Crannóggy Island

Following comments on the last post, I thought I would script a series of three essays for the season of Lent. They are, as usual, longer than I had hoped. But they deal with frequently raised questions; q uestions not easily answered that go to the heart of the mysteries of the Christian faith. After further reflection, based on the comments, I have rewritten the essay on Hell, the third in the series. Introduction: Held in Tension Some doctrines are best approached with respect, attention, and a willingness to be changed by the encounter. The nature of God, grace, predestination, free will, and hell are such doctrines. Taken separately, each is carefully articulated in the Church's teaching. Placed side by side, they generate questions that press on the very heart of faith. This pressure is not a problem to be managed; it is an invitation into the contemplation of deep mystery. The Catechism teaches that hell is real: "the state of definitive self-exclusion from commun...

"For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost"  (Luke 19:10) Introduction There are objections to hell that come from anger. Some objections come from wounded experience. And then some objections come from love, from a refusal to believe that the God revealed in Christ could eternally abandon His creatures. It is the last of these that deserves the most careful listening. Understanding the suffering of hell as a freely chosen separation from God, rather than a divinely imposed torture, has made the doctrine morally intelligible for many Christians. It aligns with the Father who runs to meet the prodigal, who entreats the elder brother, who desires not the death of the sinner but that he turn and live. Yet the difficulty remains. Why must such separation be eternal? Why would freedom be "locked in" at death? Why would the Father ever cease to entreat? What the Church Teaches The Catholic Church teaches that hell is real, that it is eternal, and ...

  Introduction There is a very human instinct, when something bad happens to someone, to wonder what they did to deserve it. And there is an equally human instinct, when we read the harsher parts of the Old Testament, the sudden deaths, the divine punishments, the apparent scorekeeping, to feel that we understand what is going on: God is rewarding the good and punishing the bad, and we are meant to learn from that. Both instincts feel reasonable; they can even feel religious. But when we take the Gospels seriously, when we let Jesus Christ be the lens through which we read everything else, something unexpected happens. It puts real pressure on them both. Again and again, in His words and in His parables, Jesus dispels the idea that we can read God's verdicts off the surface of events, or that we are qualified to do that kind of reading. This is not comfortable, but it’s deeply reassuring. It means that no suffering person need wonder whether God is punishing them. And it mean...

  Submitted to Happy Jack anonymously by a person in deep-cover. Memorandum from Below [CONFIDENTIAL: This memorandum is for operational use only. To avoid it falling into the Enemy's hands, destroy it immediately once read. The strategies herein depend entirely upon remaining unrecognised.] Notes Toward a Successful Apostolate by Slubgob, Junior Tempter I am permitted (with some hesitation from my uncle Screwtape) to outline the broad contours of our present strategy for the modern age, now that brute unbelief is unnecessary and, in many places, inefficient. Outright atheism and diffuse spirituality serve us well enough among the masses. But for those still tethered to institutional religion, a more subtle approach is needed. The central aim is no longer to persuade humans that God does not exist. Much better to persuade them that the Enemy exists, but does not speak clearly, and certainly not through any institution capable of making binding claims. Our primary achi...