I don’t remember the last time I heard a sermon on the eternal pains of hell. My parents and their contemporaries tell me fire and brimstone from the pulpit used to be commonplace in both Protestant and Catholic churches.What has happened? Has there been development in theological assumptions about the afterlife? According to Pope Benedict, the answer is both “no” and “yes.” His remarks this week in a small immigrant church in the outskirts of Rome reaffirmed the Biblical teaching that hell is real, tragic, and eternal. In that sense, according to Benedict, Church teaching about hell remains unchanged.
But if we look beyond the sensationalistic headlines (“Pope Says Sinners Burn Forever in Hell,” etc.) and examine what he actually said, we can discover something very new in Pope Benedict’s teaching approach. Instead of invoking Middle Age images of Dante’s Inferno to catechize the faithful about what eternal life may be like for the unscrupulous, Pope Benedict suggests a new and, yes, refreshing way for each of us to penetrate the mystery of hell. He dismisses fear of damnation as the principle motivation for conversion. Instead, he underscores the power of love to engender positive change.
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