What Heaven is Like

[Aiza]

This "Blessed Eminence" is the same catholic fuck who said it was better form the catholic point of view for a billion people to starve to death in the "extremest" agony than for just a single soul to sin in the view of the catholic church,
you stupid ignorant diluded catholic cunt.

He is called "Blessed" as he was beatified (the step below Saint), and "Eminence" as he was a Cardinal (though he wrote that sermon when he was a very young priest, and technically was never appointed to the episcopate, even as a Cardinal he was still a priest). Either way I don't have to agree with everything he says at all. This is the silliest sort of ad hominem.

That being said, he did not just say "a billion people to starve"--rather it was far more extreme than even that, that the very sun and the very moon themselves would fall out of the sky and the entire earth to fail rather than a single person to tell even a lie or to steal something without reason! (I suppose if that happened people would freeze far sooner than they would starve....) That the Church, as the Bride of Christ, should be opposed to even the slightest evils above all else.

"The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse"

His Apologia, written a bit over 10 years before he became a Cardinal, expounds on this:

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And first, the initial doctrine of the infallible teacher must be an emphatic protest against the existing state of mankind. Man had rebelled against his Maker. It was this that caused the divine interposition: and to proclaim it must be the first act of the divinely-accredited messenger. The Church must denounce rebellion as of all possible evils the greatest. She must have no terms with it; if she would be true to her Master, she must ban and anathematize it. This is the meaning of a statement of mine, which has furnished matter for one of those special accusations to which I am at present replying: I have, however, {247} no fault at all to confess in regard to it; I have nothing to withdraw, and in consequence I here deliberately repeat it. I said, "The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse." I think the principle here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the formal credentials of the Catholic Church, as an Act of Parliament might begin with a "Whereas." It is because of the intensity of the evil which has possession of mankind, that a suitable antagonist has been provided against it; and the initial act of that divinely-commissioned power is of course to deliver her challenge and to defy the enemy. Such a preamble then gives a meaning to her position in the world, and an interpretation to her whole course of teaching and action.

In like manner she has ever put forth, with most energetic distinctness, those other great elementary truths, which either are an explanation of her mission or give a character to her work. She does not teach that human nature is irreclaimable, else wherefore should she be sent? not, that it is to be shattered and reversed, but to be extricated, purified, and restored; not, that it is a mere mass of hopeless evil, but that it has the promise upon it of great things, and even now, in its present state of disorder and excess, has a virtue and a praise proper to itself. But in the next place she knows and she preaches that such a restoration, as she aims at effecting in it, must be brought about, not simply through certain outward provisions of preaching and teaching, even though they be her own, but from an inward spiritual power or grace imparted directly from above, and of which she is the channel. She has {248} it in charge to rescue human nature from its misery, but not simply by restoring it on its own level, but by lifting it up to a higher level than its own. She recognizes in it real moral excellence though degraded, but she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting it towards heaven. It was for this end that a renovating grace was put into her hands; and therefore from the nature of the gift, as well as from the reasonableness of the case, she goes on, as a further point, to insist, that all true conversion must begin with the first springs of thought, and to teach that each individual man must be in his own person one whole and perfect temple of God, while he is also one of the living stones which build up a visible religious community. And thus the distinctions between nature and grace, and between outward and inward religion, become two further articles in what I have called the preamble of her divine commission.

Such truths as these she vigorously reiterates, and pertinaciously inflicts upon mankind; as to such she observes no half-measures, no economical reserve, no delicacy or prudence. "Ye must be born again," is the simple, direct form of words which she uses after her Divine Master; "your whole nature must be re-born, your passions, and your affections, and your aims, and your conscience, and your will, must all be bathed in a new element, and reconsecrated to your Maker,—and, the last not the least, your intellect."

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Very interesting to think about though perhaps that is for another thread altogether.... Its worth noting that starving people, either through direct action or through passively failing to care for others, is also a sin within the Catholic Church (gasp!) so he's not planning on holding people hostage and starving them until people stop lying/stealing if that is what you are trying to insinuate here.

You're right, it's so merciful of God to send us to eternal hell-fire and suffering than to let us get bored forever in heaven

I've heard the argument before, and let me say it made A LOT more sense in my old religion, where they didn't believe in hell, they believed that at the end of times the unsaved were killed and stayed dead. That sounds a little more merciful.

Were you a JW?

In the majority of Christianity, Hell is not a physical place that you are "sent" to. It is a self-imposed state, and, as often alluded to by the Christian visionaries as well as Scripture, the flames consume from within.

As I wrote earlier ITT, a wicked person "in Heaven" would still be very much in Hell since his heart+mind are separated from God and from all that is holy.