Dear Friends and Benefactors, 
“He descended into hell…” (Fifth Article of the Apostles Creed)
These words of the Apostles Creed (which, hopefully, all of us are saying everyday when we faithfully pray devoutly Our Lady’s Rosary) refer to the soul of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which after His Death on the Cross, descended into ‘Limbo’ (Bosom of Abraham, Limbo of the Fathers) – that is, to the place where the souls of the just who died before Christ were detained, and were waiting for the time of their redemption, since the Gates of Heaven were closed after the sin of Adam, which we call Original Sin.
HELL OF THE DAMNED
Concerning the topic of hell in its strict sense, (the hell of the damned), there are many people today who question its existence and its eternity.
Over the last sixty years, those in the counterfeit church of Vatican II, the novus-ordo church, have become increasingly more presumptuous, believing that if one is judged to be a “good person” by his fellow human beings, his soul would immediately go to heaven. The notion that he might be condemned to hell escapes them.
Their reasoning would be something like the following: “How could a good and merciful God send His beloved creatures to a place like hell, and stay there forever? This hardly makes sense. No! The deceased is ‘in a better place now.’ Hell, if it exists at all, is reserved for people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. Maybe a few other convicted felons who have committed heinous crimes against humanity would join them. Nobody is perfect. To err is human. God understands this and will reward us because we are basically good, mean well, and are sincere.”
TRUE FAITH IS NOT A FEELING
First of all, the True Faith is NOT an emotion, sentiment, or aesthetic outburst. It is something we receive in fidelity to Him Who reveals. 
In the Holy Roman Catholic Church, which includes Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, God reveals to us the existence and the eternity of hell – there will be no forgiveness after death for the sinner who has died in unrepentant mortal sin. [Quotations of sources are further on]. 
No plea for mercy will then be heard and none will come to the aid of the damned, but their punishment will last for all eternity and there will be no end to their misery.
What is it that makes hell to be eternal? Is it God’s justice? Does God deny the damned the grace necessary for repentance? Are the wicked so abstinent as to refuse God’s grace? We shall see that the human soul, after death, becomes immutably fixed on either good or evil, such that no change of course is possible – not even God could bring a soul out of hell, there no grace is efficacious!
LOGIC OF HELL’S ETERNITY
Father Pohle tells us that “St. Augustine has pointed out that there is no stronger argument for the eternity of Hell than the fact that Sacred Scripture compares it in respect of duration to Heaven. This reasoning is confirmed by the Biblical teaching that the fate of every man is irrevocably sealed at death. That there is no hope of salvation for the wicked in Hell may be concluded from our Saviour’s dictum, ‘It were better for him if that man had never been born.’”
Saint Gregory the Great summons his penetrating oratorical powers to describe hell as, “death without death, end without end, defect without defect – which death lives, which end ever begins, and which defect never defects.”
The logic of hell’s eternity can be summed up this way: Sin is defined as a turning away from God toward some created good. When, by mortal sin we turn away from God completely, we constitute ourselves in a state of opposition to Him, just as the state of grace constitutes us in God’s friendship. As grace is fulfilled in glory, so aversion from God in this life is fulfilled in Hell. 
Saint Thomas Aquinas points out that when, because of death, there is irreparable damage caused to the principle of union with God, theological Charity, there is an everlasting chasm between the soul and God. Truly, there is no greater horror than final impenitence, which causes that chasm, which is none other than the “great chaos” Abraham spoke of to Dives, who was “buried in hell” — “between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot, nor from thence come hither” (St. Luke 16:26).
PUNISHMENT IS PROPORTIONATE
In the “Summa Theologiae”, Saint Thomas Aquinas explains as follows:
Punishment is proportionate to sin in point of severity, both in Divine and in human judgments. In no judgment, however, as Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xxi, 11) is it requisite for punishment to equal fault in point of duration. For the fact that adultery or murder is committed in a moment does not call for a momentary punishment: in fact they are punished sometimes by imprisonment or banishment for life — sometimes even by death; wherein account is not taken of the time occupied in killing, but rather of the expediency of removing the murderer from the fellowship of the living, so that this punishment, in its own way, represents the eternity of punishment inflicted by God. 
Now according to Gregory (Dial. iv, 44) it is just that he who has sinned against God in his own eternity should be punished in God’s eternity. A man is said to have sinned in his own eternity, not only as regards continual sinning throughout his whole life, but also because, from the very fact that he fixes his end in sin, he has the will to sin, everlastingly. Wherefore Gregory says (Dial. iv, 44) that the “wicked would wish to live without end, that they might abide in their sins forever.”
WHY IS HELL ETERNAL? – FURTHER ARGUMENTS
According to the renowned Dominican theologian and a true disciple of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange OP, in his Catholic classic “Life Everlasting”, he explains that hell is eternal on account of the grave offence which sin is against God. The gravity of punishment is not determined so much by the duration of the sin (most sins only last a moment, but hell is eternal), rather the punishment is determined by the malice in the soul of the sinner and the infinite good of the God who is offended. Thus, since mortal sin kills the soul by annihilating charity and offends God by completely severing any supernatural bond to him in love, such sin requires an eternal punishment. This punishment is the pains of hell (both the despair of the soul who has no hope and the physical pains of fire and ice).
Moreover, hell is eternal because the souls there are immutably fixed in evil, hating God and neighbor. Some theologians (Scotus and Suarez) held that this obstinacy is caused for men and for demons because God no longer offers the grace of conversion to these souls. This, however, is unsatisfactory, since the eternity of hell is then predicated upon a refusal on the part of God and not on the part of man.
Cardinal Cajetan shows the beginnings of a better way. He argued that, in death, the human soul becomes something like the angelic soul – as the pure spirit has a judgment that is immutable so to the judgment of the separated human soul is immutable. Because we are now living on earth and in terrestrial time, after making a choice we can learn something new and successively change our will. The angels, however, have an intuitive knowledge, see reality in all its aspects, and can learn nothing new – thus they can never change their will. So, it is with the separated soul after death, having chosen for either good or evil in the last moment of life, it can never alter this choice. Having freely chosen for either good or evil, the separated soul immutably fixes itself in this choice.
Later Thomists developed and adapted this fundamental insight of Cardinal Cajetan maintaining that “the soul begins to determine itself by the last free act of the present life, and it attains this fixation immutably, in regard to its knowledge and its will, in the first instant after death. Thus, it immobilizes itself in its own choice. Hence it is not a lack of God’s mercy which fixes the soul in obstinacy.”
Finally, it will be helpful to consider that each man judges according to his inclination. Thus, the humble man judges all things by his inclination to humility, but the ambitious man judges by his inclination to pride – hence the proud man sees the same event quite differently than does the humble man. After death, our inclination to our last end cannot change: thus, the humble man will continue in the next life to judge definitively according to the inclination to virtue, but the proud man will judge definitively according to his pride. The pride of the unrepentant sinner is now eternalized, he is fixed in obstinacy, he is forever perverted and incapable of choosing the only road of return, namely, humility and obedience.
HOLY SCRIPTURE

  1. “And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting, than having two feet, to be cast into the hell of unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee with one eye to enter into the kingdom of God, than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.” (St. Mark 9:42-47; cf. St. Matthew 18:8-9).
  2. “The rich man also died: and he was buried in hell. And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (St. Matthew 16:22-23).
  3. “Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you covered me not: sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.” (St. Matthew 25:41-46). 
    (N.B.  the different judgments passed on the just and the unjust were based, in this passage, solely on the criterion of GOOD WORKS. This does not contradict, but merely complements, those passages of Scripture which show that God’s grace along with the Catholic Christian Faith are necessary for salvation.)
  4. “If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth.” (St. John 15:6).
  5. “I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not: And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.” (Saint Jude 1:5-7).
  6. “Seeing it is a just thing with God to repay tribulation to them that trouble you: And to you who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with the angels of his power: In a flame of fire, giving vengeance to them who know not God, and who obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall suffer eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord, and from the glory of his power: eternal punishment in destruction.” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9).
  7. “And hell and death were cast into the pool of fire; this is the second death.” (Apocalypse 20:14). 
  8. “The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Apocalypse 21:8).
    THE CHURCH FATHERS
    SAINT IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
    “Do not err, my brethren; … if a man by false teaching corrupt the faith of God, for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified, such a one shall go in his foulness to the unquenchable fire, as also shall he who listens to him.” (Letter to the Ephesians, 16:2).
    SAINT JUSTIN THE MARTYR
    “I will briefly reply that if the matter be not thus, either there is no God, or if there is, He does not concern Himself with men, virtue and vice mean nothing, and they who transgress important laws are unjustly punished by the lawgivers.” (Second Apology 2:9).
    SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
    “All of us, Greeks and Jews, heretics and Christians, acknowledge that God is just. Now many who sinned have passed away without being punished, while many others, who led virtuous lives, did not die until they had suffered innumerable tribulations. If God is just, how will He reward the latter and punish the former, unless there be a hell and a resurrection.” (Homily on the Epistle to the Philipians, 6:6).
    “If those who argue against hell would embrace virtue, they would soon be convinced of its existence.” (Homily on the Epistle to the Romans, 31:4).
    THE MAGISTERIUM OF THE CHURCH
    The Athanasian Creed: “He [Jesus Christ] shall come again to judge the living and the dead; at His coming all men have to arise again with their bodies and will render an account of their own deeds; and those who have done good, will go into live everlasting, but those who have done evil, into eternal fire. This is the Catholic Faith; unless everyone believes this faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.” (Denz. 40).
    Pope Innocent III: “The punishment of original sin is the deprivation of the vision of God, but the punishment of actual sin is the torments of everlasting hell. . .” (Denz. 410).
    Lateran Council IV: “But He [Christ] descended in soul, and he arose in the flesh, and He ascended equally in both, to come at the end of time, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the wicked as well as to the elect, all of whom will rise with their bodies which they now bear, that they may receive according to their works, whether these works have been good or evil, the latter everlasting punishment with the devil, and the former everlasting glory with Christ.” (Denz. 429).
    The Council of Florence: “Moreover, the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin or in original sin only, descend immediately into hell but to undergo punishments of different kinds.” (Denz. 694).
    The Council of Florence: “It [the Catholic Church] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, and heretics, and schismatics, cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ [St. Matthew 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even it he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.” (Council of Florence, Decree in Behalf of the Jacobites, Denz. 714).
    RADIO REPLIES
    The following questions and statements made by Protestants to the renowned radio preachers, Father Leslie Rumble and Father Charles M. Carty, several years before Vatican II, are a few samples of how Protestantism and Modernism have affected souls today in the way they think and believe.
    Q.  I am human, and I can’t believe in a burning Hell, above all for souls Christ came to redeem.
    A.  I cannot believe that Christ came to redeem people if there be no Hell from which to redeem them. But beware of your imagination. If you imagine a Hell which is in any way opposed to the justice and love of God, that is not the Hell you are asked to believe in at all. God is just, merciful, and truthful. He says that there is a Hell, and you are asked to believe in the Hell which He knows to exist, not in any vague speculation of your own as to its nature. Hell is as much a mystery of faith as is grace, and you are asked to believe in the fact of Hell because God knows the truth and could not tell an untruth. You are not asked to comprehend fully its nature, and your inability to believe in the Hell you imagine does not mean that you are unable to believe in the Hell which God created for “the devil and his angels”.
    Q.  How could a mother be happy in Heaven with her child in Hell?
    A.  She could not were her view of things limited by her present inadequate ideas. But with an unclouded view of what really constitutes goodness and of what really constitutes evil, she will have very different estimates in Heaven which will render happiness not only possible but a fact. Let us try to grasp it. Hell being a fact, our lack of understanding makes no difference. And in any case, Christ loved the child more than did the mother herself, yet He is happy in Heaven. So, there must be some way out. You see, we cannot interpret Heaven in terms of this life. Here we are natural beings, our natural love directly awakened by our fellow beings. But in Heaven God Himself will be the direct object of our love. We shall love God, what God loves, and as God loves. All other beings will be loved in God. Thus, Christ said concerning the difference of human love in Heaven that marriage shall not exist, but that men will be “as the angels of God in Heaven.” Matt. XXII., 30. 
    Merely natural love will change to supernatural love in and through God, and people will be lovable insofar as they resemble God. If a son dies unrepentant, having identified himself with wickedness, then he will be the opposite of God. The mother will experience an absolute necessity to love God who is pure, just, holy, and truth itself. And she will find complete happiness in doing so. Her natural love for her son gives way to a supernatural love for him if he is pure, just, holy and truthful. But it gives way to her love for God if her child is impure, unjust, wicked and essentially a liar, as is the father of lies himself. Her transfer to Heaven has changed her reasons for loving her son, and if he dies in such evil dispositions, she has no supernatural reason to love him.
    All her happiness is in God, and that happiness cannot be disturbed. This may sound difficult. It must. For we are trying to explain conditions of Heaven by ideas drawn from our earthly experience, ideas which do not go far enough. The explanation gives a solution as far as the limited mind of man can go. And if it astonishes human reason, we should be more astonished still if our limited powers could fully grasp the matter.
    Q.  Is any person so bad as to deserve eternal punishment?
    A. Yes. The man who deliberately and finally despises and rejects the Infinite Love of God deserves to be deprived of it forever.
    Q.  Surely, he did some virtuous actions. Are they to be of no avail?
    A.  They would have counted for very much, had the man wished. But if he subsequently commits mortal sin and dies without repenting of it, he forfeits any benefits of previous virtue. Refraining from adultery on Friday is no excuse for the commission of murder on Saturday.
    Q.  You damn people whose wills are so weak that they cannot avoid sin.
    A.  None but deliberately willed and unrepented mortal sin meets with eternal punishment. If inherent weakness is so great as to destroy real responsibility, God would not accuse man of mortal sin. But such is not the case with the normal man. The normal man is able to refuse consent of the will to evil inclinations and suggestions. Some people are only too ready to call their own cowardice inherent weakness. They could have refused to sin, and afterwards fell back on the lame excuse of ‘weak moments’.
    Q.  However bad people may be, I think it is against the right ideas of God to speak of His punishing anyone forever.
    A.  Then what are you going to do with Satan? He is a creature of God even as we. Is he going to reform? Will he ever come out of the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels? No. And granting the fact that God is punishing one of His creatures like that, responsible human souls can certainly meet with the same fate. I do not like the thought of anyone suffering in Hell any more than you do. But that will not make me deny the existence of Hell. Hundreds of things we do not like are facts.
    Q.  That any human being should be sent to such a Hell of misery as you have described seems to me a monstrous injustice.
    A.  Far from its being an injustice, justice demands a Hell. All law has a sanction, and, to be efficacious, the sanction must be proportionate to the malice of the criminal. “No sanction, no law,” is an axiom. It is absurd to say, “You must do this, if you have to reply to the query, ‘What if I do not, what will happen?’ by weakly saying, ‘Oh, nothing!’” 
    Justice is a principle. Human justice demands sanctions. Flaunt the law; deliberately take somebody’s life, and the due penalty is incurred. But if human justice fails to apprehend a criminal, God will not fail to balance the scales of justice. Then, too, many crimes against the law of God, and against conscience, are outside human jurisdiction. But God is not mocked. And serious, unrepented sin will meet with the irrevocable penalty of an eternal living death. The soul, immortal of its very nature, cannot but survive; and it will live on forever either as the friend of God or at enmity with God. But consider the position. God manifests His serious laws. 
    If there be no eternal retribution, a soul can cry to Him, “Oh, I know You can punish me for a time, but even You will be obliged to pardon me, to make me happy in the end. There’s no eternal punishment. Then let it all come. I care nothing for Your laws, nor shall I ever repent of having flung down the gauntlet to You. Do Your worst. I’m going to do as I like and pay no attention to any of Your rights over me.” 
    I simply ask, would justice be satisfied if God had to pardon such a creature of His own making? The compulsory pardon of such a creature would be to lie at the thing’s feet, insulted and trampled upon forever. No. Justice demands eternal retribution for those who knowingly and deliberately flout God’s laws and choose not to repent of having done so.
    Q.  I still maintain that it is unjust to be punished eternally for a sin which occupied but a few moments.
    A.  In our own world life sentences are given for crimes of perhaps two minutes’ duration; and no one calls it unjust. The punishment is not proportionate to the time a sin takes, but to its gravity, malice and sheer wickedness.
    Q.  Where is this enormous gravity in eating meat on Friday, which the Catholic Church regards as a mortal sin? Hell for such a trifle is outrageous.
    A.  The soul would not be punished simply for the eating of meat on Friday. It would be punished for violating a grave law of the Catholic Church. The grave law forbidding meat on Fridays takes its significance, not from the thing forbidden, but from the divine authority behind the law, and a deliberate defiance of the authority of God, certainly a mortal sin. It is a case of radical obedience or disobedience. The law is that one cannot have a given pleasure and the friendship of God. If one says, ‘Well, I prefer this particular pleasure to the friendship of God, takes the pleasure, and dies without repenting, God can only say, “You can’t reject my friendship and have it.” Christ said to the Church, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven.” Mt. XVIII, 18. Now, the Church binds Catholics under pain of mortal sin not to eat meat on Friday. Christ gave up His life in frightful suffering on that day, and the Church commands Catholics, as an act of grateful remembrance and in a spirit of obedience, to give up the pleasure of taking meat. And as Christ said of His Church, “He that hears you hears Me, and he that despises you despises Me.” Lk. X, 16. Catholics know that to despise the authority of their Church in this matter is to despise Christ. You see, you have not understood the real character of the sin. To despise and reject Christ is to despise and reject an infinite good. Infinite punishment is proportionate.
    Q.  Do you mean to say that even sixty years of sin would not be expiated by ten times sixty years of suffering and misery?
    A.  If a man renounced his sins, repudiated his evil dispositions, and turned to God in repentant love, much less might suffice to wipe out his debts. All depends upon the intensity with which he loves God at the moment of death. A very great love of God can fully expiate past sins. Thus Christ said, “Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much.” Lk. VII, 47. And it is a fact that God has often been most tenaciously loved by those who at one time offended him most. But if a man dies in a state of grave and unrepented mortal sin, ten times sixty years would certainly not suffice to wipe out his debt to God. He died without renouncing his evil dispositions. His time of probation is over. He dies identified with sin. He neither can, nor does he wish to change. Did he get the chance, he would commit the same sins again. His malice is a persevering debt never expiated, but concurrently renewed in the midst of his suffering. A life of sixty years in sin, taken by itself, could be expiated, provided it had been repudiated, and the will were not persevering in malicious opposition to God. But if a man has never retracted his evil will, the debt can never be wiped out. It’s not a question of past sinful actions over and done with. It’s a question of an ever-present disposition of malice irreconcilable with God.
    Q.  Happily, for all your talk of a sufficient sanction, our present emotions are too strong to be influenced by hazy thoughts of the next life.
    A.  As thousands of people resist strong emotional attractions precisely because of their convictions concerning the next life, your statement is untrue. Our emotions are not too strong to allow us to be influenced by thoughts of the next life. I grant that many people refuse to think and ponder over the reality of the next life and deliberately allow their emotions to sway and even usurp the place of reason-not, however, happily.
    Q.  Your dry logic of just sanctions leaves me unimpressed. God is a God of goodness, love, and mercy.
    A.  God’s very goodness and love demand Hell for the wicked, and mercy cannot be invoked on behalf of one who deliberately rejects it. Part of God’s goodness is His very justice. His perfections are in perfect harmony and cannot contradict each other. In fact, a denial of Hell is a denial of God’s goodness and holiness. Were He less holy, Hell might not be eternal. But the holier God is, the greater His aversion to sin. His infinite love also demands Hell for those who reject it. Love and hatred go together. 
    If we are indifferent to a thing, we do not resent its destruction. But the more one loves good, the more one resents the evil which would destroy the good. The divine spirit of love is the everlasting reward of the holy yet the undying hatred which will forever enkindle the flames of Hell. It is not so difficult to understand. 
    When the white light of the sun falls upon an object which absorbs the light, it appears white. If it reflects some of the light, it appears colored. So, when the love of God bestows being upon a rational creature, if the will absorbs all to itself and reflects none of that love to the honor and glory of God, the soul renders itself black in God’s sight, and His hatred is the result of His very love. “If I exist at all”, the soul could say, “it is because of God’s love. I cannot say why His love wished me to exist, but I can say why He hates me.” 
    Let us remember, too, that the love of God prompted the Incarnation of His only-begotten Son, the greatest act of love yet; and if sin was bad enough to warrant the Incarnation and Death of the Son of God, it is bad enough to warrant Hell for those who despise the means offered for their redemption.
    Q.  But I cannot bring myself to believe that a God of love would condemn a soul to everlasting suffering.
    A.  In a way you are quite right, but not in the way you think. A God of love supposes a God who does love, and that supposes an object loved. If a soul is the object of God’s love, that soul will not be condemned to Hell. But God is good, and loves what is good. Loving what is good, He must hate what is evil. He, therefore, hates the moral evil called sin. That is why He forbids sin. If, then, a soul identifies itself with sin, it identifies itself with the object of God’s hatred. There is no God of love for that soul whilst, and insofar as, it clings to its evil dispositions. If a soul dies without disassociating itself from evil by repentance, it will go to Hell. But it is not sent there by a God of love; it is rejected by the God of justice. 
    You seem to think that a God of love must love everything, whether good or evil. That is not true. God is a God of love in the sense that He must love all that is good. If I am good, He is a God of love to me. If I am evil, I forfeit any claim to His love. As long as we identify ourselves with that moral goodness which God can love, He is a God of love to us, and we cannot be lost. In that sense, the God of love never condemns a soul to everlasting punishment. But the evil soul who forfeits God’s love will certainly meet with that fate.
    Q.  Don’t you think that cruelty is the most hateful vice?
    A.  It is not the most hateful vice, but it is thoroughly evil and a form of savage brutality. However, the doctrine of Hell does not justify in any way the attributing of cruelty to God.
    Q.  He who sentences even the vilest creature to eternal torture is more cruel than the most cruel of men.
    A.  Cruelty is the infliction of punishment upon the innocent or beyond due measure upon the guilty. God is not cruel. He is just. When you mention cruelty, you unconsciously make appeal to the sentiment of human pity. Now, we pity involuntary evils. We pity the one who suffers involuntarily. We pity criminals who repent and try to make good. We pity them even before they repent if we feel that there is yet hope that they may do so. 
    But we do not pity the man who hardens himself in his evil intentions – won’t repent, but tells us that he is going on with his malicious practices, no matter what we say. A mother who does not know how to punish does not know how to pity her child. Weakness leads to impunity. 
    And remember that God sends no one to Hell. Men go there. God does not want them to go there, otherwise His warning us that there is a Hell would be absurd.
    Q.  One who believes in Hell cannot understand the horrible nature of the vice of cruelty, not fearing to cast a reflection on God.
    A.  I believe in the existence of Hell. I am not in the least likely to regard that doctrine as implying cruelty in God, nor do I think I have a lower estimate of the horrible nature of cruelty than you. The God I serve abominates it, and will punish willful and serious and unrepented cruelty to one’s fellows by Hell forever. Even you don’t hate it that much.
    Q.  God should set a good example to men.
    A.  He does so. Your complaint is that He manifests too great a love for the good and too great a corresponding hatred of evil. You want Him to sanction evil, and tell men that He doesn’t mind so very much if they do sin.
    Q.  It is an outrage on Christian sympathy to all who realize what Hell really is.
    A.  What Hell really is, will never be realized by human intelligence in this life. The fact that there is a Hell is known because God has revealed its existence. And is it an outrage on Christian sympathy to think that God’s strict rights will be vindicated? If a man has any Christian sympathy, it goes out to Christ above all, dying in great suffering upon the Cross precisely to save men of good will from the eternal punishment of Hell – and he does not sympathize with those who blaspheme and despise Christ, and fling back into God’s face this love-offering of His own Son. No man can deliberately reject God’s love and have it.
    Q.  You talk of injustice, but you seem to have forgotten the mercy of God.
    A.  I have not forgotten the mercy of God. But you have forgotten that mercy is begged for, not forced upon people against their will. God will mercifully pardon anything, on sincere repentance; nothing without it. There is room for pardon, but not for impunity.
    Q.  But how could a merciful God send anyone to Hell?
    A.  God sends no one to Hell. Fools go there. God warns us against Hell very seriously. If He wished us to go there, the last thing He would do would be to warn us against it.
    But none of these difficulties can avail against the fact. As surely as good and evil exist in this world, so do their counterparts in eternity – Heaven and Hell. And, above all, since God has said that there is a Hell, there is no use in urging our ideas as to whether there should be one or not. It is better to give our attention to the living of a life which cannot end in Hell. As Fr. Rickaby has pointed out, “There is only one way to abolish Hell; abolish your own by a good life.”
    Q.  Would it not be better not to create, than to punish some soul forever in Hell?
    A.  Even did that seem better to us, our little ideas are not in the measure of all that is truly wise. Creation is a fact. Hell is a fact. That souls can be lost is a fact. If we find it hard to reconcile these facts with our human ideas, we can only conclude that our ideas must be limited and inadequate, and that God’s infinite wisdom must perceive more aspects than those to which we advert. God has, in fact, revealed this truth in the words, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways.” 
    We are too prone to concentrate on individual details and lose sight of the whole scheme. God has not to choose between creating this or that individual, but He made a race of beings propagating its kind. And He saw that the general good far outweighed the individual losses. 
    After all, if my great-grandfather lost his soul, that would be his own fault. There was no need for him to do so. But if he had not been allowed to exist, my grandfather, my father, and myself would not have had the opportunity of saving our souls. There is no reason why I should be deprived of eternal happiness (if I attain it) because my great-grandfather chose to throw away his eternal happiness (if he did). 
    A complete solution of the difficulty, of course, cannot be given. Man’s powers of comprehension are very limited. But reason can at least show that objections proposed by reason are not valid, and it can also show that wild conclusions and denials go far beyond any of the evidence that can be advanced in their favor.
    Q.  The future has no real bearing on morality, and if anything, would have a bad influence, making men cowards.
    A.  Since there is a future life, it has a lot to do with morality. Man is endowed with reason and is bound to exercise foresight. The future as such, whether here or hereafter, is a reasonable motive for present conduct. I refrain from eating certain foods now, because reason tells me that future indigestion will result. That is reasonable conduct. 
    I try to refrain from morally wrong conduct because it is wrong; offends God; is a personal disgrace; and will wreck my whole future existence if I persist in it, dying without repentance. All these motives are good. If the nobler motives fail to impress me in a given temptation, the thought of hell at least will tend to stop me.
    You will say, “So you are afraid of hell?” I reply, “Of course I am!” Knowing that hell is a reality, any sane man will live so as to avoid going there. It is not cowardice, but ordinary prudence. If a man leaps for his life off a railway line as an express train travels past the spot where he was standing, you would not go up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “You coward, you jumped for your life through sheer fear of that train!” God gave us our reason that we might use it for our well-being, and it is quite reasonable to weigh both advantages and penalties attached to moral law.
    Nor is this influence probably to the bad. The knowledge that retribution will follow violations of the moral law makes that law a real law. Could we say that all the penalties attached to the laws of the State are to the bad? Thousands of temptations to crime are resisted by citizens because of the thought of the future penalties. Nor does it matter much whether the penalty be future by a few weeks and in this life, or by some years, and in the next life. The principle is the same.
    Q.  Has not rationalism made havoc of Christianity, reducing the Bible to a myth, and quenching the fires of hell by humanitarian principles?
    A.  It has not made havoc of Christianity. It is making havoc of Protestantism. But Protestantism is not really Christianity. The Catholic Church alone is the true representative of Christianity, and she is not affected by rationalism. The Bible is as authentic as ever, and humanitarianism has not affected the fires of hell, even as it had nothing to do with their creation. As has been well said, the only way to abolish hell is to abolish one’s own by leading a good life, and serving God.
    Q.  How does Protestantism in general disobey Christ?
    A.  In general, it says that Scripture is a sufficient guide to salvation, although Scripture says that it is not; it denies the authority of the Church established by Christ it has no sacrifice of the Mass; it does not believe in confession; it denies Christian teaching on marriage; it rejects Purgatory, and very often its advocates refuse to believe in hell. But I could go on almost forever. Meantime, if you give me any doctrine taught by one Protestant Church, I will produce another Protestant Church which denies it, save perhaps the one doctrine that there is a God of some sort.
    A RIGHT PERSPECTIVE (from the authors of Radio Replies)
    I have been dealing with isolated aspects of this whole question of hell, proposed as difficulties. But their very isolation destroys perspective. 
    Firstly, it is a mistake to think that eternal things can be measured by ideas proper to finite men; and, secondly, it is a mistake to concentrate on individual attributes of God, such as His mercy, to the exclusion of all other attributes. As Leibuity, the non-Catholic philosopher, has remarked, “We know next to nothing of God’s ways, and to wish to measure His wisdom and goodness with our finite ideas is absurd temerity.” 
    And our separation of God’s attributes is not justified for purposes of objection. We must take all in their general connection, balancing one with another, and seeing each as the reason of the others. God is not just, and also good, and also merciful. He is justice, goodness, mercy. In the supreme unity of God these are one. It is the feebleness of our intelligence which suggests separation in these divine attributes. If hell, then, is demanded by God’s justice, it is demanded by His goodness and mercy also. And if a soul is lost, it is allowed to lose itself both by God’s justice and mercy.
    Difficulties are bound to arise for us. But objections against the doctrine of hell are not justified; for he who objects supposes the doctrine of hell to be false. And that gives the lie to God, who has revealed hell to be a fact.
    CONCLUSION
    There is a hell. The idea of eternal suffering may not appeal. It does not appeal to me. Yet hell is a fact, nevertheless. A terrible doom awaits the finally impenitent, and it is well to remember it. And the thought of hell should at least teach us the gravity of sin. Fire gives light. Let the fire of hell give us this light. And let it harden our endurance that we may face any trial and difficulty rather than sin.
    “Here cut, here burn”, cried Saint Augustine, “but spare me in eternity.” This life is the time of our probation, and death is the end of hope for him who dies radically opposed to God. 
    The renowned theologian Fr. Lacordaire once said: “Had justice alone created the abyss, there might be remedy. But it is love, the first love sempiternal, which made hell. This it is which banishes hope. Were I condemned by justice, I might flee to love. But if I am condemned by love, whither can I turn? Such is the fate of the damned, Love, that gave His Blood for them – this Love, this same Love, must now curse them. […] Love is not a farce. It is God’s love which punishes, God’s crucified love. Love is life or death. And if that love is God’s love, then love is either eternal life or eternal death.”
    These are the thoughts which lend weight, indeed, to Our Lord’s words, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” For loss of one’s soul means hell, and for all eternity. This is not a thought with which we may trifle. It is basic in Christianity, and alone explains the passionate desire to save souls so evident in the apostles of Christ throughout the ages. And the salvation of our own souls is equally a matter of urgent necessity. Sin must be renounced, and God must be served!

AVE  MARIA!
Father Joseph Poisson

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Consecration of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Immaculate Heart of Mary
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Consecration of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Immaculate Heart of Mary
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