The John-Henry Westen Show - April 30, 2025


Hell Is REAL, and Many CHOOSE It ｜ Monsignor Pope


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

193.22606

Word Count

9,166

Sentence Count

730

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

Monsignor Charles Pope discusses his new book, The Hell There Is, a book about the concept of hell, and why it s at the heart of so much of the church s current malaise.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The saddest thing about the souls in hell is that they'd be more miserable than heaven.
00:00:03.520 Because if you hate the light, the light seems harsh.
00:00:06.040 If you hate the truth, you think the truth is hateful.
00:00:10.660 Well, my friends, probably one of the most denied doctrines today is that of hell.
00:00:18.000 In fact, as I like to say, if you deny hell and that there are many there are who go therein,
00:00:24.860 you make Jesus a liar.
00:00:26.640 But don't take it from me.
00:00:28.200 There's a new book out by a very well-known Monsignor in the Catholic Church.
00:00:35.820 He's from Washington, D.C.
00:00:37.160 His name is Monsignor Charles Pope.
00:00:39.060 We've had him with us on the show today.
00:00:41.520 Monsignor, so good to be with you.
00:00:42.980 And good to be with you, too.
00:00:44.000 Thank you.
00:00:44.560 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross, if you wouldn't mind.
00:00:47.100 In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
00:00:49.760 Amen.
00:00:50.420 Thank you, Monsignor.
00:00:51.340 So you've written a book, a very controversial offering here.
00:00:55.040 It's called The Hell There Is, and it's out from TAN Books now, wherever good books are sold.
00:01:00.160 And you can go right to the TAN website to get it there as well.
00:01:03.000 Why would you write a book on a subject so unpopular?
00:01:07.740 It's at the heart of so much of the malaise that we have in the church today, the practical rejection of hell.
00:01:15.620 And what I mean by the practical rejection is people might say, well, it exists, but I don't think many people go there, and God's not going to do that.
00:01:23.060 You know, come on, you know, that sort of stuff.
00:01:25.120 So what that ends up producing in the church is a very grave lack of urgency.
00:01:30.600 I mean, almost everything that we do is positive in the fact that we need help.
00:01:35.240 We need a Savior, first of all.
00:01:37.420 And we also need sacraments.
00:01:39.940 We need the liturgy.
00:01:40.960 We need just so many, you know, all the helps that the Lord gives us, you know.
00:01:46.140 And we need His Holy Word.
00:01:48.520 We need to pray.
00:01:49.700 If you don't, why bother?
00:01:51.680 You know, everyone's basically going to go to heaven anyway.
00:01:54.180 And so it just knocks the stuffings out of any sense of urgency that I really need to run to the Lord and say, I need your help to be saved.
00:02:02.260 And we just kind of have this sort of smug presumption.
00:02:05.260 And it affects all the levels of the church.
00:02:07.640 And I would just say it also, in a way, takes the good news, the gospel, and kind of makes it, well, it just deflates it.
00:02:15.720 Because if you don't know the bad news, the good news is no news.
00:02:19.940 Okay, Jesus came and He suffered, He died, He went to heaven.
00:02:22.420 And okay, that's nice, you know.
00:02:25.000 And let's see what's on YouTube.
00:02:26.820 So it isn't just focusing on, you know, something negative or bad.
00:02:31.140 It's to, we do that in order that the positive, the glory of our redemption, the glory of salvation.
00:02:37.180 Thank you, Lord.
00:02:38.240 I mean, I couldn't ever make it except for you.
00:02:42.460 And suddenly our gratitude pours out.
00:02:44.740 We weep for our sins.
00:02:46.120 And we just weep for gratitude before the cross.
00:02:49.460 But so much of that's just gone today.
00:02:51.480 Missionary work.
00:02:52.220 You know, people would go on ships and boats and go all over the world because they thought people need to know Jesus to be saved.
00:02:58.780 And now like, well, you know, any way is a path to God.
00:03:03.540 God won't do anything.
00:03:04.540 You know, come on.
00:03:05.720 You know, that's kind of the attitude.
00:03:06.940 And so I wrote to, because I just noticed that at the pastoral level, if we don't get correct ideas about the reality of hell and that people go there, and Jesus, nobody talked about it more than Jesus.
00:03:22.120 If we don't get back to what he teaches, just an awful lot of stuff goes offline for people, becomes irrelevant.
00:03:28.720 And that's kind of what we are today with very empty churches in the West and a kind of a notion that, ah, it's in the bag.
00:03:35.540 That has to be the case.
00:03:37.660 I mean, we've had for the last 13 years in the church in a big way, over and over again, this mentioning of, well, hell's probably empty.
00:03:46.660 Heresy, coming from Pope Francis himself, that gets filtered down through various cardinals who all seem to believe this and in fact teach it, not in official documents, except in Amoris Laetitia, there was that line about no one is condemned forever.
00:04:03.920 That's not the message of the gospel.
00:04:05.740 And various theologians pointed to that line and said, whoa, whoa, that's heresy if he means this, you know.
00:04:11.160 But of course, it's ambiguous and so much.
00:04:13.460 But he was very clear when he said it on different occasions publicly, sort of reinforcing what was written in Amoris Laetitia to be the position that really doesn't count.
00:04:25.840 But how much does it not count?
00:04:28.520 In other words, there was the von Balthasar who said we could have this hope for an empty hell.
00:04:35.400 And I think that did a lot of damage because there are a lot of people who went off that and said, well, therefore, you know, it's OK to think this.
00:04:42.460 Is it OK to think this?
00:04:44.620 Because as you said, it has affected.
00:04:46.720 And I think you're you're even quoting Ratzinger there because Ratzinger said Pope Benedict said when, you know, the missionaries used to go out because they thought people wouldn't be saved without this knowledge of Jesus Christ.
00:04:58.260 They would go to hell.
00:04:59.040 You have a very hard time being saved.
00:05:00.960 Yeah, I believe that it's an error.
00:05:02.980 Now, you know, sometimes they fudge it.
00:05:06.280 You know, they play with the words a little bit.
00:05:07.880 We can hope, you know, we can wish.
00:05:11.120 And, you know, so but most people pick up on the idea that, yeah, you know, I think even the Pope doesn't really think there's many people in hell.
00:05:18.180 So his so-called wish, I mean, I guess we could all wish that hell were empty.
00:05:21.800 But I think that that just isn't what Jesus says.
00:05:26.100 And the sad thing, and I know he said it with tears in his eyes, but frequently, well, when he was asked the direct question, are those to be saved many or few?
00:05:36.480 He said few.
00:05:38.280 He said it very directly.
00:05:39.300 He said the road to damnation is wide.
00:05:41.000 Many follow it.
00:05:42.080 How narrow the road to salvation.
00:05:44.040 How difficult and how few there are who find it.
00:05:46.980 But I just don't think we're taking Jesus seriously when we say, well, we can hope that hell's empty.
00:05:53.820 That's dismissive.
00:05:55.460 I think what we have to do is hope that we can keep hell empty by preaching the gospel and living a holy life.
00:06:01.860 But at the end of the day, you know, von Balthasar, Rahner, you know, Bishop Barron has sort of toyed with this, too.
00:06:07.680 And I've had tried to have discussions with him about it.
00:06:10.360 But at the end of the day, you know, I always felt like Ralph Martin wrote a great book some years ago, Will Many Be Saved?
00:06:16.500 And he very carefully parses the Vatican II documents.
00:06:19.880 And people conveniently leave out the last line of Lumen Gentium.
00:06:23.220 Yes, there are possible ways that people who are not professing Christians can be saved.
00:06:27.420 However, on account of our tendency to sin and so on, and to call good what God calls evil and so on, we must preach the gospel for the salvation of souls.
00:06:41.380 And the missionary task of the church must go on with great fervency.
00:06:44.420 So that, you know, so in other words, the council is proposing an idea, which I think it's, you know, part of our Catholic teaching that, yes, if people through no fault of their own invincible ignorance don't know better, but they can possibly be saved.
00:07:00.480 But that doesn't mean they got a blank check.
00:07:02.100 They can just go walk right into heaven.
00:07:04.080 It's just not, but it's possible.
00:07:06.980 But probable is another question.
00:07:09.400 And so I think the Vatican Council actually handled it very well.
00:07:12.220 And Dr. Martin, Dr. Ralph Martin does that very well in the book.
00:07:16.540 And what I've tried to do in this book is to try to say that the teaching is, it's not just something Jesus said on one or two occasions.
00:07:26.200 Most of the parables are about this.
00:07:29.120 I mean, he talked about it over and over again.
00:07:31.120 20, at least 21 of the 38 parables are devoted to this question about where are you going to spend eternity?
00:07:36.520 You've got a decision to make.
00:07:37.820 There's sheep and goat, weas and tares.
00:07:39.860 Those on the right, those on the left, the wise virgins, the foolish virgins.
00:07:43.560 There's all kinds of, you know, all these other things, the dragnet, all these things.
00:07:47.900 And there's the king who held a banquet for his son, and then he said, I got better things to do.
00:07:52.880 And likewise, my favorite one, frankly, is the parable of the prodigal son.
00:07:56.900 Now, most people focus on the first son, but he's back with the father.
00:08:01.420 The question is about the second son.
00:08:03.240 He's the real one that is the target of that parable.
00:08:06.580 And the father comes out and pleads, come into the banquet.
00:08:09.820 Come in.
00:08:10.540 We must celebrate.
00:08:11.580 Your brother was lost and is found.
00:08:13.680 And the son says, I don't want to go in there with that rotten brother of mine in there.
00:08:17.000 I won't go in, old man.
00:08:18.080 I'm not going.
00:08:19.160 And the parable just ends.
00:08:21.560 Because you and I have to decide, do I want heaven on God's terms or not?
00:08:27.460 You see, we, we, everybody, but father, everybody wants to go to heaven.
00:08:32.060 Yeah, I know.
00:08:32.660 But unfortunately for most of them, that's a designer heaven.
00:08:35.560 The reality is the real heaven has aspects that a lot of people don't want a thing to do with in our culture.
00:08:41.560 Things like chastity or love of one's enemies, love of the poor, generosity rather than greed.
00:08:47.960 You know, worship of God is the preeminent, you know, joy of heaven.
00:08:52.240 A lot of people say, oh, going to church, you mean?
00:08:55.880 Ah, that's boring.
00:08:57.460 Ah, chastity, please.
00:08:59.220 I don't want to love my enemy.
00:09:00.100 I want to kill my enemy.
00:09:01.260 And so there's a lot of people that live their lives basically saying, I don't really want what heaven is.
00:09:07.420 I'm not interested in that.
00:09:09.120 I want something else.
00:09:10.680 And God respects our freedom.
00:09:12.760 And ultimately the answer isn't that some mean God is sending people to hell.
00:09:17.240 But as Jesus puts it, the light has come into the world.
00:09:20.820 But many prefer, prefer the darkness.
00:09:24.540 That's a powerful word.
00:09:25.760 They prefer the darkness.
00:09:27.440 And the Lord's not going to force them to love what he loves or who he loves.
00:09:32.300 But it's like he's always pleading, come, come to the banquet.
00:09:36.120 But a lot of people are saying, nah, I'm not on your terms.
00:09:39.040 I don't want to do it.
00:09:39.680 And that's why there's hell.
00:09:41.700 Yeah, it's interesting, Father.
00:09:42.940 To your first point, just recently in the Gospels on Sunday, we heard the story of the entering of the camel through the eye of the needle.
00:09:53.380 And what struck me so hard during that reading was the apostles were incredulous.
00:09:59.600 Jesus, as you said, spoke so many times about hell.
00:10:02.700 So many parables are about this subject, the majority of them.
00:10:07.120 And then on that one, he goes so hard that the apostles go, whoa, then who could be saved at all?
00:10:15.420 Like, can anybody get to heaven?
00:10:17.660 Yeah.
00:10:17.740 So he made it, he stressed it so much that he actually freaked out the apostles a little bit.
00:10:23.880 And then he says, you know, with mortals or with men, this is impossible.
00:10:28.220 With God, all things are possible.
00:10:29.660 So he stressed it like crazy.
00:10:31.660 Yeah, no, he did.
00:10:32.480 It was a major part of his preaching.
00:10:34.420 And most people just completely discredit that.
00:10:37.400 I had a woman years ago, I was preaching on hell.
00:10:40.220 This is way back, maybe 20 and some years ago.
00:10:42.340 It was a gospel for that Sunday.
00:10:43.600 Many of the roads of damnation is wide.
00:10:45.180 Many follow how narrow the road and so on.
00:10:46.780 So I preached on heaven and hell.
00:10:48.800 Anyway, a woman came up to me at the end and she said,
00:10:51.920 Father, I did not hear the Jesus I know in your words today.
00:10:56.300 And I responded, but ma'am, I was quoting him.
00:11:00.360 And she didn't miss a beat.
00:11:02.240 I think she'd been to the Jesus seminar.
00:11:04.040 She said, oh, we know he never really said that.
00:11:06.280 Part of the problem, a subset of this problem is the trivialization of God.
00:11:10.720 We've reduced Jesus to a kind of a harmless hippie.
00:11:13.740 And God, the father is kind of a doting grandfather.
00:11:18.980 And, you know, God is God.
00:11:21.880 He is awesome, all holy, all powerful, wonderful.
00:11:24.820 He's the great lover of our souls, but he has to be taken seriously.
00:11:29.380 We don't just walk into God's presence and say, hey, man, give me a high five.
00:11:33.380 He's the Lord.
00:11:34.600 He's got to do a lot to get us ready.
00:11:36.140 Because I'll tell you right now, as C.S. Lewis put it, hell is hot, but heaven's hotter.
00:11:42.160 Because it's where the love of God burns brightest.
00:11:44.620 And if you're not up, if you haven't been brought up to the temperature of glory by those tongues of fire at Pentecost,
00:11:49.940 if the Holy Spirit hasn't brought you up to the temperature of glory,
00:11:53.280 and the Lord hasn't accustomed you to the brightness of truth, you won't be able to tolerate it.
00:11:58.300 That's over and over again, the scriptures say, how can one look on the face of God and live?
00:12:02.160 And yes, I know Jesus came to show us God's face, but at the end of the day,
00:12:06.740 even John the Apostle, when he saw Christ in his glorified state in heaven,
00:12:11.280 the book of Revelation, he fell on his face.
00:12:14.320 He's the one who was right next to the Lord at the Last Supper,
00:12:18.300 but he saw the glory of God and fell on his face.
00:12:22.620 And God said, rise up, the Lord said to him, you know, all is well, but he had to help him.
00:12:28.400 And that's what we, we can't just walk into God's presence in our current unseemly state and do nothing.
00:12:34.880 It would be horrified.
00:12:36.620 We couldn't take it.
00:12:38.000 So we have to get back to an idea too, that God is, God is glorious, wonderful.
00:12:45.200 We should hold him in wonder and awe.
00:12:47.320 But most people just sort of trivialize, he's just a nice guy up there.
00:12:51.120 He wouldn't do that.
00:12:52.140 That's actually great.
00:12:53.120 It's the first time I heard that the hell is hot, but heaven's hotter.
00:12:56.980 So purgatory is kind of like warming up your fire so that you can get there.
00:13:02.080 Burning away some of the dross.
00:13:04.700 Indeed.
00:13:05.700 So this brings us to, it's honestly, I think one of the hardest questions ever to answer.
00:13:11.400 And this is, this is where I think a lot of people fall off.
00:13:15.980 They say, how can a good God, a holy God you believe in,
00:13:20.440 how can that God consign someone to everlasting torture that never ends,
00:13:28.060 that it goes on forever and ever?
00:13:30.280 How can that be a good God?
00:13:31.640 Well, a couple of ways to answer that.
00:13:33.080 First of all, I mean, that's one of the reasons I wrote the book,
00:13:35.040 because I want to recast this, this question in, in, in modern terms.
00:13:41.420 What I mean by modern terms is that, you know, we are dealing,
00:13:44.300 we just have to accept the fact that many people are just, are asking,
00:13:47.920 that's kind of their set point.
00:13:49.220 Oh, that's, come on.
00:13:50.300 It's almost rhetorical the way you ask the question.
00:13:53.660 It could be a real question, but it's often rhetorical.
00:13:56.500 Oh, come on.
00:13:57.780 You don't really think, you know.
00:13:59.160 So what we have to do is to recast this and say, that's not why there's a hell.
00:14:05.680 Hell, in a way, a certain sense has to be,
00:14:08.540 because God has given us choices and he respects our freedom.
00:14:12.140 And he's very serious about our freedom.
00:14:14.500 I wouldn't be serious about my freedom.
00:14:16.340 Sometimes I want God to zap me and just, but you see,
00:14:19.700 we have to be careful to understand that we really have decisions to make.
00:14:23.960 And God will not force us to love him or to love what he loves or who he loves.
00:14:31.120 He's just not going to do that because he wants sons and daughters who can love him.
00:14:36.340 So he has to make us free.
00:14:38.060 We have to choose to love.
00:14:39.200 And God will, again, he will not force it.
00:14:41.940 So with that in mind, hell exists because at the last judgment that we,
00:14:47.460 or our judgment that we come to with him, our personal judgment,
00:14:50.620 our decision has become final.
00:14:52.140 And we can talk about that more in a minute.
00:14:54.700 And the Lord simply ratifies and recognizes,
00:14:57.260 I see that you don't want what I'm offering.
00:14:59.020 All your life, I was calling you.
00:15:01.080 All your life, I wanted you to love the beautiful things of heaven.
00:15:06.440 But you've shown over and over again that you don't really want what I'm offering.
00:15:11.640 So you can consider yourself dismissed.
00:15:13.720 You can make other arrangements.
00:15:15.920 And I don't think God is happy about that.
00:15:19.800 You know, it's not like, oh, heck you, I'll throw you into hell.
00:15:22.740 It's not like that.
00:15:23.420 It's a God who's called us all our life.
00:15:25.740 And we just, some people just consistently say no.
00:15:29.400 And so what we, that's the first place we need to go.
00:15:32.440 Now, the question, though, is why is it eternal?
00:15:35.340 That's another question that's related to the question that you just asked.
00:15:38.260 You know, you're voicing a lot of people's question.
00:15:40.420 All I know is there's a mystery about the human person that is taught in the scriptures, but it's taught in a very mysterious way.
00:15:48.420 For example, that once there comes a point when our decisions are forever fixed, it's probably the moment of our death.
00:15:54.260 I think we can all repent up to the very last breath we take.
00:15:58.280 But at the end of the day, it would seem that when our, the Lord is teaching us that when our, when we die, we're like the angels who, their decisions are forever fixed.
00:16:07.360 And also the demons.
00:16:08.220 They've already gone through that process.
00:16:10.560 They're not going to change their fundamental disposition regarding the kingdom.
00:16:15.300 Well, for us too.
00:16:16.700 And some of the fathers of the church link it to a kind of a, like pottery on a potter's wheel.
00:16:21.600 As long as the clay is soft and moist and the wheels turning, you can mold and fashion it.
00:16:25.420 But once you take that off and put it into the kiln, into the kiln, in the fire, its shape becomes forever fixed.
00:16:32.960 And that fire is a symbol of judgment.
00:16:34.940 We come before God.
00:16:36.720 We've, you know, he's tried to mold and fashion us, but we may have decided we want to be something else.
00:16:41.900 And we, we come before the fire and we're fixed.
00:16:45.360 This is, this is taught somewhat in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
00:16:49.940 You notice that Lazarus is caught up by the angels to the bosom of Abraham into heaven and the rich man is in hell and he's in torment.
00:16:56.940 And what's interesting about this is, is what the rich man, what the rich man says and what he doesn't say.
00:17:02.880 First of all, he indicates that he hasn't changed.
00:17:04.920 Even though he has to look up to see Lazarus' dignity and glory, he still says, send him, tell him to step and fetch quickly.
00:17:10.800 Bring me a pail of water because I'm in torment down here.
00:17:14.320 So he hasn't changed.
00:17:15.700 In a way he can't change.
00:17:17.540 He's fixed.
00:17:18.140 But he, notice he doesn't ask to come to heaven.
00:17:21.100 Isn't that a strange thing?
00:17:22.220 I want to be where Lazarus, bring me.
00:17:24.120 I, I, I repent.
00:17:25.100 I'm sorry for what I did.
00:17:26.240 He doesn't say that.
00:17:27.400 Not only does he not repent or say I was wrong, he still sees Lazarus as kind of someone that's an errand boy.
00:17:33.740 Tell him, bring me a pail of water.
00:17:35.840 And he does ask that, you know, maybe, well, tell my brothers, man, this thing is for real after all.
00:17:40.600 They, they need to repent.
00:17:42.040 But at the end of the day, he knows he can't repent.
00:17:44.360 The way Jesus crafts that, that, that parable is very, very subtle, but it's very powerful.
00:17:53.280 He doesn't ask to go to heaven.
00:17:56.020 He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't tolerate heaven.
00:17:59.660 It's the saddest thing about the souls in hell is that they'd be more miserable than heaven.
00:18:03.540 Because if you hate the light, the light seems harsh.
00:18:07.240 If you, if you hate the truth, you think the truth is hateful.
00:18:10.240 There's just going to be an awful lot of people who find that they just, they just don't want what God is offering.
00:18:16.600 They don't want a world where you're supposed to live chastely, where, you know, you can't celebrate all kinds of homosexual things that our culture does.
00:18:24.820 They don't want that kind of, they don't want God, a God like that.
00:18:27.960 They want to, so they reinvent their own, their own God and worship that God.
00:18:31.460 And by the way, we used to call that idolatry.
00:18:35.580 Inventing your own God and worshiping that.
00:18:37.840 The God of my understanding, the God of my, the God within.
00:18:43.400 And it was, oh, religious tolerance, what a beautiful thing.
00:18:46.040 I'm spiritual, I'm not religious, and so on.
00:18:48.640 But we used to call all that idolatry.
00:18:51.900 And I think we need to get back to that.
00:18:54.260 Because the danger of that is that the fake Jesus, the fake God can't save you, only the real one.
00:18:59.820 And the real one says, I've given you every grace to come to me.
00:19:04.360 I want you to choose me, but I won't force you.
00:19:08.780 And, but there comes a day when your decision is forever fixed.
00:19:11.900 Listen to me, says the Lord.
00:19:13.380 Your decision will be forever fixed.
00:19:15.540 Hell is not eternal because a mean God will never forgive them again.
00:19:19.420 Hell is eternal because our decision will not change.
00:19:23.260 And I go through some of that in the book, you know, about how Thomas deals with this, you know, are the souls in heaven repentant and so on.
00:19:31.500 He says, well, they're regretful of what their sin has cost them, but they don't, they're not repentant in the normal sense that they want to say, I was wrong.
00:19:39.640 And I need to change my mind and agree that God is right and that I should really learn to love my enemy or live chastely or, you know, whatever, fill in the blank.
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00:20:21.980 Something you said there, that was stunning.
00:20:24.580 You said that they don't want to accept the truth.
00:20:28.320 So it's like all this woke mind virus, if you will, all these truths that they've clung on to become sort of their truths.
00:20:36.340 And what a horror.
00:20:39.180 I'm sorry.
00:20:40.460 It goes on just eternally.
00:20:43.840 You just embrace the falsehood and it just keeps going.
00:20:47.420 You know, C.S. Lewis, as you know, wrote a book called The Great Divorce, where he takes up this idea.
00:20:52.500 It's an unusual book, but it takes people get on a bus from hell and they go up to heaven to have a look around.
00:20:59.720 And all but two of them get back on the bus to go back to hell because they don't like what heaven is.
00:21:04.600 You know, there's a lot of there's a bunch of different stories about about eight or nine stories in there.
00:21:09.840 Some of them are very subtle.
00:21:11.320 It isn't people like they're genocidal murderers or, you know, complete depraved individuals.
00:21:17.000 There's one story that's very powerful.
00:21:19.360 There was a woman whose son had died when he was young in some tragic accident.
00:21:24.240 And she got on the bus to go up to hell.
00:21:26.600 And the first thing when she got off, she said, well, where's Johnny?
00:21:30.160 Why is he not here to greet me?
00:21:31.960 If this is heaven, then Johnny will be here to greet me.
00:21:34.700 And well, so anyway, a distant relative came up and said, let me show you around.
00:21:39.500 Just you.
00:21:41.720 You're just I want Johnny.
00:21:43.940 He said, well, he's here, but you can't see him yet.
00:21:46.340 I want to see him now.
00:21:47.780 Well, it goes on like that.
00:21:49.540 And eventually he said to her, you can't see Johnny because you won't see God.
00:21:56.200 And Johnny isn't God.
00:21:58.700 You know, in other words, you can't you turn him into an idol.
00:22:01.580 He's not God.
00:22:02.500 When you learn to see God and his glory, you'll see Johnny.
00:22:05.980 He's not far from here, you know, and so on.
00:22:08.780 And it's what's greater than a mother's love for a child, you know, but even that can become an idol.
00:22:14.940 And she was angry with God.
00:22:15.980 I don't want God.
00:22:16.920 He took my son away from me and all of that kind of stuff.
00:22:20.020 So, you know, you start to see that if we won't abandon grief or we won't abandon these things, these things, these anger that we hang on to.
00:22:28.220 You know, heaven's going to be just terrible for us.
00:22:31.680 We don't want to be there.
00:22:33.240 And so it's this very, very good book.
00:22:35.360 I've actually turned it into a play.
00:22:37.020 It's easy to do.
00:22:38.200 But we have a young adult sometimes act it out.
00:22:41.540 It's an astonishing book.
00:22:43.260 And I recommend everybody read it.
00:22:44.760 The Great Divorce.
00:22:46.380 And I reference it here in the book as well.
00:22:48.960 But it's very interesting how he really elucidates very well that it isn't just serial killers and, you know, mass murderers who go to hell.
00:23:00.500 It's ordinary people who just say, I just, I'm not interested.
00:23:04.220 They're not bad people, evil, doing terrible things.
00:23:06.600 But I don't want to go to church.
00:23:08.340 You know, church is boring.
00:23:09.700 And I don't want to listen to some sermon.
00:23:11.660 And, you know, the Bible is kind of old-fashioned.
00:23:14.420 But, you know, if you read scripture, most of, if you read Revelation especially, it's mostly about a liturgy.
00:23:20.240 They're singing hymns.
00:23:21.460 There's candles.
00:23:22.440 There's priests in long robes.
00:23:23.900 There's a lamb on an altar.
00:23:25.560 They're reading from a book.
00:23:27.020 I mean, oh, sounds a lot like church to me.
00:23:30.220 And, oh, church?
00:23:31.560 So, you know, I mean, I'm being a little facetious.
00:23:35.460 But, you know, again, the sacred liturgy is meant to help save us.
00:23:41.880 It's one of the ways the Lord works in our life to give us his body and blood and his word and to perform our personality to become more and more conformed to his.
00:23:51.460 This is what the liturgy is all about.
00:23:53.540 People say, I don't need all that.
00:23:55.600 Or I don't need chastity.
00:23:56.940 Or I don't want to talk about loving, being more generous with my money, you know, and so on.
00:24:03.200 And all of these are ordinary things that people are just not interested.
00:24:07.780 What's funny with the liturgy is just that you, even if you don't understand it, even if it means very little to you because you're, you know, you don't understand Latin or whatever.
00:24:17.860 I can imagine the old days.
00:24:19.900 The liturgy was loved not because they understood it, but because they loved who was there, who they met there.
00:24:26.940 They knew they could receive Jesus.
00:24:28.640 So it meant everything, despite the fact that they didn't understand it or anything.
00:24:33.900 A lot of people did probably, but even for those who don't.
00:24:37.240 But they loved it because of who?
00:24:40.040 And that was the time they got to spend.
00:24:41.440 And it's a great paradox of the modern liturgy in the modern world that we've largely pared the liturgy down and made it intelligible at a very basic level.
00:24:49.820 So we say it in the vernacular.
00:24:51.640 And, you know, let's try to be cozy and comfortable and, you know, give kind of music that people like.
00:24:57.680 But it's interesting in the old mass, I think people really knew the drama and what mass was.
00:25:02.940 It was deeply reverenced and respected, even if it wasn't fully understood.
00:25:06.860 Now everything is understood, but there's a kind of a, well, it's kind of pedestrian.
00:25:11.560 It's ordinary.
00:25:12.540 It's not something that people really regard.
00:25:14.560 They should.
00:25:15.040 But I mean, it's not as good as the old liturgy in developing that this is serious.
00:25:20.140 This is about God.
00:25:21.500 And this is holy.
00:25:22.740 This is different.
00:25:23.540 This is not the world.
00:25:24.820 We have a lot of church leaders today who just want to conform us to the world, thinking that that's the way to evangelize.
00:25:30.540 Well, I can just say, look at all the liberal mainline Protestant churches.
00:25:35.120 They've done all that.
00:25:35.960 Give the people what they want.
00:25:37.880 They're emptier than we are.
00:25:39.680 One of the really tough questions that people ask is, you know, and when you're referencing Lewis's work, brings it up.
00:25:49.040 What about the people who say, if my family's not going to be there, if my son or my dad or whatever is not going to be there, I don't even want to be in heaven.
00:25:56.360 But how will I be happy in heaven if my son's not there, if my dad's not there or whatever?
00:26:01.220 Yeah, Thomas deals with this.
00:26:02.340 And I mentioned in the book, you know, there's this just intense love of God and an understanding that my son, my daughter, my husband, whoever, you know, in that made their own decision.
00:26:14.220 They went their way.
00:26:15.840 And God gave them that freedom.
00:26:18.780 And they made that decision.
00:26:20.080 I deeply reverence what God has done for them, too, you know, because as I say, maybe one way to put it is that the saddest thing about hell is the people in hell would be more miserable in heaven.
00:26:33.640 There's a strange mercy in the existence of hell.
00:26:37.500 Because, again, God is, in other ways, they just have to be forced to be in a place they don't want to be or they'd have to be forced to experience mercy.
00:26:47.060 For example, if I came up to you, John Henry, and I said, John Henry, I forgive you for all the terrible things you said about me yesterday.
00:26:53.600 You're forgiven.
00:26:55.180 But what if you are of the mind that I don't think I need to be forgiven?
00:26:59.180 I think what I said was important for you to hear.
00:27:01.960 So you can't push forgiveness on people.
00:27:04.640 And many people, I don't need to be forgiven.
00:27:08.360 You know, the biggest problem, I'm not worried so much about people going to hell who are sinning and struggling with sins, but they come to confession regularly and they know to go to God and say, I need help.
00:27:17.380 I can't stop.
00:27:18.160 Whatever it is, the ones I'm worried about are the defiant.
00:27:21.700 I will not be told what to do or what to think.
00:27:24.680 I will not do that.
00:27:26.940 And that's, their number is legion.
00:27:30.920 It's legion.
00:27:31.700 It's huge.
00:27:32.260 The defiance in our Western culture today, in the gospel, about all the biblical moral vision, about every aspect of it, is astonishing.
00:27:43.560 And it's a huge harvest for hell.
00:27:45.760 They don't want to be forgiven.
00:27:47.240 They don't want to hear from God.
00:27:49.480 They don't want it.
00:27:50.240 And they don't have to have it.
00:27:51.300 That's something I most worry about.
00:27:54.780 Sometimes, I'm not here to scare people and say, well, most of you are probably going to go to hell.
00:27:58.840 If you're trying to live the faith, staying close to the sacraments, praying and repenting, getting to confession regularly as you should, there's great hope for us.
00:28:08.520 But even there, we have to see, we are, we can be very wily and make lots of weird little decisions and things that we don't want to deal with.
00:28:16.840 But at the end of the day, the ones I'm really worried about are the number who are just defiant.
00:28:24.220 And that's so common today.
00:28:26.640 And they celebrate, you know, do we need to get into all the details, you know, parades about sins.
00:28:32.980 They call good or no big deal what God calls sin, and then they celebrate them and talk about them as a form of pride.
00:28:39.320 They take pride.
00:28:40.800 And it's not just a homosexual community.
00:28:42.720 It's an awful lot of people today about a lot of things who just say, the Bible's out of date.
00:28:48.240 Come on, get that thing away from me.
00:28:49.600 Get your rosaries off my ovaries and take your Bible out of my bedroom.
00:28:53.640 And it's not, but it's not even just about sex.
00:28:55.800 It's about things like forgiveness.
00:28:58.220 The Lord burns.
00:28:58.800 He says, look, if you won't forgive others, my father won't forgive you.
00:29:04.160 I know it's hard to forgive.
00:29:07.220 But at the end of the day, we have to let God say to us, I saw everything they did to you.
00:29:13.160 And I promise you, they'll answer to me one day.
00:29:15.420 But just give it to me now.
00:29:17.280 And shed.
00:29:18.640 It's a beautiful gift that the Lord wants to offer us called forgiveness.
00:29:22.080 It's not a, you better forgive me, you know, as if to say, your sufferings are nothing.
00:29:27.120 Just wave it off and forget about it.
00:29:28.960 No, that's not what God is saying.
00:29:30.640 He's saying, what happened?
00:29:31.600 I saw it.
00:29:32.720 I will deal with it.
00:29:34.440 Give it to me now.
00:29:35.940 And be free.
00:29:37.660 But people think of, I won't want to forgive.
00:29:39.760 That's just crazy.
00:29:40.520 I'm not going to do it.
00:29:41.220 You know, and again, all of these are reasons that ordinary human beings that we encounter every day,
00:29:47.800 many of them may well be going to hell.
00:29:49.580 When Jesus says, few go to heaven and most go to hell.
00:29:54.560 It's not, they're not all out there doing mass murders and serial killers.
00:29:58.440 They're ordinary people struggling with ordinary things, but they will not yield.
00:30:04.580 You know, Father, I talked with someone on a recent show about heaven.
00:30:09.200 And we were talking about different, basically like saying different levels in heaven.
00:30:14.940 The idea that, you know, the guy who gets in on his deathbed has, you know, also is in heaven perfectly happy.
00:30:23.440 But the happiness they experience is like a thimble full, but they're full.
00:30:27.040 So they're completely happy.
00:30:28.140 Whereas they call Our Lady the sea or the ocean.
00:30:31.140 And so that difference in experience in heaven is huge.
00:30:35.480 Are there also such things in hell?
00:30:38.100 Yes.
00:30:38.600 Well, the tradition says yes.
00:30:40.600 And Thomas takes this up.
00:30:42.160 He says, well, of course, remember, God is a God of justice.
00:30:45.460 And therefore, not everybody in hell suffers in the same way.
00:30:49.200 They would suffer in accordance with whatever sins they clung to and didn't want to repent of.
00:30:54.380 And so Dante takes up that whole theme, too.
00:30:57.940 And all the different circles of hell and the deepest parts of hell are people who engage in betrayal.
00:31:03.500 You know, you know, those deep family wounds where they betray or they they commit terrible acts against people who trusted them.
00:31:12.780 The higher ranks of heaven are actually some of the sins of the flesh.
00:31:15.940 It's never pleasant.
00:31:17.020 But the point is, there are certainly as heaven has its hierarchy, that there are those who have suffered most and they're close to the throne.
00:31:24.120 Some who get in, you know, like you say, the different size glasses and all of that.
00:31:28.040 Um, that's also, uh, in, in, in both purgatory and hell by tradition, there are people are going through what's appropriate for them in purgatory to be, to be healed.
00:31:39.100 In hell, they are suffering among those things that they clung to and they want to claim as their own.
00:31:43.880 And they suffer especially about those particular matters.
00:31:46.680 Um, and so, yeah, this is the tradition.
00:31:50.340 Thomas speaks of it, um, and, and roots it in God's justice.
00:31:53.920 It would be inappropriate for God to, uh, punish everyone in hell in exactly the same way or to allow them to experience hell.
00:32:02.520 And, uh, their own disposition sets them up for some particular suffering related to the key sins that they clung to.
00:32:09.740 That makes sense from a point of justice, right?
00:32:13.760 You know, this is a tough one for you, Monsignor is, I mean, given your experience working with the conference of bishops and with all sorts of bishops, how in the world are we going to turn this around?
00:32:26.300 Because we don't have, I mean, it's been so many years we've been playing this game, uh, since, and it didn't only start with von Balthasar, but, but he did popularize it.
00:32:36.360 Um, and now it's become ubiquitous, very few of the people.
00:32:40.500 I mean, when's the last time most, most of you viewers, when's the last time you heard a homily on hell?
00:32:45.700 Uh, it's been a while.
00:32:48.380 Um, but how do we turn this around, Monsignor?
00:32:50.320 Because it, it, it doesn't, I don't know.
00:32:53.900 What do we have to do?
00:32:54.880 Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, trying to get people to think again.
00:32:58.400 Um, trying to snatch them from the, the errors of this modern time.
00:33:02.920 I don't know about the conference of bishops and what can be done.
00:33:06.200 I, I know that I, I have given retreats to about 40 different retreats to priests all over the country.
00:33:12.900 I've also given retreats for bishops.
00:33:14.720 And I, I always talk about this and I say, we've got to get back to a, a healthy, but clear understanding about the real possibility of hell.
00:33:23.780 And, um, I explained it to some of what I've done here in the conferences that I give.
00:33:28.100 It's not the whole retreat, but it's, it's, it's important.
00:33:31.160 So I, I think I'm, I'm hoping to just influence a conversation and reinforce good folks to listen to podcasts like this or to, um, to, to this wonderful place.
00:33:41.640 And, and give them a little more, maybe reflection on how they can answer some of the questions that do come up, uh, or some of the scoffing that takes place.
00:33:52.060 Um, I don't know if everyone, I have a whole chapter here on all the different things that Jesus said about hell.
00:33:57.680 I mean, to just know, and to have that at your fingertips and to say, look, you know, whatever you think you, whatever reinvention of the religion you want to make, this isn't what Jesus said.
00:34:07.120 You are at odds with Jesus.
00:34:08.900 And that goes all the way up to the highest levels of the church.
00:34:11.720 Um, that the, the very often there's just a, just dismiss this.
00:34:15.460 And yet this was a huge focus for Jesus.
00:34:18.780 And it would just get people to be empowered and say, I'm not wrong.
00:34:22.440 Jesus talked about this all the time.
00:34:24.540 It was important to him and he came to save us from this very thing.
00:34:29.020 And he needs us to take him seriously in order to do it.
00:34:32.540 You know, nobody loves you and me more than Jesus.
00:34:35.180 Nobody talked about hell though, more than Jesus.
00:34:37.940 And at the end of the day, he loves us, but he expects to be taken seriously and nobody's taking him seriously.
00:34:45.820 Oh, he didn't really mean that or whatever.
00:34:47.820 Or they just cling to some sort of, you know, fanciful thing.
00:34:50.340 So I try to show forth all the things he said and to explain it.
00:34:53.840 And there's a lot of reasons why a lot of us go to hell.
00:34:56.200 I have a whole chapter on that.
00:34:57.700 You know, why, why do, why would so many go to hell?
00:34:59.920 What's that?
00:35:00.420 Why is that?
00:35:01.340 And, you know, well, first of all, we have concupiscence, a strong inclination to sin.
00:35:05.900 We, we also are lemmings.
00:35:07.360 We just go with whatever the popular culture is saying.
00:35:09.660 We just walk on.
00:35:11.720 We're egotistical.
00:35:12.980 We're opinionated.
00:35:14.600 We're grouchy.
00:35:16.820 We, we, we, we're stingy.
00:35:18.500 You know, there's all kinds of reasons that, um, you know, we have to, um, realize that wickedness can build up in us very quickly.
00:35:27.660 And, um, so I have a whole chapter on that.
00:35:30.540 I also, um, try in the last chapter to say, you know, what, what's at stake here?
00:35:35.500 Um, you know, how can we rediscover the doctrine of hell, but also how does it powerfully and negative, in a negative way, the denial of this doctrine affect our faith?
00:35:47.360 Bonhoeffer said, we're living in a time of cheap grace.
00:35:52.160 Just all about cheap, just cheap grace.
00:35:54.760 Just say a prayer and, you know, or just, you know, uh, do the Jesus said, and he'll save you.
00:35:59.280 And you poof, you're, he says, this is not, this life is a battle.
00:36:04.100 And he suffered a lot.
00:36:06.380 And Bonhoeffer did.
00:36:07.520 And, uh, he always talked to, that was one of his chief themes, this too much cheap grace being sold out there.
00:36:13.320 Grace is hard.
00:36:14.860 Healing is hard.
00:36:15.780 Everybody wants relief, but nobody wants healing.
00:36:19.320 We've got to understand this is a hard work that the Lord has to do for us.
00:36:22.960 He has to take us through kind of the cauldron of this world and knock off all the foolishness and refashion us and probably spend some time in purgatory.
00:36:31.080 Because heaven is a glorious place, but you don't walk in there in your present state.
00:36:37.580 There's, um, a whole chapter I also have on something that's related to this.
00:36:42.500 It's called the wrath of God.
00:36:44.260 God, we hear about that a lot in the Bible and most people just interpret it as, um, well, it just means God is mad.
00:36:50.800 Well, first of all, I hope if we, if we're going to just calm ourselves for a minute and God doesn't change.
00:36:58.840 God is not moody.
00:37:00.020 God is not, you know, one thing, one today.
00:37:02.620 Now I'm really mad.
00:37:04.000 That's not who God is.
00:37:05.180 Uh, the Bible says in God, there is no variableness or shadow of turning book of James, right?
00:37:10.560 God does not change.
00:37:12.740 Jesus is the same yesterday, today, always, and so on.
00:37:16.540 So what is the wrath of God?
00:37:18.140 The wrath of God and not in God is in us.
00:37:20.860 It is our experience of the total incompatibility of our sinful state before the holiness of God.
00:37:28.760 And, um, it's the thing of it.
00:37:30.340 It's like fire and water.
00:37:31.300 They don't mix.
00:37:32.000 There's a conflict.
00:37:32.700 So if you drop hot water on a hot stove, you hear the sizzle.
00:37:36.900 You hear it.
00:37:37.840 I'll give you another example.
00:37:39.140 Um, at nighttime, at nighttime, we have a light on in our ceiling and, you know, we're delighted by that light.
00:37:44.780 We turn off the light.
00:37:45.880 And especially in the colder months of the year, we get up early in the morning and still dark.
00:37:49.580 And somebody puts on the light and say, turn that light off.
00:37:52.140 It's harsh, but the light hasn't changed.
00:37:55.740 We have, I've gotten accustomed to the dark.
00:37:57.660 The light was the same light it was.
00:37:59.520 So you see the vision.
00:38:00.660 It's not about God.
00:38:01.580 The wrath of God is in us, not in God.
00:38:05.060 Now, what that means is that we cannot simply walk into God's presence without being prepared and sanctified by our Lord Jesus.
00:38:13.940 Now, at the beginning, Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the garden.
00:38:17.020 But they lost, they lost this integrity that they had and they could no longer tolerate the presence of God.
00:38:23.840 The next big theophany we have is at the Mount Sinai and peals of thunder and thunder and lightning and all that stuff going on.
00:38:32.340 And the people said, Moses, you better go up and talk to him because we can't even bear to hear his voice.
00:38:38.140 And he said, don't even touch the base of this mountain.
00:38:40.020 You'll be struck dead.
00:38:41.100 But God changed.
00:38:43.400 What happened to the God who walked with them intimately in the garden in the cool, breezy time of the day?
00:38:48.920 God hadn't changed.
00:38:49.780 And now when God made a theophany, they could barely endure it, even in a veiled form.
00:38:57.180 And so this we have to understand something powerful used to happen to us in order for us to be made ready for heaven.
00:39:05.100 And that's why I think purgatory is a wonderful consolation, too, because, frankly, most of us kind of realize we we ain't all that even when we die.
00:39:15.400 You know, Jesus says you must be perfect if the heavenly father is perfect.
00:39:19.140 Well, I if I were to die today, as far as I know, I'm in friendship with God, not aware of mortal sin.
00:39:24.540 But I'll tell you, I'm not even humanly perfect, let alone godly perfect.
00:39:28.460 So he'd have to probably purge and do some final purification.
00:39:31.880 So this is a deep reverence for the wonder and the awe of God.
00:39:36.980 People have trivialized God.
00:39:38.320 There is no fear of God in people today.
00:39:40.760 Fear of God off the chart.
00:39:42.660 It's just no, it's not even there.
00:39:44.640 We don't want to fear God.
00:39:46.700 That fear is a bad thing.
00:39:48.180 That's kind of the attitude.
00:39:49.620 And yet the Bible talks about having this as a glorious gift and basically means to hold God in awe and to be fearful of ever offending such a good, holy and righteous God.
00:40:01.300 I want to be with God.
00:40:03.960 That's the fear of the Lord.
00:40:05.680 And we've lost it.
00:40:07.360 People because people have trivialized God.
00:40:09.420 Right.
00:40:09.720 As you were speaking there, I could see purgatory immediately in that you catch any glimpse of your greatest love and then you're separated even for a little second.
00:40:19.540 That second would seem like an eternity.
00:40:21.620 Well, as I say, it's amazing.
00:40:23.560 So, you know, all these things exist not because God is mad or wrathful or any of these things.
00:40:29.060 It's that he is who he is and we don't just walk into his presence.
00:40:33.100 So I'll give you one final thing about the wrath of God.
00:40:36.140 It's the end of the book of Malachi.
00:40:38.900 Right.
00:40:39.300 Very last chapter.
00:40:40.200 And he says,
00:40:41.220 Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all who do evil will be burnt up, leaving neither root nor branch, saith the Lord of hosts.
00:40:50.280 But for you who fear my name, that day will arise like a beautiful sunlit morning with healing in its rays.
00:40:58.260 Wow.
00:40:59.080 So it's one reality, but two very different experiences.
00:41:02.640 What is the difference?
00:41:03.920 Some have been brought up to the temperature of glory and are accustomed to the light.
00:41:07.460 And they see it as a beautiful sunlit morning.
00:41:09.520 And others prefer the darkness.
00:41:12.100 Their deeds are wicked.
00:41:13.700 They're not, you know, they're not brought up to the temperature.
00:41:16.900 They're locked in the coldness of sin and the days intolerant.
00:41:21.000 But God is just who he is.
00:41:23.100 And either we're ready to go and see him or we're not.
00:41:27.260 And so an awful lot of soteriology folds into this question of hell as well.
00:41:32.540 You know, soteriology is a study of how we're saved and what it means to be saved.
00:41:36.140 And a great deal of it is, of course, yes, we're baptized and so on.
00:41:40.500 So we're in like Flynn.
00:41:41.560 But on the other hand, we have to also, there's a lot of healing that has to take place for us to ever really see God's face unveiled.
00:41:49.340 And so all of this is, there's just some who refuse that.
00:41:53.060 And they wouldn't be able to tolerate heaven.
00:41:54.680 So God permits them to live apart.
00:41:57.220 And it's sad, but it's also a strange kind of mercy.
00:42:01.520 You know, this is not an angry God.
00:42:03.420 He's respectful of people's freedom.
00:42:05.340 I know they didn't want it.
00:42:08.140 But I'm glad some did.
00:42:10.000 And he welcomed them to heaven.
00:42:11.840 It's astonishing.
00:42:12.820 You know, when you think about so precious is our yes to God that apparently he's willing to receive some of us saying yes, even with many saying no.
00:42:22.040 He gives us this freedom.
00:42:24.320 It is an awesome gift, but it's a terrifying gift.
00:42:27.800 Final question for you, Monsignor.
00:42:30.360 Judas.
00:42:31.320 Judas has been a question for so many people, particularly because Pope Francis has that picture of Judas consoling Jesus has created a lot of confusion.
00:42:42.900 People wonder, you know, here was a guy who seemingly gave up his whole life.
00:42:47.300 He was a priest.
00:42:47.840 He was a bishop.
00:42:48.380 He was one of the first apostles.
00:42:49.480 He, as far as I know, because the books, the Bible says he did miracles in the name of Jesus.
00:42:57.060 How could Judas be in hell?
00:42:58.680 Didn't he just like, you know, make a mistake and then sort of he repented of it.
00:43:03.460 He threw in the money.
00:43:04.300 He was like, no, take your money.
00:43:05.380 I don't want it anymore.
00:43:06.720 What happened there?
00:43:07.700 And could he really be in hell?
00:43:09.660 Well, again, and I'm going to, whenever we talk about the Pope, we want to make one thing clear.
00:43:14.140 Many of the things the popes are saying these days are not infallibly declared and so on.
00:43:20.040 They express opinions and so on.
00:43:22.420 I think they should speak less publicly than they do.
00:43:24.820 And not just this Pope, but Benedict spoke a lot of stuff that he wrote book, you know, and the same with Pope John Paul.
00:43:31.020 So I think we have to, that's a whole different matter.
00:43:33.700 But the Pope, when he says he got this picture of Judas being embraced by Christ, kind of welcomed into heaven, it's an opinion.
00:43:42.420 It's all it is.
00:43:43.500 And I would say that it's a wrongful opinion.
00:43:45.660 I think Jesus gives us a better answer or let's say a more truthful answer.
00:43:50.780 He says of Judas, better that he had never been born.
00:43:54.960 How could you say that about anyone who finally makes it to heaven, even if they go through great suffering on earth?
00:44:00.360 So the first thing is to say, I think we have to take Jesus seriously again.
00:44:04.360 Would you please listen to what he's saying?
00:44:06.920 Now, this isn't an absolute declaration that we now, therefore now know he's in hell.
00:44:11.280 But how could anybody make it to heaven and God would say of them better they'd never been born?
00:44:16.720 That's the first thing.
00:44:17.640 The second thing is Judas did repent.
00:44:19.980 But, you know, if you compare Peter and Judas, you start to see Judas repented unto himself.
00:44:25.480 Peter repented to the Lord.
00:44:26.620 Think of those weeks that Peter had to spend, at least two weeks.
00:44:30.400 The Lord was making appearances, but I denied him.
00:44:33.200 I mean, he must be angry with me.
00:44:35.900 He hasn't gotten to me yet.
00:44:37.340 You can imagine.
00:44:38.740 And he had to wait two whole weeks till finally at the seashore, the Lord said, Peter, do you love me?
00:44:44.260 And they had the conversation.
00:44:45.680 They had to talk.
00:44:46.880 But he repented to the Lord.
00:44:48.200 He held his grace and waited for the Lord.
00:44:51.700 Judas said, I can't tolerate this.
00:44:53.120 I will not, I feel angry and bitter about what I've done, but I have to end it.
00:44:58.820 And he just, he killed himself.
00:45:00.740 He repented to himself.
00:45:02.500 How could I have done such a thing?
00:45:04.360 I blew it.
00:45:05.100 Maybe he's really going to be, you know, he had any motives for that.
00:45:08.480 Maybe, you know, this movement looks like it's going to outlive even his crucifixion now.
00:45:12.720 You know, whatever he was thinking, we don't know.
00:45:15.620 But I think at the end of the day, consider what would have happened, the beauty of it, if he had really repented.
00:45:21.360 How many churches would be named after him?
00:45:25.160 You know, the Church of Judas, no, hope for sinners.
00:45:29.840 You know, we'd have litanies and so on.
00:45:32.240 But it never happened.
00:45:33.640 And I think we have to just take the Lord seriously.
00:45:36.860 And it doesn't look good for Judas.
00:45:38.960 I can't absolutely say he's in hell.
00:45:41.760 None of us can personally say that.
00:45:43.480 That's not for us.
00:45:44.300 But it doesn't look good based on what the Lord said.
00:45:48.060 Well, let me answer my earlier question myself, Monsignor.
00:45:52.280 I do know indeed what people can do to help us recover this in the Church.
00:45:57.900 And that's that many of you can go out there.
00:46:00.100 And if you're fathers, yourselves, or bishops, please go out and purchase the book from Tan Books called The Hell There Is.
00:46:08.960 And I would encourage all you faithful, if you have a pastor open to this and need some encouragement, this is a great way to encourage him.
00:46:15.720 Monsignor Pope is a very well-known figure among the clergy.
00:46:20.700 My hope is it would give them some fortitude in terms of bringing out this truth, which needs to come for the good of souls.
00:46:29.360 Monsignor Charles Pope, thank you so much for joining us.
00:46:31.580 And I would ask you, if you wouldn't mind, could you conclude by giving us your blessing?
00:46:35.060 Lord, we first of all thank you and glorify you.
00:46:37.560 We thank you for the great gift of LifeSite.
00:46:40.900 We thank also for John Henry West and for all who lead and work in this beautiful ministry.
00:46:46.720 So thank you, Lord.
00:46:47.820 And please extend your blessing then upon all of us.
00:46:50.780 May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
00:46:54.840 Amen.
00:46:55.320 Amen.
00:46:56.120 Thank you, Monsignor.
00:46:56.980 So good to be with you.
00:46:57.700 Thank you.
00:46:58.120 And God bless all of you.
00:47:00.000 And we'll see you next time.
00:47:00.860 Aloha, everyone.
00:47:06.540 This is Jason Jones for LifeSite News.
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