The Catholic social media world has been ablaze lately with commentary on remarks Pope Francis made regarding Hell. In a recent interview, the Pontiff said, “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think Hell is empty; I hope it is.” Given the current Pope’s apparent obsession with mercy — sometimes, it would seem, unbounded or untempered by justice — the comment should come as no surprise. What may be a surprise is the vitriol with which terminally-online Catholics responded.
Pope Francis is not denying the existence of Hell by any means. Nor is he preaching that all souls will be saved from Hell.
All across Twitter, Facebook, and numerous YouTube channels, Catholics of all stripes protested the Pope’s musing as unjust, uncharitable, and a type of “universalism.” Many offered not the Litany of Saints (a powerful, if lengthy, prayer for intercession) but a litany of history’s most horrific villains — from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to more mundane serial killers — asking if even these could be deserving of Heaven. Although Pope Francis sometimes suffers from that embarrassing illness known as “foot in mouth,” this was not one of those times.
First of all, Francis makes clear that he is not expressing a dogma of faith; he is not making a doctrinal declaration; he is not making an ex cathedra proclamation carrying with it the full binding force of the Petrine office; he is simply musing, sharing his personal thoughts and hopes with those who call him Holy Father. It is important to remember that, although the Catholic Church holds that the Pope is offered the guidance and enlightenment of the Holy Ghost, he is still a man — and while God may prevent the Pope from teaching doctrinal error, the Pope is still free to accept or reject the wisdom offered from Heaven. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Archdiocese Challenges Child Abuse Victims Act)
Secondly, the Pontiff is not preaching the error known as “universalism,” the belief that either there is no Hell or that God saves everyone from going to Hell. As far as Hell’s existence, it is spoken of by Christ Himself throughout the Gospels, meaning that He would be a liar (and thus not God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity) if there were no Hell. And as for God’s saving all souls from Hell, this would necessitate His imposing on the free will He gifted to man: if man is not free to reject God, he is also not free to accept God. Although not a Catholic, the Christian author C.S. Lewis in his book The Great Divorce pithily summarized Hell by saying, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” He adds, “All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
It is fallacious to think of Hell as a place where souls are punished for not living up to God’s standards. Rather, Hell is a place or a state of being that souls choose for themselves: those who repeatedly, unrepentantly reject God in life choose not to suddenly embrace Him in the afterlife. Indeed, a heart hardened and deadened by sin over the course of a lifetime is not in the habit of turning to God but away from Him. Although Hell is an existence of pain and suffering, it is the self-inflicted pain and suffering of an eternity cut off from God, the source and summit of all good. It is not just a never-ending timeout for enjoying sin.
Pope Francis is not denying the existence of Hell by any means. Nor is he preaching that all souls will be saved from Hell. He is simply hoping that Hell is empty. Whether this means that no one, in the end, chooses to reject God or whether it means that God offers all the chance to be purified of their sins through Purgatory is not stated. The first of these alternatives seems unlikely, though it is not necessarily impossible. The latter is even more possible. The Catholic Church holds that mortal man is bound to the sacraments: we are to avail ourselves of the forgiveness God offers through confession and the intimacy He affords through the Eucharist — but God Himself is not bound by the sacraments: He can, being the omnipotent God that He is, operate outside of them. Pope Francis seems to be placing his hope in this prospect. (READ MORE: In 2023, Nicaragua Was No Place To Be Catholic)
Unfortunately, the Pontiff’s thinking in this case, while by no means expressly erroneous, would appear to be just wishful thinking. Countless Saints have had visions of Hell, and testify that it is well and fully populated. The most powerful of these Saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary, even testifies to the fact. While appearing to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, Our Lady showed the children a vision of Hell. At the request of her bishop, one of those children, Lucia dos Santos, testified that she and her two younger cousins had been shown “a sea of fire.” She continued:
Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly: You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.
While Pope Francis’s wish that Hell is empty seems to be contradicted by the Blessed Virgin herself, he and we may hope that, through much prayer, it is never quite so full as its diabolical denizens desire.
