I don't think the Catholic view of hell has ever been as hard-lined as Protestant sects, has it? We see this in the Eastern Church more than the Western, but I can't see that the Church has ever been too specific on the finer details of hell.
@Vouthon if you're tired of being everybody's Catholic expert on RF kick me, but- your thoughts?
Well, the first thing which needs to be made absolutely clear is that we
do believe in hell (sorry guys! I hate being the guy who ruins the party
). In our eyes it is the logical corollary of free-will, since 'hell' is defined in the church's doctrinal tradition as a state of definitive "
self-exclusion" from God.
We emphatically do not believe in the annihilation of the damned, as the papal transcript would appear from a surface reading to imply.
Immortality of the soul is as central in our beliefs as it is in Platonism. The individual's conscious awareness, to use the more contemporary term, is indestructible and will never "
disappear".
If we denied the possibility of hell (that is the 'choice' to separate oneself from God in both this life and the next), then we would essentially be confining the spiritual destiny of mankind to a kind of super-determinism and make God into a cosmic tyrant who compels unwilling beings to contemplate Him for eternity.
I am of the mind that the Holy Father likely made remarks significantly more nuanced than those in Scalfari's transcript would have one believe. For instance, the Church speaks about hell only as a
possibility. It has never positively declared that anyone is actually in this state of being, so the Pope may have been trying to communicate the idea that hell is in fact never actualized, even though it remains a theoretical possibility.
Sclafari has been prone in the past to record his exchanges with the Pope (with whom he is a close friend) in a less than precise manner, mainly due to the fact that he works from a generally poor memory (i.e. he has never learned the art of note-taking
during an actual discussion) and is an atheist lacking in awareness of theological subtleties. FYI:
Vatican: Claim that pope denied hell's existence is unreliable
The Italian journalist has explained on more than one occasion that he does not take notes or record his conversations with the pope; he re-creates them afterward from memory, including the material he puts in quotation marks.
The Vatican issued a statement soon after the article was published, saying the pope did receive Scalfari "in a private meeting" to exchange Easter greetings, but he did not "give him an interview."
Regarding the alleged words of the pope, which were also published in a similar article written by the journalist in 2014, the Vatican said Scalfari's article "is a product of his own reconstruction in which the actual words pronounced by the pope are not cited."
"No quotes of the aforementioned article should therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the Holy Father's words," the Vatican said.
The alleged quotes ascribed to Francis directly contradict the many public remarks he has made in homilies and speeches confirming the existence of hell.
That said, I would agree with you inasmuch as the Catholic understanding of hell differs greatly from the conventional stereotype of a fiery place of eternal punishments. The Baha'i definition offered by
@Tony Bristow-Stagg is essentially the Catholic one as well. We consider 'hell' to be
a state of being rather than a place, in which a person is separated from the beatific vision of the essence of God as enjoyed by the blessed (which is what 'heaven' is). The damned are deprived of the sight of God for all eternity by their own free choice, in a state of definitive self-exclusion. That is
ALL hell means and entails.
“…Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life…The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy…“Eternal damnation”, therefore, is not attributed to God’s initiative because in his merciful love he can only desire the salvation of the beings he created. In reality, it is the creature who closes himself to his love. Damnation consists precisely in definitive separation from God, freely chosen by the human person and confirmed with death that seals his choice for ever. God’s judgement ratifies this state…The thought of hell — and even less the improper use of biblical images — must not create anxiety or despair but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom…”
- Pope St. John Paul II (General Audience, July 28, 1999)
In Catholic Christianity, heaven by contrast is called “
supreme beatitude” the latter word being Latin for “a state of utmost bliss” and it consists of the eternal enjoyment of the “Beatific Vision”. This state of being is an eternal and unmediated perception of the Essence of God; which the blessed participate in and are divinized by through grace.
Spiritual entities are not "in place" in the same sense as physical objects, which is why Hell is not described in spatial terms. Some good old fashioned Thomism might help here:
"...Incorporeal things [ie spirits] are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us..."
- Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1, Doctor of the Catholic Church
As an EWTN article explains:
"...Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him..."
