Hell Yes

Gustave Dore's image of Satan

in hell.

Well tomorrow Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation following up from the 2014-2015 Synods on the Family is due out and the neo-trads are, fittingly enough, girding their loins for war.  For neo-trads Christianity seems to be all about lumbi (Latin for loins), that is when it isn’t all about Latin.  But before we get into that fray, let me print some responses I got from a disgruntled disciple of the late Bishop of Ypres, Cornelius Jansen.  Jansen (1585-1638) you may recall was the Catholic face of Calvinism.   Like the great Protestant Reformer and most unhappy of ecclesiastical campers Jean Calvin, Jansen believed that most souls were damned to hell through no fault of their own but simply for having been predestined to damnation from all eternity through the agency of a rather capricious deity.  In this festival of the divine wrath, should Our Blessed Lady be otherwise occupied it might even be hard to get a foursome for bridge (or golf) if such trivialities were even to be tolerated in heaven. 

Anyway here is what our own Inspector Javer wrote me

Look at what the church fathers have to say about this. They would know that most people will go to hell. Stop supporting father Barron's and von Balthazar's heresy. You are threatening souls.

Adding this is a second post  

Read the church fathers and you would realize that most people are damned. Stop supporting con (sic) Balthazar's idiotic heresy which threatens souls.

I am not really sure what provoked this admonition but let me say that both as a historian and a Christian believer, I believe there is a hell.  And despite my confidence in the overwhelming Mercy of God and the Treasury of Merits of Jesus Christ,  along with his Blessed Mother, the saints and the faithful, I would never go so far as to agree with von Balthazar’s thesis that, as some people put it, while there is a hell, it is empty.  (Von Balthazar gets that idea, by the way, from Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, but then what did she know of theology, a simple girl from the bourgeoisie.)  Hell must be an option or the human will is not ultimately free to reject God and grace is no longer free but a prison that takes away our choices. 

Besides, the words of Saint John Chrysostom have always echoed deep in my soul: Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.  From experience I am willing to add that to the Creed.  So at least there are bishops in hell.  But as for others, I would not presume to know just how chock filled with the damned hell is.  And in fact I have no idea of what hell is like--the Church does not go into a lot of detail about hell and most of our conceptions are owed to popular mythology or classic literature.  But I do know this and believe it with all my heart:

God so loved the World that he sent his only Son that whoever should believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the World but so that the World might be saved through him. 

That is the gospel in a nutshell.  You can sum up our entire faith in those two verses. 

So while there are those who might reject God and the Salvation he offers, it makes no sense whatsoever that a God who is Love—who is Love, not simply who loves—would create for the sake of destroying the greater part of his creation. I also believe, because it is in Sacred Scripture, that the plan is for Christ to gather all creation to himself and present it to the Father.  How that squares with hell I am not sure.  

But Jansenism is alive and well and lurking behind this confessional door and that penitential practice and in the sermons of psycho-sexually underdeveloped priests, and in the neurosis of unhappy souls who have not yet found their own peace.  All we can do for these poor people is to pray for them that the Lord frees them to accept the overwhelming Mercy he offers us all. 

Now back to Amoris Latitia.  Love is always a joy and there is no joy without love.  There is nothing to fear in the Mercy of God. And I have heard a rumor that one of Francis' hand-picked American supporters at last year's synod is in line to get a significant Archdiocesan See.  

Merry Christmas--God So Loved The World That He Sent His Only Son

Well, we finally finished the series on what an evangelical renewal of Religious Life might look at.  I was relieved to hear from one reader, Olllddude, that he (I presume a he) “really enjoyed” it because my readership went waaaay down over the two weeks or so I was posting it. It just isn’t as sexy as calling out the krazies or hitting issues like who gets to go to Holy Communion or just how many silk worms have laid down their lives so that Cardinal Burke can cut his dashing figure at Christmas Midnight Mass.   Nevertheless, I am glad to have written it because I believe that the renewal of Religious Life is a top priority for a renewal of the Church.  Love ‘em or leave ‘em, the Nuns on the Bus and the LCWR mavens arguing with the plump prelates of the CDF get the rest of us thinking, arguing, and looking at the issues.  And if these same women—and the guy Religious too—got their act together in terms of a truly evangelical life-style that shook the rest of us out of our cultural complacency, I think our Church would be something very different.  Not only would our favorite member of the Sacred College find himself under inpatient care for his wardrobe affectations that are somewhat of a hybrid of Louis XIV and Lady Gaga, but we would be freed of the web woven by the culture wars that are confusing the platform of the Religious Right for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in how we reach out to Gays, the Remarried, the Cohabitating, and those for whom English is a second language.  But enough about all that for now.  I want to get to the purpose of this particular posting. 

Purpose of this particular posting, Oh! I almost forgot: Merry Christmas.  Let’s remember that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the World, but so that the World might be saved through him.  Not my original idea, but it works so well, I want to borrow it.

About a week and a half ago I had a response from a reader named Christopher.  Christopher got a little itchy about my not responding right away, but that was, I assured him, because I didn’t want just to do a response hidden away beneath the posting to which he was reacting, but to do a posting on the questions he raised  about several of my entries, and in particular about my claim that the translation “for many” is not a good translation of the “pro multis” found in the Latin text of the Mass because the “pro multis” itself is a faulty translation of the Greek original.  But before I go further, let me post Christopher’s remarks. 

I've read your back posts concerning 'pro multis', and you're simply mistaken in your reading of the Greek. The phrase which is rendered into Latin as 'pro multis' is not, as you state, 'hoi polloi' ("the many" or "the multitude") but 'peri pollwn', which can only mean "for many" or "on behalf of many" (which is why it's rendered precisely as such in modern translations of the New Testament, which are based directly on the Greek). And while "for many" CAN be interpreted with a Calvinist slant, it need not be. It's perfectly consistent with the Catholic belief that those who, in fact, are reprobate need not have been and could have freely availed themselves of salvation through Christ. Your preferred translation of "for all," however, is extremely problematic, since the only way you can rule out universal salvation (if indeed you wish to rule it out) is to say that Christ's suffering was at least partially in vain (i.e., his suffering for those who would nonetheless reject salvation on Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIX

Well, let me begin by coming clean.  When I referred to the Greek word πολλοι I referred to it in the nominative case. (Greek, unlike English, is a highly inflected language, which means that a word changes its case (nouns or adjectives) or tense (verb) depending on its role in the sentence.  A noun, or the adjective that agrees with it, which is the subject of the sentence is in the “nominative case.”  A noun (and its adjectives) which is object of the action of the verb, is in the “accusative case.” And so on, there being distinct cases for indirect objects, to imply possession, to follow certain prepositions etc.  This exists only barely in English but we can find remnants of inflection in pronouns: “I” am the subject of this sentence.   But when you are talking about “me” you might need to use the accusative case following the preposition “about.”  When you give “me” a gift you also would use the accusative case since “me” refers to the object of the action of the verb “give.”   (Actually, that could be a dative since I am the indirect object and not the direct object of the verb, but we don’t have a dative in English and thus the indirect object in English is in the accusative case. And now of course that gift is “mine” which is the possessive form of the pronoun “I.”   I hope you get this concept because in all honesty as a freshman in high school starting Latin I, it was the most difficult concept for me to grasp.  Even though I instinctively get it right in English 99.9% of the time, I never really understood it until well into Latin III.  And then there was Greek.  And German.  And Hebrew.  Fortunately French and Italian are not so highly inflected—they are more like English but you still have to watch out a bit. 

In any case, when referring to a noun in a foreign language the convention is that one refers to it in the nominative case regardless of how it is used in the sentence.  And so I referred to ‘οι πολλοι in the nominative when in fact it is, as Christopher points out πολλϖν, the genitive (possessive) case in the Greek.  The reason that it is in the genitive is that it follows the preposition περι which means, “concerning” and περι takes the genitive case when it means “about” or “concerning.”   That provides us with the first level of our answer. (Just in case you feel like we have slipped through the looking glass, be assured that in academics this surrealism is our version of normal.  Just think of what it would have been like if Sheldon Cooper had gone into Liberal Arts rather than Physics.) 

It has been a long time since I studied last studied Greek (44 years to be precise) though I do remember hashing all this out again when I did my theological work. But just to be sure, I went over the classical languages department and sat down with one of our Greek scholars and had him review it with me. 

Whereas when one refers to a noun in the nominative in Greek, as in English, one usually places the article, in this case ‘οι (which means “the”), the article would not normally be used in Koine Greek after the preposition περι.  (Koine is the Greek dialect used throughout much of the eastern end of the Roman Empire at the time the Christian Scriptures [as well as the Old Testament Septuagint] were composed.  Koine distinguishes the popular Greek of the Graeco-Roman world from the Attic Greek of Thucydides (5^th century BC) or the archaic Ionic of Homer in an even earlier period.  The significance is not in the absence of the yet implied “‘οι” in the word πολλοι (genitive: πολλϖν) itself.  While it means “many” it is not, as it is in English, an adjective nor as in the Words of Institution, an adjective acting as a noun (poured out for you and for many).  The word πολλοι, or more properly, ‘οι πολλοι is a noun and it  means not “many” in a restrictive sense, but “a multitude,” or “the masses,” or in the phrase of Edward George Earle Bulwer Lytton Bulwer (only an Englishman could carry such a name) and much cherished by Winston Churchill: “the great unwashed.”  There is not a universality but an inclusivity built into the word at which the English “many” fails.

So how do we translate it.  The French have, I believe, done it best: pour la multitude.   The problem with a prayer that says that Christ’s blood was shed for “many” is that Christ did not die for many.  He in fact died for all.  This does not mean that all accept the salvation offered them in Christ’s blood, but it is our Catholic faith that the Redemptive Sacrifice offered by Christ on Calvary and renewed in each Mass is sufficient for the salvation of humankind. 

The problem with universal salvation—that all will be saved—is that ultimately it denies freedom of the will.  If we are all saved then we have no choice but to accept the Love of God.  Going back to the beginning of the third century, the Christian tradition condemned this teaching that all are saved precisely because it robs us of our freedom of the will.  Universal salvation requires that we are ultimately compelled to love God and be loved by him for all eternity.  There is no shortage of Catholics greats—including Saint Thérèse if Lisieux who, in forfeit of proper catechesis, so believed however.  And of course, while we cannot hold that all people will be saved we can hope that each person will be saved, the end result being somewhat the same while the later formula leaves the individual’s freedom of will intact. 

When Innocent X condemned Jansenism in 1653 this issue of Christ dying for all, many, some, or a few was raised.  The Jansenists, who in their Catholic mutation of Calvin’s heresy of double predestination, claimed that it conformed to the Semipelagian heresy to claim that Christ died or shed his blood for all men.  Pope Innocent condemned that proposition of Janesnism, and in so doing established that our Catholic faith does indeed claim that Christ died/shed his blood, for all.  Kontemporary Katholic Krazieism today is nothing other than a strain of Jansenism redivivus.  The fuss over the Words of Institution asserting that Christ died for all was a thorn in their double-predestination side as it means that all people are (potentially) saved in as much as Christ’s redemptive act is sufficient for the salvation of all.  Again, remember, though that our free will enables us to reject the gift.    And since the inadequate “for many” translation has been revived in the current translation of the Roman Missal, the krazies in their sermons, talks, blogs, and videos have used the liturgical text to advance their Jansenist poison claiming that the liturgy makes it clear that Christ did not die for all but only for those who will be saved.  I have noticed that since the ascendency of Pope Francis, more and more elements of the previous translation are slipping back into the Mass.  I for one am glad to see many priests going back to the “for all.” 

That being said, let’s slip from the rabbit hole back into the light of day—Christmas Day—and celebrate that wonderful mysterium fidei:  God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the World, but so that the World might be saved through him.   God’s Will, whatever our freedom, is that all people be saved.  

A Katholic Krazie and An Old Heresy

Cornelius Jansen 

I knew it was a huge mistake when the new translation of the Roman Missal came out and the words of consecration were translated “for many” rather than “for all.”  (if you are interested in this, check the side bar for “pro multis” and that will link you to the four postings I did on this subject in 2011 and 2012.)  In the first place while “for many” is a literal translation of the Latin “pro multis” it is a faulty translation because it fails to translate the original Greek text, ‘οί πολλοί, from which the Latin is itself translated.  (The New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, like the remainder of the New Testament, were written in Greek.)  ‘Οί πολλοί means “the many”—an inclusive term signifying the vast multitudes of people.  We know it in English as “the hoi polloi” meaning the common run of humanity, although “the” here is a bit redundant. Greek, like English, has articles. ‘Οί is Greek for “the.”  Latin doesn’t have articles and so the Greek inclusive “the many” became the Latin restrictive “many.”  This has a huge impact for soteriology (the theology of salvation) as it implies that Christ did not die for all but only for some, namely those “many” (but not all) who were to be saved.  This proposition that Christ did not die for all was condemned by Pope Innocent X  in 1653 in the first salvo the Holy See fired against the Jansenist heresy. 

Jansenism, a heresy that stresses the fallen nature of humankind and overstresses the idea of the “election” of the saved, has never been completely wiped out; indeed it is very much the foundation for many of the Catholic neo-traditionalists ranging from the Krazies among the sedevacantists at Mount Saint Michael in Spokane to “Catholic” commentators like Michael Voris.  Jansenism is commonly said to have spread to America via the Irish clergy who came here in the 19^th and early 20^th century—and Irish Catholicism has in its blood a streak of Jansenism picked up from Irish clergy who studied in France during penal times.  But the real infestation of Jansenism came to America even before the Irish migration with émigré clergy fleeing the French Revolution. It found its American home in Mount Saint Mary’s, a seminary founded in 1808 by Father John Dubois and other French priests in the Catotctin Mountains of Maryland.  Jansenism must infest the old floorboards of “The Mount” as despite valiant efforts to erase it on the part of various deans and some faculty over the years it has managed to take root in the hearts of certain grads, and through them has spread to infect the faithful in various eastern dioceses that send their candidates to Mount Saint Mary’s for training.  The Diocese of Arlington Virginia seems particularly vulnerable to infection both in its priests and some of its more outspoken laity. 

Jansenism is basically “Catholic Calvinism.”  It is derived from the writings of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), a theologian and Bishop of Ypres in what is today Belgium.  Flanders, the province in which Ypres is located, then was part of the seventeen provinces, a component unit of the Hapsburg Empire where the Eighty Years war was being waged as the Calvinists were trying to win their independence from their Catholic Habsburg rulers.  In the end Flanders remained under Hapsburg rule and Catholicism was restored, but through much of this period Flanders—like the northern provinces that would become the Netherlands—was dominated by Calvinism.  In the highly intellectual atmosphere of the Calvinist Republic of Ghent, certain points of Calvinist theology spilled over into Catholic circles and Cornelius Jansen’s theology of grace and predestination had a strong scent of Calvinism to it.  Jansen’s book, Augustinus, gave a Calvinist read to the teachings of Saint Augustine of Hippo—the great theologian of the Catholic West.  The resultant distortions of Augustine’s theology of Grace produced a conviction among Jansen’s followers that Christ only died for those who would accept his sacrifice, and did not die so that all might accept his Grace.  This same error was made by Calvin and became one of the distinguishing marks of Calvinism.  This distorted Catholicism was very influential in France in the 17^th century and even its condemnation by several popes did not lessen its influence. 

Jansenism persists today.  Katholic Krazy Mary Anne Kreitzer of Woodstock Virginia who tilts at the windmills of “liberal” Catholicism under the banner of Les Femmes recently published on her blog

Jesus warned about Gehenna more than anything else during his life on earth. He died to save people from it. The Mass (since the restoration of the millenial "for many" at the Consecration) is proof positive that ALL are NOT SAVED because Jesus could only die for the salvation of the many who would accept His sacrifice. Note that the bad thief got no guarantee of paradise. Did he repent in the end? Maybe. Let's pray he did, but we have no evidence of it.

Well, Ms. Kreitzer should read her bible as bit more assiduously as while Jesus certainly did warn us about Gehenna, he did not do so  nearly as much as he warned us about the false teachings of those scribes and Pharisees who were so confident in their own religiosity and despised those whose views were so narrow.  But it is interesting that not only does Ms. Kreitzer espouse the Jansenist doctrine that Christ did not die for all but only for those who would accept his grace, but she uses the faulty translation of the pro-multis to justify it.

A few months back I attended a funeral in upstate New York and the principle celebrant of the Mass—a cassock-wearing, biretta bedecked gentleman in his seventies—pointedly said “for you and for all” as he consecrated the chalice at the funeral Mass.  I chided him about this at the luncheon afterward and he took umbrage as he said: “I have no choice; I will not give in to heresy.  Christ died for all and we must never say otherwise.”  Father then pointed out to me that while one cannot say that all are saved, one must be uncompromising in the faith that Christ died so that all might be saved.  And—to my surprise—this priest is a graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s.  But must have been in better days.  

The Sacred Heart of Jesus--More Vatican II Than You Might Think

Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a devotion that while it is associated with Saint Mary Margaret Alacoque  (1647-1690) but which actually goes back much further to Saint Lutgarde (d. 1246), Saint Mechtilde (d. 1298) and Saint Gertrude (d. 1302).  It is a devotion that grew in popularity among Catholics while condemned by both the Protestant Calvinists and their Catholic “cousins”, the Jansenists, because it places an emphasis on the humanity of Christ and the universality of his mercy.  Ironically it is a favorite of many modern-day Jansenists who have interpreted the theological focus of the doctrine far more narrowly, confining the mercy to those who “are worthy” of it through their repentance and acts of penitent reparation for their sins and for the sins of others.  This stands in distinct contradiction to the prayers of the Roman Rite Missal (the Sacred Heart is not celebrated in the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church) which stress the unconditionality of the Love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus.  I noticed in several parishes of the Arlington Diocese that the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or what we call “the extraordinary form” was being used for today’s feast.  This allows the “faithful” to avoid being confronted with the mystery of God’s universal and irrevocable love.  This, in turn, highlights how the TLM is used to mask the faith of the Church by removing the catechetical dimension of the Liturgy to the unintelligibility of Latin and require that it be filtered through the homiletic bias of the priest-preacher.  This allows neo-trad clergy to shape the faith of their congregants according to their own beliefs rather than let the Church speak to them directly through the Liturgy.  Doctrines—such as the unconditional love and mercy of God or the gratuity of grace—can be concealed and the faithful can be molded into the semi-Jansenism (or full-blown Jansenism) of their “pastors” rather than confronted with authentic Catholicism. 
In the homily I heard at Mass this morning, the preacher began with a quote from the March 17, 2013 homily of the newly elected Pope Francis:
I think we too are the people who, on the one hand, want to listen to Jesus, but on the other hand, at times, like to find a stick to beat others with, to condemn others. And Jesus has this message for us: mercy. I think — and I say it with humility — that this is the Lord's most powerful message: mercy.
Those who want a stick with which to beat others—same sex couples, those practicing artificial contraception, those conceiving with IVF, those married outside the Church, or those who do not adhere to Church teaching on immigration, or capital punishment, or just distribution of wealth—fail to appreciate the mercy of God which is embodied in the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  It is something for us all to think about.  A non-Christian source for reflection on this feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but one that only confirms on a natural level what has been revealed supernaturally in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church, is the following quote from the Dalai Lama.
Finally I would like to point out that the purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples; it is to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity, and love.  Fundamental to Buddhism and Christianity, indeed to every major world religion, is the belief that we must reduce our selfishness and save others. [i]
This is what the Sacred Heart of Jesus reveals to us: the transformation of our hearts into his heart; the infusion in our human hearts of the Divine Compassion that fills the heart of Jesus.  As the liturgy tells us: …may we come to share in the divinity of him who humbled himself to share in our humanity.  Beautiful churches and splendid liturgies are all well enough in their place (when not meant to distract us from genuine faith), but they are not the reason that Jesus hung on the Cross for us.   That we might be crucified with Christ and that it may no longer be we who live but Christ Jesus—in all his compassion—who lives in us is the mystery of our faith. 

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[i] H.H. The Dalai Lama, Spiritual Advice for Buddhists and Christians, edited by Donald W. Mitchell, New York: Continuum, 1998, p. 98