Because Hell is Real: Reflections on Our Lord Establishing a Church

Last time I talked about God ultimately being in charge, so we could trust Him to protect the Church when things grew beyond our control. This time, I want to talk about the other side of that coin—the fact that God established a Church as the ordinary means of bringing His salvation to the world. Unlike Protestants and Orthodox, Catholics hold that Our Lord established His Church on the rock of St. Peter and his successors. We hold that God gave this Church under Peter, the Apostles, and their successors the authority to bind and loose. When the magisterium teaches, we are obligated to give assent—our full acceptance of that teaching.

Remember John 14:15. Loving Him is keeping His commandments. Remember Luke 10:16. Our Lord makes clear that rejecting His Church is rejecting Him. Remember Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:18. What His Church binds/looses on Earth is bound/loosed in Heaven. Remember Matthew 18:17. Refusing to hear the Church is a very serious matter. Remember Matthew 7:21-23. If we do not keep His commandments, we will be barred from the Kingdom of Heaven.

I stress this because there is a temptation to separate Our Lord from Church teaching—a claim that Our Lord is merciful but the Church is focussed on “rules.” This temptation claims, “God doesn’t care about X.” It accuses the Church of Pharisaism. But what it tends to mean is, “The Church should not judge my sin.” Let’s be clear here. I’m not equating the Church with individuals who insist you do things according to their preferences, like vote for a certain candidate or you’re damned. I’m talking about the authority of the Pope, as well as the bishop and the priest who properly use their authority in communion with the Pope, to make known how we should live if we would be faithful to Christ, our Lord.

One cannot separate God from the Church, because the Church teaches with God’s authority. It is that simple. So if we dislike what the Church teaches on a subject, our issue is with God. Remember, if we accept the fact that God is in ultimate control, and that He has given the Church the authority to teach in His name, then we must accept what the Church teaches, trusting Him to protect His Church from error.

That doesn’t mean God retroactively turns falsehood into truth. It means God prevents the Church from teaching error. When the Church binds, saying a certain action is gravely sinful, then the person who knows this and freely chooses to do it, commits mortal sin. We do not appeal to God as if He were a higher court. Nor can we use the bad behavior of corrupt Churchmen or harsher methods of law enforcement in harsher times to justify disobedience. If we do, God will no doubt remind us of Matthew 23:2-3. Or as St. John Chrysostom commented on it, 

I mean, that lest any one should say, that because my teacher is bad, therefore am I become more remiss, He takes away even this pretext. So much at any rate did He establish their authority, although they were wicked men, as even after so heavy an accusation to say, “All whatsoever they command you to do, do.” For they speak not their own words, but God’s, what He appointed for laws by Moses.

 

John Chrysostom, “Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople on the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. George Prevost and M. B. Riddle, vol. 10, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 436.

When the Pope and bishops in communion with Him teach, they do not do so from their own authority, but God’s. If some members of the hierarchy behave unjustly, that does not absolve us from being faithful to the Church under the bishop of Rome. So, if we don’t like the fact that the Church teaches that abortion, contraception, divorce/remarriage, or homosexual acts are sinful, we have to remember that when we know the Church calls these things to be gravely sinful, yet we freely choose them, we sin against God, and don’t just “break a rule.”

But what about Pope Francis? But what about mercy? I answer, his stance is not contrary to the teaching about sin and Hell. His Year of Mercy presumes that we are sinners, and we are in need of forgiveness. But his Year of Mercy was not about dispensations permitting sin. They were about reminding us that now is the acceptable time of salvation, and making the Church available to bring God’s mercy to us. This meant if we would receive God’s mercy, we must repent. This isn’t a radical traditionalist screed. This is Our Lord, Himself telling us, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

Bishop Robert Barron points out the mistakes some make about the Holy Father:

A good deal of the confusion stems from a misinterpretation of Francis’s stress on mercy. In order to clear things up, a little theologizing is in order. It is not correct to say that God’s essential attribute is mercy. Rather, God’s essential attribute is love, since love is what obtains among the three divine persons from all eternity. Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner. To say that mercy belongs to the very nature of God, therefore, would be to imply that sin exists within God himself, which is absurd.

Now this is important, for many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer mattered. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness. Or, to shift to one of the pope’s favorite metaphors, it is to be acutely conscious that one is wounded so severely that one requires not minor treatment but the emergency and radical attention provided in a hospital on the edge of a battlefield. Recall that when Francis was asked in a famous interview to describe himself, he responded, “a sinner.” Then he added, “who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.” That’s getting the relationship right. Remember as well that the teenage Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to a deep and life-changing relationship to Christ precisely through a particularly intense experience in the confessional. As many have indicated, Papa Francesco speaks of the devil more frequently than any of his predecessors of recent memory, and he doesn’t reduce the dark power to a vague abstraction or a harmless symbol. He understands Satan to be a real and very dangerous person.

Barron, Robert (2016-03-31). Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism (Kindle Locations 613-625). Word on Fire. Kindle Edition.

Mercy is not about turning a blind eye to sin. Mercy is about sparing the person from the penalty justice demands. See, we deserve damnation for our sins. But God desires our salvation. So He sent His Son to save us. Yet, we can refuse to accept His mercy, and we do when we choose to do what God forbids. During our life on Earth, God gives us every chance to repent and accept His mercy. But if we refuse to do so, we will face His justice. When the Church teaches something is a grave sin, it’s not because she is obsessed with rules and power. it is because she is concerned for our souls, and wants to save us from the fires of Hell.

Remember that while Our Lord spoke of love and mercy, He also spoke of Hell:

^{13 "}Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. ¹⁴ How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

He’s the one who talked about casting sinners out into the darkness (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30). These are not contradictions or additions to Jesus’ message of love and mercy. They’re warnings about what happens if we reject His commandments. Neither God nor His Church are cruel or judgmental for warning about sin and Hell. They don’t make dire threats to cow us into submission. We’re warned about Hell because it is real and we can go there if we refuse to keep Our Lord’s commandments. 

What we need to remember about the difference between the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) was not that the Tax Collector was a better person. It was the Tax Collector repented, while the Pharisee did not. But not all tax collectors repented—The publicani (tax collectors under contract) were recognized across the Roman Empire as a scourge because of their rapacious ways that bankrupted entire provinces to boost their profits. Likewise, not all Pharisees were unrepentant. Some became Christians, after all. 

The point is, God loves each one of us, and desires our salvation—but that call requires a response. If we demand the benefits, while refusing the call of Our Lord—Repent, and believe in the gospel—we show we do not love Him, regardless of how we profess it otherwise. Instead, we simply want cheap grace. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it:

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 44.

We should think of this when we’re inclined to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Christ. Our Lord established the Catholic Church to be His means of bringing His salvation to the whole world through the sacraments and teaching His way (cf. Matthew 28:19). It is true that as missionaries to the world, we must not be harsh. But as sinners in need of salvation, we must not demand that the Church change to suit us. If we do, we are spurning The Lord who desires to save us. If we spurn Him, and do not repent, we risk facing the reality of Hell.

Properly Understanding Mercy in a New Year

¹³ Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  (Matthew 9:13)

Introduction

I remember, during my earlier childhood, reading a book on the Second World War. In it, there was a picture of an elderly Jewish man arguing with members of the SS. I recall the caption saying something to the effect of, “An elderly Jewish man argues in vain against being deported.” I also remember being confused because I thought that they should take the opportunity to escape Nazi Germany. It wasn’t until I grew older that I understood what “deported” really meant, and why this man was so desperate to avoid deportation. I can understand why a book in the children’s section of a library would not get so deep into the Holocaust. But, if I had never gone beyond what I thought was meant from these books, I would not be excused as an adult for thinking that the experience of the Jews in the Third Reich was merely “unpleasant,” instead of the horror it really was.

The point of this anecdote is showing how something can originally presented to us in a way which isn’t false, but also overlooks crucial information. This doesn’t have to be a deliberate attempt to mislead. Rather, it can come about if people assume they have the whole story and interpret what they read through that assumption. In doing so, they overlook the possibility that their knowledge may have been a mere summary, or that they missed some pieces that would put things in context and should lead them to a different conclusion.

Mercy

One of the major examples of “missing pieces” in 2016 was the concept of mercy. The Pope declared a Jubilee Year dedicated to mercy. He gave many addresses encouraging the faithful to seek out confession, and encouraged the clergy to be receptive and merciful in reaching out to the faithful. The Pope desired that the faithful might come and be converted, and that stumbling blocks that might discourage them from conversion should be removed.

Yet, two groups got that Year of Mercy wrong. They equated mercy with saying it was all right to sin. One group thought this was a great idea. The other thought it was a horrible idea. These two groups fed off of each other.  Those who wrongly believed, “Mercy = laxity,” and thought it was a horrible idea pointed to the group who thought it was a great idea as if it were “proof” of  the Holy Father wanting to change Church teaching. Those who wrongly believed, “Mercy = laxity,” and thought it was a good idea pointed to the critics as trying to “block the Pope’s reforms.”

What nobody asked was whether the “Mercy = laxity” claim was even accurate. The debate between these factions was only relevant if their premise was true. If the Pope was not in favor of moral laxity, then their fight was meaningless.

The fact is, the Pope’s call for mercy could be described as reminding the Church that their role is this…

And not this…

In other words, the Pope was reminding us that we need to look at sinners as people we’re called to go out to find, not as foes we need to defend the Church against. They’re our patients, not our enemies. No doubt some will despise the Church for what she believes and seek to undermine it. Such people might need to be opposed. But even then, we can’t be harsh about it. That being said, many others simply don’t understand why we believe what we do. Some actually think we’re the enemies of mercy and compassion, and we need to teach them why our teaching is what God wills.

How We Reach Out to Others Matters

That’s not a matter of just throwing a Catechism to them, telling them to read the relevant sections and keeping them away until they get their lives together. It’s a matter of patient charity, working with their desire to do what is right and loving, so they can realize, “Because I love God, I need to change my outlook and ways.” If we drive the sinner away, and that sinner decides “This can’t be God’s Church,” we have failed in our task.

The Pope, in his calls for mercy, calls us to look at every case individually, and not assume all sinners know Church teaching and reject it out of bad will. Some are alienated because they have a wrong idea of what we believe. For example, I’ve encountered some Catholics who were deeply embittered because they (wrongly) believed they could not receive the Eucharist simply because they were divorced, even though they never remarried outside the Church and were living chastely.

The Church is not to blame for this misunderstanding, though it is possible that people within the Church are responsible for this misunderstanding. We should consider this point. Does our behavior drive people away from the Church because we lack mercy or because we have given a distorted view of the Church to others? Perhaps we should think about the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) in these terms. If God has entrusted to us the task of bringing people to Him, and we drive these people away, will Our Lord respond to us like the master did to the servant who buried his talent? 

God’s Gift and Our Task

¹⁹ Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:19-20)

God gives graces so we might respond to His call, and He makes use of human agents to make His call known, and how we are to respond to the call. Playing “goalie,” trying to keep people out who are less holy than we think we are is not cooperating with His mission. Yes, one of the spiritual works of mercy is to “Admonish the sinner.” But admonish does not mean, “Act like a jerk.” Many people look at the word with a modern meaning of “strongly rebuking.” But actually, the sense of “Warn (someone) of something to be avoided” is what we need to do.

So, yes, we do need to admonish (warn) people about the sins popular with the world. If they reject the Church because of their obstinacy, we will not be held accountable. But if they reject the Church because they think our misbehavior represents what the Church is, we will be held accountable for driving them away.

So when we reach out to the divorced and remarried, when we reach out to those committing homosexual acts, when we reach out to those considering or having committed abortion, or any other sins, we need to make sure that we are not the cause of a hostile reaction. As St. Peter put it:

¹⁹ For whenever anyone bears the pain of unjust suffering because of consciousness of God, that is a grace. ²⁰ But what credit is there if you are patient when beaten for doing wrong? But if you are patient when you suffer for doing what is good, this is a grace before God. (1 Peter 2:19-20)

That’s harder than it might seem. Think about your own interactions on social media (I know I do). How many times have we sought to put the smackdown on someone we’re arguing with instead of patiently putting up with their hostility? What sort of witness have we left? That doesn’t mean we should be a doormat for the abuse of others. Sometimes, when facing an abusive person, we have no choice but to walk away.

But it does mean we can’t write people off as a lost cause. Our Lord told us about forgiving “seventy times seven” when we are wronged. We can’t harbor resentments or think of them as not worth saving. All of us are sinners, and all of us need God’s grace. That doesn’t mean that we decide that since all are sinners, no sin matters. It does mean that our task is a constant reaching out to get them back to a right relationship with Our Lord and the Church.

Accompanying

Some people hate the term, “Accompanying” because they (again, wrongly) interpret it as a Church just letting people do what they want. But that is to miss the point. The Pope has never called for that. He has called for the Church to be present for each member as they are guided back to God, looking at the situation of each person. If they’re not at the level of understanding that they can have proper contrition and firm purpose of amendment, the Church seeks to help them understand. 

But the Church also recognizes that to have a mortal sin, there has to be a gravely sinful act, full knowledge and full consent. Where one of the three is lacking, mortal sin does not exist. Of course things like abortion, divorce/remarriage, and homosexual acts fall under the category of “gravely sinful.” Nobody denies that. But when the person is ignorant of the evil, we help them to understand. When the person has a lack of sufficient consent (for example, a person who is sexually compulsive), it is often a long, difficult task getting the person to a point where he or she is able to control their acts to the point to give sufficient consent before acting.

The person who stops with the fact of grave matter, assuming the rest is not accompanying the sinner on the path back to Our Lord and His Church. If he or she acts like a bouncer trying to “keep out the riffraff,” such a person is like the Pharisee our Lord warns against when he says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.” (Matthew 23:13).

We don’t ultimately know who will refuse God’s grace and merit hell. That’s the sort of judgment Jesus condemns in Matthew 7:1. We simply can’t give up on anyone, nor assume the worst motives.

That, in a nutshell, is Pope Francis’ call for us in being merciful.

Thoughts on Reading Pope Francis' "The Name of God is Mercy"

This isn’t a book review of the Pope’s new book The Name of God Is Mercy. Rather it is a reflection on some of the points that really struck home with me and the ideas they raised in me, leading me to say, “This is amazing!” Admittedly, a large portion of the book does fall under that description, so if I wanted to quote all the excerpts that impressed me, I’d probably be posting the entire text.

Let’s just say right off that many people have wronged Pope Francis. Both those who hope he will “decriminalize” their favorite sin and those who fear he will abandon Church teaching have wronged him. The reason I say this is because the book recognizes a link that the Church has long taught: To receive mercy requires us to be sorry for our sins. That is a theme running through the book. Once a person understands this basic concept, it becomes clear that the panic within the Church over the Pope’s words and actions are wildly inaccurate. He’s not looking for ways to bring people who are at odds with the Church to Communion without a need to repent. He’s looking for ways to encourage such people to get right with God through the Church. In other words, people have spent the past 3 years rejoicing or panicking over something he never intended and missed the point of what he was calling people to.

I would describe it this way. What people misinterpret as a “liberal” Pope is actually an attempt to show mercy to those who think they are irredeemable, letting them know that Our Lord is constantly calling them back. At the same time, he is warning those who think they are fine as they are and don’t need to change that they are wrong. In one excellent passage, the Pope is asked if there can be mercy without the acknowledgement of sin. His reply is:

Mercy exists, but if you don’t want to receive it… If you don’t recognize yourself as a sinner, it means you don’t want to receive it, it means that you don’t feel the need for it. Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what happened. Sometimes you might feel skeptical and think it is impossible to get back on your feet again. Or maybe you prefer your wounds, the wounds of sin, and you behave like a dog, licking your wounds with your tongue. This is a narcissistic illness that makes people bitter. There is pleasure in feeling bitter, an unhealthy pleasure.

If we do not begin by examining our wretchedness, if we stay lost and despair that we will never be forgiven, we end up licking our wounds, and they stay open and never heal. Instead, there is medicine, there is healing, we only need take a small step toward God, or at least express the desire to take it. A tiny opening is enough. All we need to do is take our condition seriously. We need to remember and remind ourselves where

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 510-517). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

But how many of us actually want to receive mercy instead of vindication? I think many of us want to be proven right. We want the Church to admit she has done “wrong” in teachings we run afoul of. The individual does not want to admit that they have done wrong in being divorced and remarried or in contracepting or in rejection of authority to changes the Church makes in terms of discipline. We look for flaws in the behavior of individuals in authority in order to deny the authority of the Church. If the individual Pope or bishop can be shown to have done wrong on X, we think it justifies our rejection of authority on Z (a totally unrelated subject). But when we approach the teachings of the Church this way, we’re showing we don’t want to receive forgiveness.

The Pope also deals with another aspect of mercy. He uses the imagery of the Torah and the exclusions of lepers to avoid contamination and to protect the clean. He points out that Jesus showed mercy to the lepers in healing them—He is concerned with the well-being of the leper, not just the clean. He extends this image to the concerns of the Church, with showing mercy to the sinner and avoiding having the faithful brought into sin:

This excerpt from the Gospel shows us two kinds of logic of thought and faith. On the one hand, there is the fear of losing the just and saved, the sheep that are already safely inside the pen. On the other hand, there is the desire to save the sinners, the lost, those on the other side of the fence. The first is the logic of the scholars of the law. The second is the logic of God, who welcomes, embraces, and transfigures evil into good, transforming and redeeming my sin, transmuting condemnation into salvation. Jesus enters into contact with the leper. He touches him. In so doing, he teaches us what to do, which logic to follow, when faced with people who suffer physically and spiritually. This is the example we need to follow, and in so doing we overcome prejudice and rigidity, much in the same way that the apostles did in the earliest days of the Church when they had to overcome, for example, resistance from those who insisted on unconditionally following the Law of Moses even for converted pagans.

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 588-595). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Of course we need to both protect the sheep inside the pen and save those outside of the pen. But it is wrong to think of one at the expense of the other. The Pope isn’t saying either-or. He’s saying do both…avoiding the danger caused by solely thinking about the protection of the clean and avoiding the concept of mercy which is devoid of turning back to God. Oh yes, contrary to the claims by people who hope or fear that the Church will change her teaching. The Pope makes clear that the Church speaks about sin because she has to speak the truth:

The Church condemns sin because it has to relay the truth: “This is a sin.” But at the same time, it embraces the sinner who recognizes himself as such, it welcomes him, it speaks to him of the infinite mercy of God. Jesus forgave even those who crucified and scorned him. We must go back to the Gospel.

Pope Francis (2016-01-12). The Name of God Is Mercy (Kindle Locations 477-480). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Which makes perfect sense. As St. John put it:

⁵ Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say, “We are without sin,” we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. ¹⁰ If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 

 

 New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 1 John 1:5–10.

The Church speaks about sin because, unless we recognize that we walk in darkness, we deceive ourselves and cannot act in truth. If the Church wants to be the vessel of God’s mercy, she must speak truthfully about sin. Otherwise, we’re flailing about and unable to recognize the mercy God has for us—because we will not seek it. So all the calls for “changing Church teaching” in changing from saying “X is a sin” to “X is not a sin” is not being merciful.

So, unpacking these sections of the book, I see the Pope making three important points that we all have to remember:

1. All of us have to recognize that we are sinners who are in need of mercy. We have to avoid thinking that we are good enough as we are with no need to change. If we will not repent and turn back to The Lord, we do not want to receive mercy.
2. All of us have to recognize that protecting the flock in the pen does not permit us to neglect the sheep outside of the pen.
3. The Church teaches about sin because the has to testify to the truth that sin separates us from God. If the Church will not teach about sin, she cannot testify to the truth about God.

With these three points, all of us have to ask about our relationship with God and His Church. Are we refusing the opportunity to accept mercy? Are we refusing to show mercy to others? Are we recognizing that the teaching about sin involves recognizing that which separates us from God and where we need to change? Are we refusing to accept that the teaching of the Church is not arbitrary rules, but speaking the truth so that we might accept God’s mercy?

Each one of us will have to look into their own heart and seek out where repentance is needed. Each one of us will have to seek out reconciliation with God through His Church as He established as His means of doing so. God’s love and mercy are unmerited gifts. God does not owe them to us, but He does want to give them to us, if only we will accept them.

This is something important to consider for us as we go through this Year of Mercy (and afterwards too).