being turned into a robot, which God supposedly didn’t want enough that he let evil exist.
Comrade,
It won’t be so different than what you already experience. How much sleep have you lost over all the murderers doing life in prison? The only qualms we may have concern the doubts we have in our justice system. Questions like “what if they are innocent?” Or “what if it was just an accident or self defense?” Can linger and haunt us. The really compassionate person may even be concerned that the prison conditions are inhumane and too harsh. Yet none of these concerns will be in play for those in hell. God is perfectly just. No one gets a bum deal. Everyone will know that the people separated from God are getting precisely what they deserve. No more and no less.
If we can live with this in our own current world, I’m sure we will not be forever agonizing over the lost in heaven.
I’m done beating this dead parrot.
I think what you’re missing, Kenneth, is that God is fully capable of saving those people (friends, relatives, etc) from themselves. He could easily rehabilitate those “criminals” and bring them to heaven to be reunited with loved ones, but in your view he won’t.
How about a different dead parrot? Transubstantiation: or if I got bought enough boxes of communion wafers, could I build a Franken-Jesus with them? 😀
Christian,
Yes, that’s true. He could, but He will not. That sucks.
Serena,
The wrestling with God concept is interesting. Their is definitely accounts of Abraham and Moses trying to gain mercy for others by bargaining/doing penance with God. I mean Jacob seems to have literally wrestled with God.
What did you mean by the tradition of the “anonymous Christian”? I’m not familiar with it.
Kenneth Winsmann, YOU SUCK and you and those like you are the reason I am no longer a christian. I would rather find out what purgatory and Hell has to offer than spend eternity with the likes of you.
Leaving……..just another typical fundy undy tight wad holier than thou blogo…….
Haha! Maybe you are a woman after all… I hear stuff like that from the ladies all the time 😉
You would get along with my wife
http://www.issuesetcarchive.org/issues_site/resource/archives/anonchrs.htm.
It’s the premise of how non-Christians can be saved.
“Remember, we have assumed for the sake of argument that God is perfectly just and the consequences of one’s actions are perfectly proportionate to the crime.”
Did anyone other than Kenneth assume that? Whilst I’m mostly off to the side of this my assumption is that I don’t assume the christian god is in anyway just or the punishment proportionate to the crime unless those ideas can be demonstrated.
At this point the message supported by Kenneth and churches I’ve been part of in the past looks more like a god who is the vilest of psychopaths with no sense of justice or proportion and a very unhealthy need to be worshiped. Nothing worthy or good about that image of god at all.
Bob
I’ve heard this complaint before, but it always confused me. If God is a maximally great being, He is the only object worthy of worship. Withholding your worship or directing it elsewhere would be a lie and “unhealthy”. God as a maximally great being also had no “need” of anything including worship, you on the other hand do.
Bob,
Making an assertion is easy. Making an argument is more difficult.
Ah, but would a perfectly complete being without the need of worship create beings that needed to worship or felt the need to worship It? Is our need to worship and sing songs or listen to liturgies and breathe in incense and gather together every week a consequence of our fall from grace then? Actions we take to reinstill in ourselves the sense of awe and the sense of the divine that we lack in our daily lives?
Oh look, it came up again. 🙂
Kenneth, true especially when the topic is imaginary friends and their rules.
You appeared to be the one asserting that we should work from the assumption that the particular view of god you support is perfectly just and the consequences of actions are proportionate to the actions. An assumption that I don’t see having any basis in reality. Why would anyone who does not share your views wish to discuss this topic with that as an underlying assumption. Rather it looks like you have arbitrarily tried to grab the high ground.
If you want to make that assertion then the onus is on you to demonstrate that it is a credible assertion, not to claim it as a shared and agreed assumption.
Bob
Kenneth, sorry I posted to quickly and with tunnel vision. I stepped away to do some other stuff and remembered that there are those who believe in the christian god but not the vision of hell being discussed here who might have reason to start with an assumption of a just god and the consequences fitting the actions..
Bob
Obviously the topic of Hell is one that needs to be discussed. If God is Just, he must be fair. If God is Love, he must be merciful. Perhaps the story of the prodigal son is a story about Hell. Perhaps when those in Hell start finding their way home, some in heaven (or the new earth) will say, “there goes the neighborhood.”
George MacDonald has written extensively on this idea. I’m sure I’m not the first person to bring him up in these discussions. Here’s a description of his idea of what Hell is like.
“I think I have seen from afar something of the final prison of all, the innermost cell of the debtor of the universe; I will endeavour to convey what I think it may be.
It is the vast outside; the ghastly dark beyond the gates of the city of which God is the light–where the evil dogs go ranging, silent as the dark, for there is no sound any more than sight. The time of signs is over. Every sense has its signs, and they were all misused: there is no sense, no sign more–nothing now by means of which to believe. The man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness– such a loneliness as in the most miserable moment of deserted childhood he never knew. Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his consciousness reaches him. All is dark, dark and dumb; no motion–not the breath of a wind! never a dream of change! not a scent from far-off field! nothing to suggest being or thing besides the man himself, no sign of God anywhere. God has so far withdrawn from the man, that he is conscious only of that from which he has withdrawn. In the midst of the live world he cared for nothing but himself; now in the dead world he is in God’s prison, his own separated self. He would not believe in God because he never saw God; now he doubts if there be such a thing as the face of a man–doubts if he ever really saw one, ever anything more than dreamed of such a thing:–he never came near enough to human being, to know what human being really was–so may well doubt if human beings ever were, if ever he was one of them.”
Spooky no? He goes on to write…
Self-loathing, and that for no sin, from no repentance, from no vision of better, would begin and grow and grow; and to what it might not come no soul can tell–of essential, original misery, uncompromising self disgust! Only, then, if a being be capable of self-disgust, is there not some room for hope–as much as a pinch of earth in the cleft of a rock might yield for the growth of a pine? Nay, there must be hope while there is existence; for where there is existence there must be God; and God is for ever good, nor can be other than good.
It makes sense to me only if there is hope for those who are there. If I am wrong, than I must be wrong in such a way that things are even better than I hope. For God is Hope. The sign above the gates of Hell may read, “Embrace Hope all ye who enter here.”
http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/18/
Greg,
Hell is not a punishment for a certain number of years of sinning. All people sin. Heaven and Hell are simply the respective, final fruitions of what we have spent our lives wanting and following in this life.
If our lives have been spent mocking God as being mythical, or pronouncing Him to be a “moral monster,” then from the Catholic perspective, logic would seem to dictate that, at the end of our lives, we will either see that we seriously but sincerely misunderstood Him, and thus, we will possibly need some time in Purgatory to be prepared to spend eternity with Him, *or* we will see that we just didn’t, and don’t, like Him, and that we thought, and still think, that we are truly smarter and wiser and more moral than Him, and thus, we still won’t *want* to spend eternity with Him– so He will allow us to have what we want, which is eternity separated from Him, i.e. Hell. No unjust punishment. Just what we truly want.
“*or* we will see that we just didn’t, and don’t, like Him, and that we thought, and still think, that we are truly smarter and wiser and more moral than Him, and thus, we still won’t *want* to spend eternity with Him”, Christopher, what if on that day it turns out that the ones with the real understanding of the character of god were those fighting with ISIS?
Would you be willing to consider yourself more moral than god in that case?
Continuing the thought experiment of what if there is a god with an interest in intelligent beings with the ability to make moral/ethical choices then as I suggested earlier there is a case for considering all the established religions as a test.
The thinking, moral being will not live comfortably with any of them and being able to maintain a comfortable adherence to the dogmas of one of them is a fail rather than a pass (a pass very much based on you happening to be born into the right culture to be exposed to the correct view of god in the first place).
In my view a much more logical proposition than the idea of this life being the sole determined of our fates in an after life and somewhat more logical than that of the nature of god portrayed by any of the worlds major religions being a god with a plan for humanity and being worthy of our worship.
Bob
Bob,
Thanks for your comment. You ask, what if ISIS has the true understanding of God’s character, and I learn that upon my death?
First of all, I must say that, as a Catholic by choice and conviction, I am bound to, and I happily do, affirm and believe all that the Catholic Church officially teaches– and I *don’t* believe it as I “believe” a personal preference that I may have, such as that coffee ice cream is better than than praline ice cream (though I do like both!).
I believe it what the Church teaches as a matter of certitude by faith, *not* as opposed to reason, but by faith working *with* reason. The Church teaches the goodness of human reason, and she also teaches that we can actually *know* truths of divine revelation, and that they are not irrational leaps of blind faith into the dark. Saint John Paul II’s encyclical, “Fides et Ratio” explains the Catholic view of the friendship between faith and reason more fully. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html
The Church officially teaches that the true character of God is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ. I believe this, but I *do not* believe it as a matter of blind faith. I was not always a Catholic or even any kind of a Christian. For years, I was an outspoken atheist.
The radical love for *all people,* that is displayed in both the life and the sacrificial death of Jesus, is decidedly *not* what is displayed by ISIS and its supporters. I understand that you posed your question as a thought experiment, but– and I mean this with no disrespect– the question is a logically self-refuting one to a Catholic. I am not, and never will be, more moral than Jesus. For this reason, I have no worries about discovering, in this life or the next, that I am “more moral than God.”
If I’m wrong about God and His character, then, to my thinking, my mother made the logical, sensible decision in committing suicide when I was nine years old (even as deeply as her decision hurt me and everyone in my family). To every bit of my understanding, without God, life is an objective horror– and, as an atheist, I experienced life as a *subjective* horror for years.
However, for many more years now, I have been convinced, by reason and by faith, that God exists, that He is loving, that there *is* objective sense to life (and much mystery too), and that, even with all of its terrible pain, life is worth living. I am convinced of these things, partially, but not only, because I am convinced of the historic teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church. (I am *not* saying here that I think agnostics and atheists and other non-Christians should make the same choice that my mother made though– far from it!!)
P.S. Bob,
Also, being a Christian is not simply a matter of where one is born in the world. People become Christians, and often die for doing so, in majority-atheist Communist countries and majority-Muslim countries. There have been, and continue to be, converts to Christianity in almost-entirely-non-Christian Japan, and in other parts of the world where, both circumstantially and statistically speaking, Christian conversion seems very unlikely. It happens though, and it keeps happening. Nothing can seem to stop it.
Christopher, a number of points raised there. I’ll poke away at a few. Firstly I don’t know you enough to know how to respond to the tragedy that marred your early life (and whatever pain your mother went through to lead to her choice). You have my best wishes in whatever remains to be worked through in getting over the scars that left.
Likewise for your point “as an atheist, I experienced life as a *subjective* horror for years”, this is possibly not the right forum for unpacking some of that but again my best wishes in moving on from that if you have not already done so. I don’t believe I’m speaking only for myself in saying that life is not a subjective horror for most people even if life is sometimes hard.
As for the rest I’m not quite sure where to head. From my perspective your decision to adopt the Catholic Churches version of the Christian god is no more a truth of divine revelation than that of someone who chooses an entirely different version of faith (or no faith). You are correct in point out that people become christians outside their own culture but by the same token people from predominately christian cultures convert to other faiths. By and large though the predominate faith in the culture you are raised in will be a useful predictor of religious belief. It is by and large an accident of geography if you happen to accept a particular view of god and his or her plan for humanity.
Without wishing to offend one of our hosts (that’s his besties job) I don’t see a balance in the Catholic Churches past of present history to leave me with any conviction that they hold the keys to a correct understanding of the nature of a just and holy god or anything else that would give me reason to in some way subject my own free will to their teachings.
There have been good things done by them but enough evil and enough lack of judgement (taking the optimistic view there rather than the cynical view) for me to disregard them as a moral authority.
Most prevalent in my mind because of it’s currency (but not the only or worst of their horrors) is the systematic protection of child abusers (sexual, other forms of physical abuse and psychological) and an apparent unwillingness even now after much is exposed to truly put their house in order. Those with substantial allegations in their past of either having protected child abusers or lacking the decency and wisdom to deal with allegations of such abuse continue to still be appointed to senior roles.
I’m getting the impression there is still a culture of trying to protect the church from the consequences of evils done under it’s oversight across many countries and many years. If they lack the fundamental morality at their highest levels to decide that the careers or services of particular individuals in their ranks are more important than truly moving to ensure that the horror of that part of their history is dealt with as thoroughly as possible then they clearly lack the moral authority to determine on my behalf what I should believe about the nature of god or how to live my life to the best it can be. There are certainly times I lack that ability as well but that’s a somewhat different issue I think.
Bob
Bob,
Thanks for your reply and your kind wishes, as far as my dealing with my mother’s suicide. It has been over 30 years since that terrible event, and I am much better at dealing with it than I once was. There are definitely still emotional scars, and there is a void in my heart from her absence, over the years, which will not be completely filled in this life, but there has been, and continues to be, healing.
About my subjective experiencing of life as a “horror” when I was an atheist, my mother’s suicide was not the primary culprit there. From my adolescence (if not earlier), I have not been able to think of my life in a way that is disconnected from the realities of living for people in other regions of the U.S. and other parts of the world.
This is an example of what I mean. In certain countries, at this very minute, young girls (12 years old in some cases) who have been trafficked and sold into sexual slavery, are having to “service” male adult clients. For some of these pre-teenage and early-teenage girls, they have to “service” between 20 to 30 men each night. Now, I am living in the same world, at the same time, as these precious girls who are having to endure such almost unimaginable horrors. I don’t think of, or experience, my life as being fundamentally disconnected from their lives. Their suffering is certainly a reality with which I deeply struggle at times, in terms of reconciling it with my faith in an all-powerful, perfect, loving God– but as terrible as their suffering is, it does not leave me in a state of despair and hopelessness.
When I was an atheist, though, the knowledge of such suffering truly made life seem like a horrowshow, and I often experienced life as a horrorshow, partially because I knew that this suffering, and many, many other kinds of suffering, are *constantly going on*, around the world, and probably even within my own area here in the U.S.– *and* if atheism is really true, then there is no *ultimate meaning or sense* to this or any kind of suffering, whether large or small.
Other than the fact of the free will of men, used wickedly, I still don’t understand, now, why these young girls should have to suffer so much. I don’t understand why God allows it to happen, other than the fact that we are free and can make very good and very bad, even evil, choices. I do know, though, that one of the most active groups, in terms of combating sex trafficking, both in word and in deed, is Christians. Catholics, Protestants, Christians of all ecclesiastical stripes, are alerting the world to the truth about sex trafficking, and some of them are actually going to these hell-houses of abuse and rescuing the girls.
As an atheist, suffering (mine and others’) certainly seemed bad, to the point that it often depressed me– but I couldn’t see, and didn’t have, any *redemptive hope* within suffering, because I understood that, logically speaking, within my worldview of the time, we are all just here, in this life, with no *ultimate, objective* rhyme or reason to anything. By contrast, as a Christian, I still struggle with understanding, and dealing with, suffering; I struggle with it personally, emotionally, and philosophically, *but* I don’t view it from within the context of an atheistic, impersonal universe which simply goes on and on, pitilessly, whether people are helped or harmed, comforted or ravaged.
Next subject. You wrote that, to you, my choice of Catholicism looks basically the same as anyone else’s choice of any Christian tradition. I can certainly understand that reaction from your perspective. For me, when I began to re-invesigate the teachings of the Catholic Church, after years in a decidedly anti-Catholic form of Protestantism, one of the surprising discoveries (for me, personally) that I made was the writings of the early Church Fathers: St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, Clement of Rome, and so on.
Af first, I had thought these men were, surely, sufficiently early in Church history (from 100 to 300 A.D, before Constantine’s legalization of Christianity for the Roman Empire) that their theological and ecclesiological thinking would be fairly similar to the “pure, uncorrupted, Sola Scriptura” philosophy to which I subscribed. That is, I did not expect them to sound like Catholics! However, they did sound very much like Catholics, including in passages such as these from St. Irenaeus in 189 A.D.:
“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul—that church which has the tradition and the faith with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (ibid., 3:3:2).
The more that I read of these early Christian writers, I saw that they simply did not reflect a good bit of the thinking that I had been taught, in my Protestant churches, for years. Moreover, they were not simply stating *their opinions* of what church life should look like and how the Scriptures should be interpreted. They were actually writing about *what these matters looked like* for the Christians of the first centuries after the deaths of Christ and the original apostles– *and* the early Church Fathers could actually, historically show their apostolic teaching connections to the apostles and those who succeeded them.
You mention the many serious problems in the Catholic Church, such as the sex-abuse scandals. They disturb me deeply. For personal reasons, and just as a human being, I cannot take such horrible realities lightly. Looking at them from outside of the Church though, as you are, you perhaps have not been able to see all of the many measures that have been taken to address the problem. Many, many priests have been stripped of their capacities to operate as priests, and this has been done *by Church leaders* Pope Benedict XVI was particularly active in this regard.
Pope John Paul II was a good and holy man, but very unfortunately, to my mind, he did have a personal failing, in that he wanted so much not to “rush to judgment” against certain priests and Bishops (a tendency partially attributable to his past of seeing priests falsely accused and killed in Communist countries) that he listened to some of his advisors too much, when they vigorously defended the innocence of certain accused men. This was a real failing on the part of the Pope, but it did not come from a malicious heart. John Paul II did begin the cleaning up (and cleaning out!) of the priesthood, but Benedict XVI did much more. From within the Church, I have been able to see much good in this area that you may not have seen. There is still work to be done though. I can’t deny that, and I don’t want to deny it.
Even with the many sins and failings of Church leaders throughout the centuries though, I don’t see why or how those sins and failings *logically invalidate* the Church’s teachings. St. Peter, whom Catholics count as the first Pope, denied Christ three times, just before He was crucified, and Peter was still chosen by God to write parts of the New Testament which testifies to the Gospel of Christ. I could say more in this regard, but I don’t want to allow this treatise of a comment to become a dissertation, so I will end here.
Christopher “Even with the many sins and failings of Church leaders throughout the centuries though, I don’t see why or how those sins and failings *logically invalidate* the Church’s teachings” – for me it’s stepping back to an earlier phrase you used “but by faith working *with* reason” .
Clearly my disconnect from the core beliefs of the Christian faith is such that it’s more than just about the failings of the leadership of the catholic church but as a former evangelical I am of the view that those ongoing failings put a massive hole in the Catholic Churches ability to speak with credibility or to be trusted to deal with issues in a way that does put their own secular needs ahead of truth. I can listen to the arguments put by those with some history of significant failings but the arguments will be judged on perceived merit rather than on authority. There are those I give more trust to because their known track record is good, the Catholic Church leadership is not in that category.
From my own perspective the current pope has undermined perceptions of seriously dealing with the issue of covering up of child sexual abuse. The part where the church in light of past misjudgements should be careful to be seen to take the issue seriously even if it means some high ranking clergy find themselves sidelined or career paths curtailed based on allegations. Remembering that these are men who have supposedly devoted their lives to God and the church so personal ambition and power should not be a consideration.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-vatican-abuse-chile-idUSKBN0MR1U920150331
From an Australian perspective there are serious allegations Cardinal Pell regarding his dismissal of claims of abuse by priests, alleged attempts to pay off people to be quiet etc. The allegations appear serious enough to warrant Pell being stood aside from his position while questions are answered rather than a promotion to the Vatican. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4240282.htm more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pell#Handling_of_sex_abuse_claims_as_Archbishop_of_Sydney
The allegations have been around for a long time and Pell’s response has in my view varied depending on what’s known publicly rather than anything that looks like genuine concern for truth.
I don’t know as much about it but have also seen claims that the church continues to shelter paedophile priests by moving them between countries. Not so sure on that one but I’m certainly not convinced that the church is determined to remove this evil from it’s midst.
Bob