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777. Please explain the doctrine of predestination of souls.

predestination of soul is simply a special Providence of God in regard to a particular individual for whom God has foreordained special graces with which He knows that the individual will certainly correspond. There is no such thing as predestination to hell. To every man in this world God gives…

predestination of soul is simply a special Providence of God in regard to a particular individual for whom God has foreordained special graces with which He knows that the individual will certainly correspond. There is no such thing as predestination to hell. To every man in this world God gives sufficient grace for salvation and every man can be saved by corresponding with it. Therefore, if any man is lost, it is his own fault. But there is a predestination for a specially chosen few to very special graces over and above the ordinary distribution, as in the case of St. Paul, who though a Pharisee, was predestined to his glorious Apostolate. Now, with these principles in mind, we can go on to your other questions.

Topic: "Grace and salvation" in Vol 3.

933. Take a suicide. You Catholics have to believe that his soul was destined for hell.

Before proceeding, I must correct you. The expression destined for hell could be taken in two ways. Yet neither of those two ways could fit in with the Catholic view. Firstly, one could interpret the expression in the sense of predestination to hell. But the Catholic Church condemns the doctrine…

Before proceeding, I must correct you. The expression destined for hell could be taken in two ways. Yet neither of those two ways could fit in with the Catholic view. Firstly, one could interpret the expression in the sense of predestination to hell. But the Catholic Church condemns the doctrine that God has predestined any soul to hell as straight-out heresy. Secondly, and I think this is what you have in mind, one could understand the expression in the sense that the soul of such a man will certainly go to hell as a result of his own perverse conduct. But even that is not the Catholic view. Undoubtedly suicide is, in itself, a gravely sinful thing. And every Catholic is taught that objectively it must be ranked as mortal sin. But when we turn from the crime itself to the person who takes his own life, we are quite unable to say that that particular person will go to hell. For we are unable to estimate his subjective responsibility. That depends upon the clarity of his mind at the time, the deliberateness of his decision, and the degree of untrammelled consent. Those things we cannot estimate. Then, too, even granted a sufficient degree of subjective guilt, we do not know whether or not a supreme act of God's mercy has intervened between the sin and the actual death of the unfortunate man. The Catholic view, therefore, is that we must refrain from judging that any given soul has actually forfeited salvation.

Topic: "Hell" in Vol 3.

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"The hardest thing to find in the world today is an argument. Because so few are thinking, naturally there are found but few to argue. Prejudice there is in abundance and sentiment too, for these things are born of enthusiasms without the pain of labour. Thinking, on the contrary, is a difficult task; it is the hardest work a man can do - that is perhaps why so few indulge in it."
- Mgsr Fulton Sheen in Preface to Vol 3 (1942)

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