Is Anne in hell?
It depends who you shall ask.
Some say this, some that.
Her friends will say, "no".
Her foes will say, "it's not so".
Strangers, "I don't know".
Ask yourself,
"who are you?"
---<--@
About this article:
I resent the sweeping generalization leveled on the Christian religion in the above article by R. Smith Blacktown.
But to tell you the truth, I welcome it and I even thank R. Smith Blacktown for writing it.
To me, that article reveals a very human longing; a seeking for God.
Notwithstanding the apparent bitter frustration in the author's pleading, the above article presupposes the reality of God and in particular, God as revealed in the Christian tradition.
It's really a cry for justice addressed to Christians in specific: Do we serve an unjust God?
As a practicing Roman Catholic Christian, I will take this opportunity to meaningfully respond to this article.
The tone of the article indicates to me a sense of desperation.
There is something hurting in there and it hurts for the souls of our good men and women: Have people like my Anne, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, etc. gone to hell?
Have the lives of our innocents and all these contributors to the nobility and the culture of our common humanity been all lived in vain?
They say that atheism is becoming rampant in our days and this is true. Articles like these are springboards into atheistic thinking or into new age syncretism.
But as we can gather from this article, atheism or any non-traditional form of religiosity is not a reaction to the reality of God. They all presuppose the Divine Reality.
They are all, in my opinion, indications of an unconventional willingness in the soul to encounter the conventional reality of God.
Rather, all of these are radical reactions to the unreality of religion. Religion which is the conventional response to the conventional reality of God.
This is why I am of the conviction that the New Evangelization of our times must begin from within my own Mother Church and from within blessed Christendom first.
As a Roman Catholic Christian, my religious training forbids my faith to fall into a state of despair - of my own salvation or the salvation of others be they Christian or non-Christian.
Because Catholic Tradition teaches me that Despair is one of the four unforgivable sins against the Holy Spirit (along with Presumption, Obstinacy to the Truth, and Final Impenitence) and my faith accepts it as true.
The salvation of souls is the primary domain of God. It is not the primary domain of Man. What's ours to do is to guard and to prosper each other's hopes with the true love of friendships taught to us by the example of Jesus Christ Himself - a love that doesn't turn on itself on a whim.
Because those who are prone to condemn the souls of others with judgments reserved only for the final Justice of God condemn themselves:
Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6: 37
The absence of love
in the Presence of the LORD
is the pain of hell.
