By David Martin ——Bio and Archives--March 21, 2023
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Pope Francis has again denied Catholic dogma concerning the afterlife. First he said, "No one can be condemned forever" (A.M. 297), then he said that the souls of unrepentant sinners who die in mortal sin are simply “annihilated” or disappear and are not punished eternally. Now he's saying that Hell does not exist.
In an interview conducted by Argentinian news site Perfil, Francis was asked, “What is your own interpretation of Hell and paradise, and what happens to people who go to Hell, and what happens to those who go to paradise?”
Francis answered: "Hell is not a place," explaining that "it is a state of the heart” and “a posture towards life.
This directly contravenes the Church's dogmatic teaching that Hell is a distinct place in the netherworld, the abode of the damned, where the souls of unrepentant sinners that die out of grace are eternally punished by means of fire. Christ Himself said that those who merely neglect good works are sent “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Mt. 25:41)
As always, we see Francis pulling ideas out of his hat and presenting them as doctrine while mocking and trashing the Church's true teachings as given by Christ and upheld through the centuries by the true Popes. The faithful have a duty to reject Francis’ heterodox ideas lest they wind up in the fire themselves.
A penitent in confession once told St. Padre Pio that he didn’t believe in Hell, whereupon the saint glared at him with piercing eyes and replied, “You’ll believe it when you get there.” Those who maintain a mocking and hellish “posture” in this life indeed wind up in the place called Hell.
One has to wonder, too, what this “political pope” is insinuating by “posture” seeing that he has consistently persecuted tradition-minded Catholics who maintain the traditional posture of kneeling and folding their hands at Mass. We refer especially to groups like the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate or the Carmelite Nuns of Fairfield, Pennsylvania, who have been asked by Francis to give up their traditional practice for the more worldly mod exhibited by most of today’s religious. Is the reverent posture exhibited by traditional Catholics what Francis means by ‘hellish posture?’
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David Martin is the former moderator for St. Michaels Radio which is the one radio program of our time specializing in Catholic prophecy. He has also authored numerous articles on the Church and the Papacy which have appeared on various blogs and websites.
David presently resides in Los Angeles, California where for thirty years he has coordinated a Catholic ministry. He is a daily communicant in his parish church and strongly supports Benedict XVI’s aspiration to see the Traditional Latin Mass returned to every Catholic parish of the world.