Conversation Board - The Pope speaks out about Hell and Heaven

blink

Ex Member

Re: The Pope speaks out about Hell and Heaven
Reply #15 - Mar 29^th, 2007 at 4:21pm

I disagree with this. I believe that hell is a state of mind and/or body and/or spirit which can can have a multitude of causes and that humans do not always create their own hells. Nor do I believe forgiveness is an automatic requirement to be released from any or all hells.

I think popes might take off their heavy robes and ornaments and sit with the common people as Jesus did. Those who wish to lead others to Truth might be trusted more from a posture of humility.

I do not recommend believing those who sit on thrones of any kind.

love, blink

----------------
DocM wrote on Mar 27^th, 2007 at 9:39pm:

Pope says hell and damnation are real and eternalBy Richard Owen in Rome
March 28, 2007 12:00am
-

HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said.

Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, the Pope said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to "admit blame and promise to sin no more", they risked "eternal damnation - the inferno".

Hell "really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more".

The Pope, who as cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine, noted that "forgiveness of sins" for those who repented was a cornerstone of Christian belief.

He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the "woman taken in adultery" and prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

God had given men and women free will to choose whether "spontaneously to accept salvation...the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind".

Vatican officials said the Pope - who is also the Bishop of Rome - had been speaking in "straightforward" language "like a parish priest".

He had wanted to reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that hell is a "state of eternal separation from God", to be understood "symbolically rather than physically".

Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian, said the Pope was "right to remind us that hell is not something to be put on one side" as an inconvenient or embarrassing aspect of belief.

It was described by St Matthew as a place of "everlasting fire" (Matthew xxv, 41).

"The problem is not only that our sense of sin has declined, but also that the world wars and totalitarianisms of the 20th century created a hell on earth as bad as anything we can imagine in the afterlife," Professor Bagliani said.

In 1999, pope John Paul II said heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God, which is the goal of human life".

Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy".

In October, the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a "halfway house" between heaven and hell, was "only a theological hypothesis" and not a "definitive truth of the faith".

Back to top

« Last Edit: Mar 29^th, 2007 at 5:31pm by N/A »

IP Logged

DaBears

Senior Member

Offline

Posts: 254

Re: The Pope speaks out about Hell and Heaven
Reply #16 - Mar 29^th, 2007 at 6:02pm

Quote:

I disagree with this. I believe that hell is a state of mind and/or body and/or spirit which can can have a multitude of causes and that humans do not always create their own hells. Nor do I believe forgiveness is an automatic requirement to be released from any or all hells.

I think popes might take off their heavy robes and ornaments and sit with the common people as Jesus did. Those who wish to lead others to Truth might be trusted more from a posture of humility.

I do not recommend believing those who sit on thrones of any kind.

love, blink

----------------
DocM wrote on Mar 27^th, 2007 at 9:39pm:

Pope says hell and damnation are real and eternalBy Richard Owen in Rome
March 28, 2007 12:00am
-

HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said.

Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, the Pope said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to "admit blame and promise to sin no more", they risked "eternal damnation - the inferno".

Hell "really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more".

The Pope, who as cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine, noted that "forgiveness of sins" for those who repented was a cornerstone of Christian belief.

He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the "woman taken in adultery" and prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

God had given men and women free will to choose whether "spontaneously to accept salvation...the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind".

Vatican officials said the Pope - who is also the Bishop of Rome - had been speaking in "straightforward" language "like a parish priest".

He had wanted to reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that hell is a "state of eternal separation from God", to be understood "symbolically rather than physically".

Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian, said the Pope was "right to remind us that hell is not something to be put on one side" as an inconvenient or embarrassing aspect of belief.

It was described by St Matthew as a place of "everlasting fire" (Matthew xxv, 41).

"The problem is not only that our sense of sin has declined, but also that the world wars and totalitarianisms of the 20th century created a hell on earth as bad as anything we can imagine in the afterlife," Professor Bagliani said.

In 1999, pope John Paul II said heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God, which is the goal of human life".

Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy".

In October, the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a "halfway house" between heaven and hell, was "only a theological hypothesis" and not a "definitive truth of the faith".

I totatly agree, with your statement.. peace

Back to top

IP Logged

dave_a_mbs

Super Member

Offline

Afterlife Knowledge Member

Posts: 1655
central california
Gender: male

Re: The Pope speaks out about Hell and Heaven
Reply #17 - Mar 30^th, 2007 at 3:11pm

Couldn't resist this -
http://dos-centavos.blogspot.com/2005/08/new-german-pope-is-making-some-changes....

Just a sggestion (but based on reports from past life work) - Heaven is the eternal place of joy and bliss where we merge into God - the Ultimate Holy Commnion, and Hell is the eternal place of regrest, suffering and discomfort where we are separated from God.

Those who reject everything except their own ego and pride seem to go into a hell-state in which they are separated ferom God - by their own self-definition. Those who later get the message (sch as when Jesus "descended into hell" cease to separate themselves from God, and thus nolonger are loguically bound to the hell states, but cn start going heavenwards.

Those in heaven, even the upper astral, since that's the usual next level up, can continue upwards to merger, or, as with most of us, become subject to personal desires, recollections of the fun of having a body, and essentially talk themselves out of heaven and back to rebirth.

It seems that God created these as sort of logical extremes - just as white implies an alternative blackness for those who won't accept whiteness, and that they are more or less a way of looking at the extremes into which people can put themselves - and with many levels, as in Dante's Inferno, depending upon how many different kinds of ways we have merged into the God-Oneness or to the degree that we insist on rejecting God and Oneness and replacing it with pride, self aggrandizement, puffed up egotism etc .

I might have it wrong, but it seems to me that this is actually how it works. I used to be a hippie and discovered that if I was willing to reject everything and everybody, I'd go into some pretty ugly places - commonly called a "bad LSD trip". (50 years ago.) Then, if I'd repent of my arrogance, abandon hatred, accept love and trade in my ego for a willingness to share in the global Unity, I'd usually go into a blissful state. Better yet, I could stay there as long as I could maintain the attitude. - But usually I'd fall back because I'm really a self-center ed SOB at heart, and it has taken decades to advance even to this level.

Alpert reported a (double blind - LSD or Vit B used as placebo) LSD experiment back in the 1940's at a Catholic seminary led to two kinds of reports, "I think I might feel something" as opposed to "I see God!".

I suggest that the solution might be for the Pope to take a little LSD, and to recall the old college toast:

Here's to Hell, and may our stay there
Be as pleasant as our way there.

dave

Back to top

life is too short to drink sour wine

IP Logged