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The world around us would replace Christian virtues with secular ones.  While tolerance is arguably a subcategory of justice, contemporary humanism would redefine it as an overriding permissiveness to a whole host of evils. Christianity cannot be tolerant of moral evil. Indeed, real Christianity makes moral judgments, seeks repentance and conversion, and amendment of life. A false Christianity would buy into the mentality of gross toleration.  But the assertion that no judgments are made is a deceit. Any who would judge as God does or against the grain of selfishness would themselves face a negative judgment. The joke about this is that everything is tolerated except another’s intolerance. The tables are turned by those cohabitating in sin, living in adultery or pursuing intimate same sex unions. “Who are you to judge me! How dare you be so intolerant and backward? All we are doing is loving each other!”

Of course, such a stance makes moral life subjective. Life and behavior are not under human whims but must comply with both divine positive law and natural law. Neither liberal politicians nor progressive churchmen can substitute their statutes for those of the historical Gospel. When such people want to argue with me, I explain that their grievance is not with me but with God. They are essentially saying that God is at fault, that the Almighty has no right to judge them or to make demands.       

As Catholics we are obliged to render human respect, but this does not mandate surrendering our basic principles.  We can love others without embracing or enabling their sins. Those who act as if they were ashamed of Jesus Christ, failing to witness and to testify to the Lord, are doing no one any favors. Instead of promoting civility they are exhibiting cowardice. Believers should be willing to suffer persecution, imprisonment and martyrdom for the Gospel.  It is an odd situation when the sinner is tolerated, and the would-be saint is oppressed. While much dissent comes from the left, the right is also guilty, as with the philosophy and cult around Ayn Rand. While an anti-communist, she was virulently anti-religion. Her popular philosophy of selfishness and a stark individualism stands in diametrical opposition to the communion of the Church and charity admonished by Christ. Religious liberty in the United States helps to preserve the place of the Church and the faith in society; however, it also makes room for competing creeds and contrary messages.

The reason why some states like Communist China persecute and manipulate the Church is because it sees Catholicism as a threat. While we might argue otherwise, insisting that believers make the best citizens, in truth the Church is dangerous.  The Church and her message about justice and human dignity make her a threat to those states aligned with the principles of hell. Yes, the cosmic confrontation also has terrestrial allies. Despite propaganda, threats, imprisonment and executions— faith communities are hard to silence and neutralize. Communist China is intimidated by symbols like the cross. Lately there has been a campaign to remove crosses from churches. When possible, the churches themselves are bulldozed. There is a competition for souls. While it takes a different form, the tension is taking place in the Western world, too. The Marxist atheist and the Secular humanist are kindred spirits. The existence of God would not only be inconvenient but would place their materialistic objectives in peril. The battle is for hearts and minds. The devil is never more effective than when he is hidden from sight, presumed as a fairy tale without real existence.

I well recall the Solidarity movement in Poland during a time when a Polish Pope had been elected in Rome. What was happening in the Eastern bloc countries was thought impossible. Strides were being made for truth and freedom. The news recollected Stalin asking a mocking question of Churchill after the war, “How many divisions does the Roman Pope have?” Given time, the joke was on him, for the Pope evidently had enough. Not all wars are won with guns and bombs. Some victories come with trust in God and a willingness to take up the cross and follow the Lord.

Christian faith and values are often quite personal, but they are also communal and never private. Modern secularists assume that religion is merely a false superstition. Increasingly militant, they are forcing believers and their God out of the public forum. Sadly, if God is removed then there is no protection from those who have usurped the Lord as the chief lawgiver. Politicians make themselves into gods, lawyers become their priests, and the police are made the muscle to keep everyone in line. Media personalities and public-school teachers make possible the necessary indoctrination.  By contrast, the Church does not indoctrinate but seeks to inform free men and women with the truths that come from God. Conversion and faith are the work of the Holy Spirit. Saints and the damned are fashioned in this world, not the next. Even though they may be unaware, all are being prepared for eternity, for heaven or hell. The demarcation as to which side we might be on is made possible by asking pertinent questions of ourselves. Are there certain truths that are immutable or are all things relative or subjective? Are all people regarded as having an incommensurate value as “persons” or do some matter more than others? Is human life sacred or are some judged as expendable?  Anything that undermines human dignity and the sanctity of life is not from God. Human rights and freedoms are cherished by the Church and believers. The commandments reflect the mind of God and our nature as men and women. Any license to sin is not a nod to true freedom but rather its misuse and the derogation of human dignity. When we fail to think with the mind of Christ and his Church, we compromise the Gospel. We begin believing something other than the Christian faith. Reflecting upon such matters can enlighten us as to whether we are walking toward the kingdom of God or to the fiery trash heap of Gehenna.

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When we compromise with sin or fail to acknowledge its damaging gravity over us, we are not simply tempting fate but attempting to spurn the providence of God. We are literally daring God to save us despite ourselves. This makes us kindred spirits with Judas who likely thought that a forced confrontation would speed the messianic confrontation with the Romans and a corrupt Jewish leadership. Given his close association with Jesus, it is unlikely that he acted purely from greed. He despairs when he realizes that he has been an agent for Satan in getting his master tortured and murdered. Lacking supernatural faith, he finds himself alienated from the other apostles and stripped of hope. The throngs he expected to rise as an army of the righteous proclaiming their hosannas, shouted “crucify him” instead. If the devil could not claim Jesus, and even has Peter stolen from his grasp, then he will at least claim this one traitor as his own. Indeed, all who sin and fail to repent before death overtakes them, share in the stamp of traitor that is pressed upon their souls. While those who have never known baptism and faith might know hell because of ignorance; Judas was probably the first but not the last to betray our Lord as one who had belonged to his grouping of friends. Indeed, while there is arguably a most terrible circle of hell for renegade Christians, Judas stands as a warning to the Church that even bishops and priests can suffer damnation. 

Why would we play games and take chances? Too many are among the walking dead, perpetually working and playing in mortal sin. Failing to go to confession and to receive absolution, they have allowed the spirit of Satan to enter them. Indeed, akin to Judas at the Last Supper, they attend Mass and receive the Eucharist— blasphemies on top of blasphemies. Their priests like Christ could immediately steal them from Satan and return them to the good graces of God if only they would go to confession. But too many will not submit to God’s ministers of mercy or admit to one another or even to themselves, the terrible truth. They have broken their friendship with God. They already have one foot in hell. The longer this situation lasts, the more comfortable they become with sin. They can still be saved but it is increasingly unlikely. Indeed, many will no longer change their hellish trajectory even if they could.  

Proof of this is evidenced when trying to turn someone around. They get angry when anyone challenges their hypocrisy. “Leave me alone! Who are you to tell me about my business! I haven’t hurt anyone! You talk like I’ve killed someone! I know people a lot worse than me!”

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Rage and anger against a brother are judged by Christ as damnable (see Matthew 5:22). Such hardness of the heart focuses not on justice or mercy, but on revenge and is frequently accompanied by a curse. I suspect that those in hell are locked into that posture and cannot escape. They can never say they are sorry. There is no healing. Their own self-hatred is projected upon God and everyone else.  

Given that the sin of wrath or out-of-control anger is a damning sin, it must assuredly have a role to play in hell, no doubt polluting the atmosphere more than the smoke of any ordinary fire.  While it might be directed toward God, it is a type of anger that is always diffusive, violently assaulting everyone and anything around the enraged person.  The loss of control makes any type of meditative composure or resignation utterly impossible. The hearts of hell are forever restless or agitated. The irony is that the damned can never be whole or truly free. Their anger betrays a self-hatred that evades any semblance of supernatural love. The subject experiencing wrath always believes that he has been wronged and that his anger is justified. However, it allows for no levelheaded analysis. There can be no dialogue or reasoned accommodation. Note that stories of possessions often portray the demoniac as similarly explosive toward any efforts at exorcism. They act like cornered wild animals. Hell would constitute their ultimate cage. Unable to get their way, many souls might resemble wild beasts more than rational men and women. Wrath in hell is a demonic occupation, wrestling against a darkness that has nested in the human soul.  There can be no exorcism for those in hell so infested.  The soul strikes out and seeks to expel an invader and yet it no longer has any strength to do so. It is property. One cannot both hate or reject divine power and call upon it for help. Like an old battery left in a flashlight, the acid of wrath has eaten away at the insides. The light can never again be switched on.

Wrath eclipses the soul and casts hell in eternal twilight. This anger is literally hatred itself. It impacts upon the two properties of identity in the soul, intellect and will. The fire of wrath buries any possibility of good judgment and a humble heart.  While in this world, the fiery tentacles of wrath would reach out to draw all within its reach into the embrace of hell. It desires harm and the downfall of others, even the most innocent.  

While we are still pilgrims in this world, we should replace the raging lava of hate that threatens to consume hearts with the calming waters of Christ. The antidote to wrath in this world is the mystery of Christ’s Cross and the selfless love of Jesus in enduring his passion. If he could accept a death so outrageous, then why can we not embrace with docility the heavenly Father’s will in our lives? It is humility that can keep us from the grips of this sin. Oddly enough, Christ’s victory in the Cross is also the focus for the rage of Satan and his minions on the other side of the divide. The devil has allowed himself to be duped.

We often speak of contrition as the precondition for faith and saving grace. However, even more foundational is humility. The acceptance of God’s providence voids any claims at self-justification before the Lord. It makes possible clarity of judgment and resignation of spirit.  If we want mercy, then we must also be vehicles for forgiveness and healing.

Rage is irrational and out-of-control. It is associated with vengeance and murder.  It signifies an anti-gospel.  The good news of Christ is about the acquisition of the truth, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. While the abode of hell is an expression of God’s justice; the horror stories about hell are due to its denizens, themselves. It is not the just punishment of God but the rage of sinners that leads to the excessive chastisement of the damned.

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Hell is defined as a place of eternal punishment. Nevertheless, the Scriptures relate that the devil and his demons actively roam the earth. It is for this reason that some speculated about hell being located on earth or at least deep within it. I would argue this is unlikely. It may be enough to say that the earth or the material universe falls outside the parameters of the heavenly kingdom. The kingdom of Christ is breaking into the world but has yet to be fully realized.  When Satan tempted Christ, he took for granted that he owned the world as a sort of adjunct to hell. Of course, our Lord’s passion and death redeemed us from the devil.  We need no longer to be his property. Given the ministry of exorcism and the testimony of Job 1:7, Satan does indeed roam the world and he and his minions can negatively influence souls. Indeed, in some cases they seem to have limited power within the material order. This has given a few of us real pause, not only regarding traditional hauntings and stories of possession, but also about the internet and the rise of artificial intelligence.  Might these new technologies open doors for the direct influence of the demonic on a wider scale than thought possible?  Can we be certain that conversations online and even in social media are always with purely human and/or A.I. agents?    

If the devil can influence men and intrude through tarot cards and Ouija boards, why not in the new electronic and digital media? I knew a priest-exorcist taunted through odd phone calls. Just look at the gross violence in gaming. Online pornography has utterly replaced adult bookstores and X-rated movie houses. All are now targeted with impunity.  The devil has a hand in this for sure. Would the devil not use technology to undermine faith and to deform moral conscience? Such is a real potentiality if the devil is not rigidly restricted to the confines of hell.  

Why does a good God give the devil liberty to tempt, influence and frighten us? The serpent in the garden tempted humanity with his own sin, urging that a bite of the forbidden fruit would make them gods. The cost was the dark side of mortality and the reduction of the devil to a worm that borrows the dirt. More than a snake, Satan was imaged as a serpent or dragon. Not only did he tempt Eve, but he intimidated her. The devil still seeks to frighten as the big boogeyman. This dragon appears in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and in Revelation, the last.  He was the great deceiver and was cast out from heaven, hurled to earth, along with his fallen host of angels (Revelation 12:7-9).  

I suspect the presence of the demonic on earth has to do with the specific sin of Satan.  He refuses to bend the knee to the Christ Child. Jesus, by making our humanity his own, dismissing Satan’s temptations in the desert and claiming victory by the Cross, incites the devil to target us all in his crosshairs. If he cannot take out Jesus, then he will go after us.   He tempts our first parents, and the original sin would inflict great harm upon humanity and material creation. Our Lord would pay the price to make satisfaction for this dishonor to God, and he would heal the rift between heaven and earth. However, since the devil targeted the incarnation and humanity; all men and women would be called to take up their crosses and to take their turn in being tested. Now, not only the divine Person of Christ would assail the devil, but armed with faith and grace, even the smallest and weakest of God’s children might put the devil to shame.  Jesus tells his friends not to be afraid but the devils and the damned have every reason to be fearful. The parable story of Christ has not ended with the Gospel but is extended into the life of the Church and her saints.  The devil has lost the war, but the saints and martyrs still face the darkness in various skirmishes and battles. The devil fights on in spite and this intensifies his humiliation.  It is as if he will never learn. He thought the crucifixion would be his great victory and yet it proved to be his bitter defeat. Now in time, with every selfless act of love and martyrdom, his loss is revisited.

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I suspect even the damned seek to run away from the truth of perdition, seeking to make some semblance of heaven in hell. What powers remain to them? They still have intellect and will.  C. S. Lewis may have been on to something in his book THE GREAT DIVORCE. The damned fashioned their worlds through imagination and separated themselves ever more and more from one another. The reality would be most unpleasant. Might they seek escape through the phantasms of the mind just as mortal men turn to drugs or the bottle?  Such seems to be a symptom of self-preoccupation and self-destruction. 

What are the characteristics of the damned? Let us look first at the saved. At the very beginning of the catechism, we are asked about our ultimate meaning. Why did God make us? The answer is short and decisive— to know him, to love him, to serve him, and to give him glory.  The damned do not want to know God and either hate or are indifferent to him. This failure to love will also show itself with an impoverishment regarding charity to our neighbor.  The devil’s sin becomes that of fallen humanity. Milton’s Satan swears, “I will not serve!” We read in the epic poem, PARADISE LOST: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. . . Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”  The saints are about God’s business in the world. They worship him at Mass and take their adoration and praise with them into heaven. By contrast, a fallen humanity might go through the motions, but their love is purely for show. They might curse and throw God’s name around, but they rarely if ever pray. They miss more Masses than they attend. As I stated before, if they cannot worship God once a week for an hour, why should they want to enter heaven where the saints and angels give endless glory to God? 

Many people wrongly assume that the souls of saints become angelic after death. However, this is not the teaching of the Church. When a human being dies, his body becomes a corpse, and his soul becomes a ghost.  Human ghosts are regarded as helpless. They have no angelic powers. It is for this reason that after the final judgment, the righteous dead will be restored body and spirit. Like the glorified Christ, they will be reconstituted albeit like Jesus able to appear in locked rooms and no longer subject to sickness, suffering or death.  By contrast, the angels were never born and are not human.  They have no true bodies or physical extension. While we are born in time, the number of angels is fixed.  Just like men, some angels rebelled against God. Fallen angels followed Satan and are called devils or demons.  Fallen human beings are called the damned.  They are not the same and fallen humanity is largely subject to the will of the demonic.  While it is generally accepted that demons can sometimes evade or escape or extend hell; many if not most authorities view the fallen dead of humanity as imprisoned in hell without any possible respite. However, the Church has not given a certain answer to this query.

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The gravity of the parable in Luke 13:22-30 is not about the dimensions of the door but the fact that it is closed. No one will enter heaven except those that the Lord allows to do so. Hell is not simply another path or door that might be chosen but also regards being locked outside the kingdom of the just. St. Augustine writes in THE CITY OF GOD about two competing cities.  The great doctor of the Church argued that in this world it is often difficult or impossible to determine the kingdom to which a person belongs. Wicked people sometimes do good things.  Good people sometimes commit grievous wrongs. All will be made clear on the other side of the mortal veil. 

We are reminded of a two-fold movement, first, pilgrims toward God and the land of promise; and second, the God who comes searching for us. God knows those who belong to him. When it comes to the damned, some will jump ship before reaching the promised shore. They may literally knock on the door to God’s house, but they will never come in. Self-deception can take one to the very entry of heaven but without the key hidden in the human heart, no one can enter. A single step inside would bring the full weight of truth crushing down. Lies have no place under the light of divine truth. God’s revelation about this takes into consideration human freedom and the tension between virtue and vice.  The Lord readily showers his grace upon those who are disposed to receive his help and life. Unfortunately, others shun the rain of God’s gifts and favor.

Ours is no angry God who hates sinners as depicted in radical Calvinism.  God loves us all, even those who would reject him.  Indeed, he loves us so much that he is willing both to die for us and to give us space to exercise our own freedom, even if that means letting us go. There is no annihilation as supposed by the Adventists. God would love us into heaven but that same love will follow us into hell with a fire that can never be extinguished. If heaven is the proper home for love, then hell is where that love is never accepted. That love brings joy to some and agony to others.

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Matthew 7:13-14 urges us to enter through the narrow gate and that “the broad road leads to destruction.”  Our Lord tells us that salvation demands struggle (taking up the cross to follow him) and that there are few who take the narrow gate into the kingdom. This summons to mind the somewhat comical door to the ground level bathroom in my rectory. It is a half-door, fondly called the “Hobbit” door to the toilet. It requires that anyone who is somewhat wide to squeeze into the room. Visitors have laughed about it but those of us who are on the large side find it disconcerting. While it may be unlikely, it is hard to shake the prospect of getting stuck. Indeed, it precipitated a story that I told parish friends.  Preaching on how our salvation is not a private affair, I insisted that it had a communal or interpersonal dynamic.  While we must each make our own choices, we can assist one another in making and keeping them. Sharing a mental image, I related imagining myself standing before the entry way to heaven.  The door is open, but the opening is very small.  Despite many efforts, I cannot squeeze through. Suddenly friends appear that I have known in life. Yes, this is a somewhat elaborate fantasy. Those already in heaven started to pull and pull, so that I might join them.  Meanwhile, I am holding up the line. More friends start to push me from behind. While it might be a peculiar and comical image, I would offer it as a depiction for the communion of saints.  Starting at the font when we come in the arms of parents and godparents, we never come to God alone.  Intercession plays an essential role in our approach to the Lord and our life in the kingdom.  Jesus establishes a “church” or community of faith.  He gives us sacraments and one another.  It might take a lot of pulling and pushing, but those who love the Lord will eventually get through that small door or narrow gate. Maybe the struggle at the entry itself is another indication of purgatory?  

How many would give up and select the wider gate? Separated from others, one would be alone. Would there be any interest in taking the narrow gate to see God if love for him is lacking? Too many take the easy way out. Unfortunately, in the parable this route leads to destruction or hell.

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