Hi Father Angelo,
I am reporting the statements of my son who would like to know your opinion on the matter. Here’s what he dictated to me.

In my opinion, I do not understand why God allows the existence of hell: in his blackmail the human being is forced to submit to the will and whims of the Christian Father God in a manner similar to terror propagated in a manner similar to how it is represented by Pascal’s wager (a reductive thing in itself but this is not the point). 

He gives man the freedom to choose in life, but even in man’s greatest ignorance it does not give the possibility of choice after death.
And therefore the concept of Christian freedom is almost the same as that of a judicial system, only that the existence of these “policemen” is not known a priori.
Perpetual suffering is permitted to the damned, similarly to allowing one of his creatures the freedom to throw himself (metaphorically) into a pool of lava, but he allows them to burn themselves forever without the possibility of atoning for their sins.

If a person states/believes that they do not deserve hell for adhering to personal principles whether they are deplorable or not. This individual should be given the freedom not to choose hell even after death.

If this possibility does not exist, unconditional freedom does not exist and therefore freedom does not exist.
If God is true love he would not allow the existence of hell, since if there are human beings who would not condemn anyone and would give mercy to everyone, we should affirm that these specific individuals (or, if we want, another God) are more merciful than God and therefore God would not be absolute love? It would be a glaring contradiction.

I’d be curious to hear your opinion.

Cordially.

A. G. 

Priest’s answer

Dear Irene,
Only today I read the email you sent me on 17 October 2021.
I am sorry and I apologize for this.

1. Reading the email I said to myself: “But this is not the God that I have been knowing forever, that I loved and that I hold dear in my heart.
It is not the God the Gospel talks about. THis is not the God I love and seek”.
This is a caricature of God.
And by virtue of this caricature, as if it corresponded to the truth, a condemnation is expressed in such a harsh, not to say blasphemous, manner.

This is not right.

It is a caricature that your son has constructed with his imagination which has no confirmation in the Gospel.
If he had read it, he would document in verses the statements he disputes.

Here, however, there is no statement by Jesus that he would claim to contradict.

2. This boy certainly abandoned religious practice a long time ago. Because if he went to Church, he wouldn’t come away with the idea of ​​a police God.I think you don’t hear this being preachedfrom any altar in this world.
Anyone who read the email you sent me would say: “Is this the God that so many love to the point of spending their lives for him?”.

3. Your child should read the Gospel. Then he would come out with another vision.
For example, has he ever heard that God is love (see 1 John 4,8)?
How to reconcile his statements with the affirmation that God has given of himself: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” (1 John 4,16).
Does he know what it means to remain in God? 
Does he know what it means that God remains in him?

4. It is to be hoped that he distanced himself from God only by daydreaming.
Most of the time we walk away without realizing it.
We distance ourselves with sin because sin is precisely this: a distance from God.
If your child lived in God and God lived in him he would begin to experience something that is not of this world and that theologians rightly define as “supernatural”. It is a certain savoring or delicacy of future bliss.
This savoring cannot be achieved if one does not live in grace because God does not enter a soul polluted by sin (See Sap 1,4).

5.Some sins then, without making one become criminals and while still making them remain “good natured boys”, as they say today, dampen the taste for the things of God and cloud the mind towards spiritual realities. They make one become spiritually blind.These are essentially the sins of impurity.
According to Saint Thomas “...man seems to go furthest away from God in the sin of lust” (Comment in Job, lecture. 31, beginning) and  “lust gives rise to blindness of mind, which excludes almost entirely the knowledge of spiritual things, while dulness of sense arises from gluttony, which makes a man weak in regard to the same intelligible things. 

On the other hand, the contrary virtues, viz. abstinence and chastity, dispose man very much to the perfection of intellectual operation. Hence it is written (Dan. 1:17) that “to these children” on account of their abstinence and continency, “God gave knowledge and understanding in every book, and wisdom.”” (Summa theologiae, II-II, 15, 3).

6.Finally, believing in God and being Christian does not simply mean adhering to some principles, as if it were an ideology.
Christianity is not an ideology.
Being Christian means meeting a Person, indeed, meeting the Creator who reveals himself and communicates to us as friends to make us participants in his communion of life.

With the best wishes for a peaceful and Holy Christmas, I gladly assure you of my prayer so that your son can meet the Lord and live together with the One who said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8,12).
I bless you both,
Father Angelo

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