Radio Replies Vol 5 - Catholic Apologetics Online

The clipping you send is from the London "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post," of June 18, 1963, declaring the report to be from "its own correspondent, New York." It is an excellent example of how things can be misrepresented in headlines; for the item is published under the caption: "Mercy Death Permissible — Says Bishop." The editor must have known that most readers would understand by "Mercy Death" simply euthanasia, or deliberately putting to death in a painless way people suffering from incurable illnesses. Such a deliberate killing would be murder, and Bishop Fulton Sheen would utterly condemn it.

Note the choice of words. To allow a person to die, letting nature itself take its course, is a very different proposition from deliberately ending a man's life by killing him; and even then, there is the qualification "under certain circumstances."

All Catholic theologians would agree with that. It is a doctor's duty to alleviate suffering, but basically he exists to save life, not to destroy it. That forbids all direct and deliberate killing of a living person. In the case, however, of an incurable person where there are no grounds for hope that he can be restored to health and it is clear that to prolong his life longer than he would normally live would be, not to alleviate his sufferings but to make him endure still more, then it would be quite lawful morally to omit, not ordinary medical and nursing care, but all extraordinary measures to keep him alive, such as special oxygen supplies through tubes, blood transfusions, intravenous feeding and drug stimulation, natural developments in the case being allowed to take thencourse.

The difference is between murder and allowing the patient to die of natural causes. A patient, dying of an incurable disease permitted by God which has reached its terminal stages, is quite entitled to say to his doctor: "Let God take me, without any further special efforts to prolong my life." In 1947, Pope Pius XII, addressing an International Congress of Anaesthetists, said that in hopeless cases doctors have no duty to continue artificial means beyond ordinary forms of treatment in order to postpone death, unless patients themselves request them. If they do ask for them, it is the doctor's duty to comply with the patient's wishes as far as possible.

It is the patient suffering from the prolonged and incurable illness, who has the right to decide that the disease God has permitted should not be allowed to take longer to kill him than it would, if just left to take its natural course. The doctor, therefore, must consider the wishes of the patient, who has the right to use or refuse additional efforts beyond the ordinary to make him live longer than he otherwise would. Granted this acknowledgment of the primary right of the patient, the doctor may regard as his own rule: "Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive officiously to keep alive."

The Council itself allowed only for earth-burial, making provision in its Decree on the Liturgy, n.81, for a revision of prayers to be used on the occasion. A special Instruction of the Holy See on May 8, 1964, however, abolished the severe church penalties incurred by Catholics choosing cremation. In the 19th century, atheists were using the idea of cremation as a means of anti-religious propaganda, especially to promote their teaching that death meant the end of everything for man, and that there is no immortality of the soul or future resurrection of the body. Few people regard cremation in that way today. But in abolishing such penalties, the Holy See made it clear that this in no way indicated an approval of cremation. The 1964 Instruction said all care must be taken to maintain the custom of earth-burial wherever possible, and to ensure that Catholics will avoid the choice of cremation. Catholics are still to regard earth-burial in ground set apart and consecrated by the rites of the Church as the normal way for themselves, to the exclusion of cremation.

Here we must ask what the Church forbids, or permits, or merely tolerates. She positively forbids the choice of cremation from antireligious motives. Where such motives are evident, the Last Rites of the Church must be refused. She permits cremation in exceptional cases where good reasons make it advisable or necessary, as in epidemics, or where civil law requires it owing to lack of burial-areas, as in Japan and other countries. She merely tolerates it where Catholics think they have serious personal reasons for wanting to be cremated, although she in no way authorises such a preference. In cases where the Church either permits or tolerates such a choice, the Last Sacraments may be given and Catholic burial rites granted.

The Instruction on this matter forbids that, allowing the priest to officiate only at funeral rites in the church and at the cemetery, should the ashes of the cremated Catholic be buried or placed in a family grave there. The Instruction declares that the priest's non-attendance at the Crematorium is in order to show the Church's disapproval of cremation where Catholics are concerned.

The word censorship has fallen into disrepute with many people where almost every aspect of life is concerned. It would be better, then, to speak of a supervision exercised by the Church in the fulfilment of her duty to safeguard the faithful from erroneous teachings and influences where faith and morals are involved. No one can deny that duty. It would be highly irresponsible on the part of the Church to neglect it. St. Paul bade the assembled Bishops at Ephesus to take care of the whole flock over which the Holy Spirit had placed them as leaders (Acts 20:28); he urged Timothy to fulfil the duties of his office reproving, entreating and pleading with his people lest they should abandon sound doctrine and turn to fables instead according to their own desires (2 Tim., 4:2-5); and he admonished the faithful to submit to their leaders who watch over their souls as men who will have to give an account for them (Heb., 13:17). These responsibilities are wide-ranging in thenscope, and it would be a mistake in connection with them to think only of what was known as the "Index of Forbidden Books."

It was first introduced over four hundred years ago, in 1557. The invention of the printing press in the preceding century had led to a multiplication of books, many of which were subversive of religion and morals, and often, in that early Reformation period, directly hostile to the Catholic Faith. The more significant works of such a kind were condemned by the Church, declared forbidden reading for Catholics, and listed in a catalogue or "Index" for the guidance of priests in the exercise of their ministry — much as civil laws and regulations are published in a "Government Gazette" for the guidance of lawyers and judges in their own sphere of work. The Index was often revised during the centuries, obsolete works being omitted as more recent ones were added, the last revised edition being published in 1948. On December 7, 1965, in accordance with the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI replaced the "Congregation of the Holy Office" with a new "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith;" and on June 14, 1966, this new Congregation declared obsolete the "Index" itself, which had been under the administration of the Holy Office, and which therefore no longer formed part of the disciplinary laws of the Church. It was not the intention of the new Congregation to do away with any rules in this matter at all, but rather to decentralise administration, transferring responsibility to the Bishops throughout the world, each in his own diocese.

In practice, as it always has been. They will experience no noticeable difference. In its June 14 decree, the new Congregation said that the general law — which is really included in the obligation to avoid all voluntary occasions of sin — remained; namely, that Catholics may not read literature known to have been written in order to undermine their faith or morals, and must cease from reading literature which they personally find to be a source of serious temptation to themselves in such matters. In particular, besides this general obligation, the new Congregation said that it is the duty of each Bishop in his own diocese to supervise publications, warning against bad and promoting good literature. Catholic writers are still obliged to obtain episcopal approval for the publication of books on religious subjects; and the "Nihil Obstat" and "Imprimatur" prefacing such books, showing that they have been duly examined and approved as at least not conflicting with Catholic teaching, will continue to be a valuable guide to the faithful in their choice of religious books. The Congregation added that, even granted such normal procedure, the Holy See still reserves to itself the right to intervene directly in cases where more than ordinarily serious matters are involved.

No Catholic need regard the practice itself as abolished. In your letter, you give as your reason that on the day on which our Lord gave up His life for us in such suffering, we could at least give up the pleasure of eating meat; and that Friday should not be the same for us as a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. The Church fully agrees with you. The actual position is this. In 1966, Pope Paul VI, in a special "Apostolic Constitution," said divine law obliges us to do some penance or acts of self-denial in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel. He said, however, that while the Church esteems abstinence from meat as one of the customs observed for many centuries, especially on Fridays, he left it to the Bishops of various countries to decide what they thought suitable for their own regions. The Australian National Conference of Bishops stressed that all Fridays must be regarded as penitential days and recommended continued abstinence from meat on those days. But they decided that, from May 1, 1967, Australian Catholics may substitute for this some other form of selfdenial, such as abstaining from alcoholic drink, or from smoking, or from luxury foods; or they may choose to attend an additional Mass on Fridays, or make a charitable donation towards the relief of the poor. At any rate, some special act of self-denial on Fridays in honour of our Lord's complete self-sacrifice for us all on that day, and in expiation of our sins, is still an obligation in conscience.

The papal document of February 17, 1966, said that only "substantial observance" of prescribed penitential days obliges under pain of serious sin. Not every isolated neglect of one's penitential duty on Fridays other than those in Lent is, therefore, to be regarded as a serious sin. But a repeated and habitual neglect of any practices of selfdenial at all on Fridays would be a grave violation of the law and necessary matter for confession before receiving Holy Communion. Continued neglect during a period of three months would certainly constitute a "notable number" of Fridays proportionately to the fifty-two Fridays in the year and deserve to be ranked as gravely sinful. From a practical point of view, the better choice would be to follow the advice of the Bishops by retaining the regular custom abstaining from meat on Fridays. There is a very real danger that if one does not have a definite rule for oneself, but thinks to rely on various alternatives chosen haphazardly, one may fall into habitual disregard of any duty at all in this matter. The Australian Bishops have made it clear that in some way we are obliged in conscience to make all Fridays of the year penitential days.

The supposition that alcoholic drink of any kind is morally evil in itself is a mistaken one.

There is not a single biblical text declaring fermented wine to be an evil thing in itself. Psalm 104:15 speaks of it as one of God's good gifts "to gladden the heart of man." At the same tune, Scripture warns against the abuse of wine and utterly condemns drunkenness. So Proverbs 20:1 says: "Wine is a mocker; strong drink riotous; and whoever is led astray by it is a fool." St. Paul tells us, in I Cor., 6:10, that "drunkards . . . will not inherit the kingdom of God."

That would exclude the abuse of wine, but not its use with due moderation. When the same St. Paul wrote to Timothy: "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (I Tim., 5:23) he was not advising Timothy to do anything contrary to the glory of God.

He could not condone the abuse of it; but He could and did sanction the use of it. It is quite certain that, in His first miracle during the wedding feast at Cana, in Galilee, He changed water into wine in the strict sense of the word (Jn., 2:1-11). And He described how He himself, by His own use of wine, brought upon Himself the false charge of the Pharisees that He was a "glutton and a drunkard." Lk,, 7:34.

All people are not alcoholics. The vast majority of our citizens manifest sufficient sobriety to exclude our being called a nation of drunkards. And many people have ruined themselves and broken their homes by other vices, and even killed people on the roads by imprudent and even reckless driving without being addicted to alcoholic drink. The Catholic Church does not make light of drunkenness. She condemns it, as does Scripture itself. Man has obligations to God, to himself, and to his neighbour. Drunkenness violates all three obligations. All that, however, has to do with the abuse of drink. It does not justify a wholesale condemnation of the use of it. The Church commends "Total Abstinence Societies" and those who voluntarily join them; or those who, without doing so, simply decide for themselves as individuals to abstain from alcoholic drink of any kind. But she does not fall into the unwarranted extremism of declaring morally evil the use of alcoholic drink in due moderation.

The cases are not parallel. As the Creator of human life God alone has supreme authority over it. No man, unless authorised by God, has rights over the lives of his fellow human beings. But both by the natural moral law and God's positive enactments the State is expressly authorised to safeguard social welfare by sentencing to death those guilty of capital crimes, and to preserve its own national existence by armed resistance to unjust aggression on the part of other nations. Within itself the State has no more right to put an innocent person to death than an individual citizen has that right; but the positive law of God as given to Israel, Exodus 21:12, declared as the penalty for murder: "Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death." And that not all wars are forbidden is made clear in Deuteronomy 20:1, where we read: "When you go forth to war against your enemies you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you who brought you out of the land of Egypt." There are national destinies entitled to vindication by military force if necessary.

Undoubtedly as a scourge, not a blessing. In Matt., 24:6, when our Lord predicted "wars and rumours of war," He ranked war with disasters such as famines and earthquakes. Pope John XXIII, as a young priest, was called up for military service during the First World War, 1914-1918. He knew at first hand the hardships of soldiers fighting in a war which was certainly not due to any decision of theirs. Writing in his "Journal of a Soul," he said: "God has left the control of the States to the free decisions of men. Men cause wars by their defiance of the most sacred laws governing human society. All that peoples suffering from them can do is to pray that the Lord in His mercy will bring the powerful men of this world to their senses and persuade them to make peace." Over forty years later, unexpectedly elected as Pope, he devoted his last Encyclical two months before he died on June 3, 1963, to "Pacem in Terris" ("Peace on Earth"), in which he said: "Everyone ardently yearns to see war banished, with peace prevailing and finnly established." The Church certainly regards war as a bad thing in itself.

Because it is a duty to oppose armed resistance to armed aggression by those who unjustly resort to war in order to impose their will on other peoples, regardless of the rights of those peoples. After the Second World War, which ended in 1945, Pope Pius XII spoke repeatedly on this subject, despite all the horrors that war brought with it. In his Christmas Message, 1948, he said: "A people threatened with unjust aggression or already its victims may not remain passively indifferent, if it would think and act as befits Christians." In 1953, on October 3, addressing an International Convention of Lawyers, he said: "The right to be ready for defence cannot be denied, even today, to any State." In his Easter Message, 1954, he declared: "We will tirelessly endeavour to bring about by means of international agreements the abolition of atomic, biological and chemical warfare; but always in subordination to the principle of legitimate self-defence." In his Christmas Message, 1955, he urged disarmament, but not unilaterally. "No nation," he said, "is obliged to renounce nuclear weapons unless all do so." In his 1956 Christmas Message he returned to the same subject. "Even in present circumstances," he said, "lawful Governments do not act immorally if, other alternatives having failed, they decide on effective self-defence in ways they consider necessary;" and he added: "Therefore a Catholic citizen cannot invoke his own conscience in order to refuse to serve and fulfil those duties the law imposes." On May 21, 1958, in one of his last addresses before his death in the following October, he told a Congress of Italian Women-Auxiliaries that a nation has the right to defend itself against unjust aggression despite the "weapons ready for use being of unimaginable power." Pope Pius XII was anything but a war-monger. He took as the motto of his pontificate "Opus Justitiae Pax" ("Peace is the work of Justice"), and on the day after his election as Pope in 1939 he dedicated himself to the promoting of "peace among nations through fraternal help, reciprocal collaboration, and a deep human understanding for the higher interests of the great human family under the guidance and protection of Divine Providence."

Pope John XXIII dealt with that problem in his final 1963 Encyclical "Pacem in Terris," pointing out a key measure men have not yet thought of adopting, which they ought to adopt, and without which no lasting peace will be possible. Realistically he declared it not possible for the many different political communities with their conflicting ideologies to form one world-government. He agreed with Pope Pius XII on the necessity of a policy of simultaneous, not unilateral, disarmament. Admitting that the stockpiling of military weapons and above all the nuclear race are intended for the preserving of peace, he points out that the basic idea is that no one will dare to start another world-war, a policy indicating fear and mistrust between the nations, dispositions on which peace can never be built. Moreover, Pope John said, not only may continued nuclear tests have fatal consequences for life on earth by contamination, but with huge supplies of weapons available, despite all human calculations there is always a danger of war beginning through an unexpected and uncontrollable chance mistake. Granted simultaneous disarmament, governments must, with mutual trust, engage in sincere negotiations and observe strict fidelity to pledged agreements. But how obtain this? Pope John XXIII praised the efforts of the United Nations Organisation, but said that it is open to the suspicion of pressures within it of the more powerful countries, whilst its Security Council's measures are subject to a veto by any one member of it. The key solution to the problem which Pope John proposed was that there must be a Universal Public Authority voluntarily agreed upon by all nations, an impartial Authority above the U.N.O. and its Security Council, and indeed above all national interests, a Tribunal whose decisions will be accepted by all as having the force of law which all are obliged to observe. He declared that there is no other way to lasting peace. His Encyclical met with worldwide acclaim; but in practice his suggestion has been regarded as an unattainable ideal.

Men and nations so differ as to what is right and just that, without a supervising and supreme authority to control their activities, conflict and wars are inevitable. As a result, armed resistance to unjust armed aggressions will also be inevitable. A denial of any right to such armed resistance would itself be based on a false scale of values. There are moral and spiritual realities of such importance to humanity that they can far outweigh the material and physical sufferings the defence of them against unjust aggressors could involve.

The Commandment forbids the unauthorised killing of one human being by another with murderous intent. In closer conformity with the actual Hebrew text, therefore, the Protestant Revised Version of the Bible and also the Catholic translation by Msgr. Ronald Knox render Exodus 20:13 as "Thou shalt do no murder." Peake's 1962 Revised Commentary on the Bible says that the text "refers to murder, not to killing in war or capital punishment. Both of those the Old Testament sanctions unequivocally." Whatever else one may have to say about war, one cannot rightly quote this Commandment in connection with it, since the Commandment as given by God was not intended to deal with the subject.

It is not right to speak of "responsible scholarship" irresponsibly. The Old Testament editor of Peake's Revised Commentary (1962) is Hebrew Professor H. H. Rowley, of Manchester University, a Baptist whose responsible scholarship is acknowledged by all biblical experts, Protestant and Catholic alike. Another, Professor W. F. Albright, a Methodist Hebrew scholar and world-known archaeologist, also a member of the Advisory Board for the translation of the Revised Standard Ver-sion, writes expressly on our present subject in his book "History, Archaeology, and Christian Humanism" (1965). He points out, on p. 97, that Hebrew has three different words for different types of killing: "Lo'Tah-a-rog" meaning "Thou shalt not kill," in a quite general sense; "Lo' Tizbah," in the specific sense of "Thou shalt not slaughter animals;" and "Lo' Tirsah," in the specific sense of "Thou shalt not murder a fellow human being." Exodus 20:13 has, in the Hebrew, "Lo' Tirsah."

Strictly speaking, the primary purpose of a nation engaged in a just war of self-defence is to disable the forces of the aggressive nation. It does not send its soldiers into the field to kill enemy soldiers just for the sake of killing them. Those taken captive must, even in a detention camp, be cared for reasonably, the wounded receiving necessary medical and surgical attention. International law requires that, even though it is not always observed as it should be.

It is true that the Old Covenant given through Moses ceased when it had served its purpose as a preparation for the New Covenant established by Christ. Many of the laws specifically proper to the Old Covenant, therefore, are no longer of obligation. So St. Paul wrote in Romans 6:14 that "we are not under the law, but under grace," and frequently condemned Judaizing tendencies in the early Church. Our Lord himself, however, said: "I have come, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them," Matt., 5:17. He was the realisation of their distinctively religious message. But, from the ethical or moral point of view, the Mosaic Law included basic principles of the natural moral law which are perpetually valid for all mankind and which Christianity therefore also includes. To the man who asked what he had to do in order to inherit eternal life, Jesus replied: "You know the commandments," and listed them for him (Mk., 10:19). Nowhere in the New Testament, however, can a word be found declaring any participation in war at all to be morally wrong.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was dealing with the personal dispositions His disciples must cultivate in their own lives, not with social duties in public life and the duties and mutual obligations of rulers and subjects. Obviously, in the external order, State authorities must discriminate between the just and the unjust, or no criminals could be arrested and punished, and the protection of society would be impossible. In our personal lives, to be like our Father in heaven who makes His sun rise upon the evil and the good, and sends His rain upon the just and the unjust, we should ourselves rise above our likes and dislikes in our treatment of other individuals we meet in our daily lives. But that has nothing to do with our duties as law-abiding citizens. St. Peter, therefore, tells us to obey public authorities "for so is the will of God" (I Pet., 2:15) and St. Paul declares that princes "bear not the sword in vain," to punish evildoers, although he adds that we should be subject to those in authority, not through fear, but "for conscience' sake" (Rom., 13:3-5). Nor does God's will exclude recourse to arms in national defence. Taking the New Testament as a whole, we read in Lk., 3:14 that when the soldiers asked St. John the Baptist: "What shall we do?" he replied: "Be content with your pay." He did not order them to abandon their military career as if that were an evil occupation of its very nature. So, too, when, in Matt., 8:9-10, the centurion begged our Lord to cure his servant, saying: "I'm under orders with soldiers under me, and when I give a command I am obeyed. You've only got to say the word and my servant will be healed," our Lord turned to His disciples and said: "Truly, I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel." He made not the slightest suggestion that the centurion's profession as a military commander was a morally unlawful one.

He was speaking proverbially, not literally. He himself did not externally fulfil His own words literally. Struck on the cheek during- His trial, He did not turn the other cheek but protested, saying: "If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil; but if well, why do you strike me?" Jn., 18:22. Later, St. Paul, struck on the mouth by the High Priest, said to that individual: "God shall strike you, you whited sepulchre, sitting there to judge me according to the law but ordering me to be struck contrary to the law." Acts 23:3. Even were one — wrongly — to take the words literally for oneself personally, it has been well said that where "turn the other cheek" is concerned, it must be your own cheek you offer for another blow, not somebody else's, letting others suffer harm you could prevent. From all this it should be clear that the text quoted cannot be used to decide the question of the legitimacy or otherwise of war; and that even where personal conduct is concerned, it is not meant to be taken literally, but as referring to interior dispositions of patience and charity.

That can be one's personal code of ethics at all times. But love itself may demand preventing enemies from putting their enmity into practice, and protecting others from it. In fact, we do good to enemies by frustrating their evil designs and bringing them to their senses. Nor, in our zeal for justice, charity and right order, need our motives degenerate into dispositions of personal hatred of anybody.

The "peacemakers" are not necessarily the "pacifists." The two are not to be identified. One can have peace as an individual by avoiding conflict at any cost, refusing to get involved in efforts to prevent the disorder and injustice which destroy peace for everybody else. But one is not a "peacemaker" who is prepared to let unjust conditions continue provided they don't affect him, letting others take a stand against them. One who really loves peace may have to fight in order to make it prevail, if others are bent on destroying it.

One could ask here why Peter had a sword and why our Lord had not made him get rid of it long ago. However, our Lord had something else in mind. He merely declared the fact in a proverbial way that earthly warfare carries with it the risk of death in warfare. But He had come to die, not in battle, but in the way God's plan for man's redemption required. He had said of Himself: "The Son of man is come to give his life, a ransom for many." Mk., 10:45. The time for this was at hand, and Peter should not try to hinder that plan. So Christ said to him: "Put away your sword." It would be a complete misunderstanding of this incident to take it as a condemnation of war as always unlawful. One must keep in mind that Jesus did not come as a social reformer, to establish an earthly Utopia. Far from expecting wars to be eliminated, He predicted a continuance of "wars and rumours of war," as one of the hazards of life in this world. We know how in his parables he drew on every phase of home and social life, laborers, judges, and rulers. He treated their habitual ways of acting as just taken for granted. War was not excluded. "What king," He said, "about to go to war against another king does not first sit down and think whether he be able, with ten thousands, to meet him who with twenty thousands comes against him?" Lk., 14:31-32. Such methods he rejected in his own case because of His redemptive mission, not because armed resistance to unjust aggression was in itself wrong. As he told Pilate, were his kingdom of this world, his subjects would certainly fight (and rightly) in his defence (Jn., 18:36).

Death of some enemy soldiers may be an unhappy consequence of war, but to speak as if this were the primary intention is a fallacy. The primary purpose of an army is the welfare of the country it must defend; and to join that army can easily be a duty for eligible men in times of national danger. The intention of soldiers on active service is, not to kill "decent fellow Christians," but to put enemy forces out of action. If they wanted specifically to kill fellow Christians, they would have to ask every enemy soldier they encountered about his religion, on the score that they were looking for fellow Christians in order to exterminate them! That clearly does not do justice to the realities.

All human beings are equally the children of God by creation and therefore brothers in that sense. But this does not alter the fact that as citizens in this world people belong to their own countries as natural social units and retain duties in the sphere of national loyalty. In a defensive war, a soldier is resisting those who would harm his immediate neighbours within his own nation, and proving his love for them even at the risk of his own life. In all this, it would be a quite wrong impression that I advocate war as such merely because I am called upon to show that biblical passages thought to exclude it altogether have been misapplied.

Some did, but it was certainly not the commonly accepted Christian practice. The Council of Aries, 314 A.D., after the conversion of Constantine, condemned Christians who refused military service. The Council's reason for this was because soldiers were then no longer compelled to take part in pagan religious rites. There is a great deal of misunderstanding in this matter. Recorded objections by Christians to military service during the first three centuries were based on the ground that the pagan State compelled soldiers to engage in pagan worship, offering sacrifice to the gods. Tertullian (160-220 A.D.) in his "De Corona," warns Christians of their duty to refuse this. But in his "Apologia," addressed to the Roman Prefects, he defends Christians against charges of civic disloyalty. "Side by side with yourselves," he wrote, "we Christians are sailors and soldiers, farmers and fellow business men in daily life."

It did not and could not make such a declaration, for it would not be true. In general the Council, in its "Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," adopted the programme set out in Pope John XXIII's 1963 Encyclical "Pacem in Terris" (See n.622 above). The Council's "Constitution," said in n.79: "As long as the danger of war remains and there is no competent and sufficiently powerful authority at the international level, Governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defence once all means of peaceful settlement have been exhausted. State authorities and others who share public responsibility have the duty to protect the welfare of the people entrusted to their care." It added: "Those who are pledged to the service of their country as members of its armed forces should regard themselves as agents of security and freedom on behalf of their people. As long as they fulfil this role properly, they are making a genuine contribution to the establishment of peace." It may, therefore, be the duty of a Government to engage in a defensive war and the duty of individual citizens to fulfil such military service as may be alloted to them.

It drew attention to the fact that nuclear weapons are able to cause massive destruction far beyond the bounds of legitimate self-defence, and condemned their employment in such a way. In n.80 of its "Document" on the subject it declared: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." Earlier the document says that those who give or blindly obey orders designed for the methodical extermination of an entire people, nation or ethnic minority are guilty of horrifying crimes, and the courage of those who refuse to obey such orders merits supreme commendation. According to the Council, then, not every war of self-defence is to be condemned; but this does not mean that any kind of warfare, involving even a wholesale slaughter of noncombatants, is permissible. The Council urges all men, especially governments and military leaders to weigh well their fearful responsibility in this matter before God and the entire human race.

The position the Pope envisaged was one in which a freely-elected Government decided in a moment of extreme danger, all efforts to avoid war having been in vain, to engage in legitimate military self-defence. Normally, the Government with fuller and more detailed information at its disposal, is in a better position to judge the needs and merits of the case than the subjects; and it is the normal duty of a subject to defend his country's cause, refusing of course to engage in individual actions which are quite evidently wrong of their very nature from a moral point of view. A Catholic would have an erroneous conscience who thought otherwise.

That does not say that objectively such persons have not an erroneous conscience. The very reference to "humane provision" is an appeal for compassion on those who subjectively and abnormally think themselves obliged to refuse combat duties should lawful authorities allot such duties to them. The same paragraph 79, in its final section, treats as both objectively and subjectively fulfilling their duty "those who are pledged to the service of their country as members of its armed forceis."

No normal Catholic would adopt such a position, differing from that of the vast majority of well-instructed and practising Catholics. In general, we would have to say that anyone making such a choice would in reality be sacrificing the cause of his country by depriving it of the services he could and should render it. Granted, however, that if such a man's action were not dictated by mere obstinacy of his own judgment and self-will, and that he died for what he sincerely but wrongly thought to be a Christian principle, God would reward him for his mistaken self-sacrifice because he was inculpably ingorant of his actual duty. Father Henry Davis, S.J., one of England's foremost moral theologians, wrote in his booklet "War and Pacifism," that "if a State is in fact unjustly attacked and calls upon its citizens to defend it, the pacifist attitude may not be adopted by any Catholic, since the rational presumption is, unless the contrary is quite evident, that the State has come to its decision on just and sufficient grounds." He added that a priest hearing confessions must regard a Catholic pacifist as a penitent with an erroneous conscience; entitled to sympathy, yes; but error is error and, if asked, the confessor must declare conscientious objection to be wrong from a moral point of view.

Such Catholics cannot say that they have adopted such a stand because of their Catholic religion, for such a stand is contrary to Catholic teaching; they can appeal only to their personal opinion or persuasion on grounds of their own making, whatever be the reasons which led them to think in such a way. Whether they have developed their erroneous conscience culpably, or inculpably through not adverting to the need of inquiring as to what the teaching of the Church really is, we must leave to the judgment of God.

It did not deal directly with that subject. Indirectly the Council condemned pacifism by declaring a defensive war morally lawful in certain circumstances and that it is the duty of citizens called upon to do so to engage in the necessary military activities. Pacifists hold that all forms of war are intrinsically immoral and that no good end can justify resorting to such a means even in self-defence; in practice they urge a national policy of non-resistance even in the face of the most unjust and violent of aggressions. The Church agrees, of course, that all war involves great physical evils, but holds that it is morally lawful to endure those rather than the greater sufferings — even to the loss of existence as a nation — which could result from non-resistance to unjust aggression.

The pacifist claims to be an advocate of peace even to the extent of declaring all wars to be wrong, defensive as well as aggressive. Pope Paul VI, on December 8, 1967, suggesting that the first day of January should be set aside as a "Day of Peace" each year, said that peace is an objective to be built up and defended. Peace, he said, is not a thing that is just going to happen. The first step towards it is to remove the causes of war, national rivalries, race hatred, the spirit of revenge, the stockpiling of armaments, and incitements to revolutions by violence. The second step is to awaken men from a false pacifism, wrongly confused with peace-making, which smothers in men's minds the meaning of justice, duty, love and peace. This false pacifism is really passivity and an excuse for refusing to do anything positive, even if uncomfortable, for the establishing and defence of peace. "Peace," he said, "is not pacifism. It does not mask a base and slothful concept of life, but proclaims the highest and most universal values of life, namely, truth, justice, freedom and love." He added: "The ideal of peace must not be made to favour the cowardice of those who fear it may be their duty to give their life for their country and brethren when these are involved in defence of justice and liberty; and who seek only a flight from their responsibility." One of our duties, then, is to strive to be "peace-makers;" to be "pacifists" is not.

Those words do not tell in favour of pacifism; they exclude it. What the pacifist needs to ask himself is this: Were he being brutally assaulted by gangsters, would he wish others nearby and able to come to his assistance, to remain passive onlookers on the plea that they were pacifists, refusing to deal with the gangsters; or would he wish them to intervene and rescue him? If the latter, should he not do for others what he would wish others to do for him?

In order to help them do that, it may be necessary to prevent others from preventing it. What if those others are using violence and will desist only if violently compelled to do so? The good Samaritan came upon a man lying by the roadside, wounded, robbed and half-dead. But had he come earlier when the man was actually being assaulted, would he have been a good Samaritan had he declared himself a pacifist and looked on without doing a thing to stop the aggressors from half-killing and robbing their victim?

Defence of a victim of unjust aggression proceeds, not from hatred, but from love of one's neighbour who is suffering from the aggression; and it frustrates the hatred and ill-will of those afflicting him. The pacifist would stand by and let the hatred and violence of the aggressor prevail. Where is the love of one's neighbour in that?

The blacker one paints the picture of man's inhumanity to man, the more one weakens the case for a pacifism which would let it go on unchecked.

That is really not true. The world rings with the protests of the majority against them. The problem to be faced concerns what is to be done when those who do not share the outlook of the majority embark on a programme of military conquest from which they will desist only when compelled by military opposition. The pacifists would be those "without a murmur," rather than those who, despite discomfort and self-sacrifice, adopted the only means required to halt the would-be disturbers of law, order and peace among men.

If he was correctly reported, his pacifist views would certainly not be in accord with Catholic teaching; and his retort may have been witty, although it was not notable for its wisdom.

He would be dead, if the enemy aimed straight and shot to kill him and not merely to wound and disable him. But you are concerned with the morality of his conduct. His action would be morally reprehensible. While love of our neighbours includes all our fellow human beings, there is a priority in the order and degree of love we should have for them. Our own nation, among the nations into which the human race is divided, has a first claim upon us. It is not a question here of "my country, right or wrong." If we definitely know our country's cause to be wrong and unjust, we are not free in conscience to support that cause. But it is another matter when our country is engaged in a just war of self-defence against an aggressor nation, and we have no reason to believe otherwise. Here we must remember that patriotism is a natural virtue and that it is a Christian virtue if inspired by Christian motives. This virtue imposes on a soldier engaged in a just war of self-defence an obligation not to deprive his country of his services by throwing away his weapons and allowing himself to be captured or killed. As early as 314 A.D. the Council of Aries, to show that Christianity cannot be made an excuse for evading military duties, decreed excommunication against those who would throw down their arms in time of war.

You overlook the fact that our enemies have the say as to whether they will be impressed and persuaded by our radiating love. If they refuse to be influenced by it, is it a duty to let them continue in their criminal conduct? Where is the man, however idealistic his theories, who would regard it as his duty to stand passively by, doing nothing except talk persuasively of love while a maniac armed with a knife proceeded to stab his wife and children to death one by one before his very eyes? Nowhere will you find any teaching of Christ that we must allow others to suffer unjustly, doing nothing whatever to prevent it where it is in our power to do so.

That is true; and there was a mysterious reason for it. In fact, if some pacifist had a special mission from God to give his life for the salvation of mankind — had his life value enough for that — the same conditions would apply to him. But, in Jn., 2:15, Jesus resorted to violence when He flogged the money-changers out of the Temple, accusing them of desecrating it. They outnumbered Him, but sensed in Him an authority which completely overawed them and made disputing it unthinkable. Again, He told Pilate — and this affects your present mysterious case — that "if my kingdom were of this world, my men would fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews." Jn., 18:36. Were His an earthly kingdom, it would have been normal and right that His subjects should take up arms in His defence. Christians, therefore, so long as they are in this world, are not exempt from the normal duties of citizenship in the earthly kingdoms to which they belong. So St. Peter said: "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him . . . for it is God's will that by doing right you should leave no room for stupid criticism. Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God." I Pet., 2:13-16. That applies to all our duties as citizens, whether those duties involve military service or not.

The Greek word "eschatos" means last or final; and eschatology means the theology of the last things. Eschatology includes discussion of God's final purpose for the whole universe; but men are usually more interested in the fate awaiting themselves after death. One of the basic doctrines of the Christian religion is that all men will have to answer to God for the way in which they have lived both according to religious beliefs and moral conduct in this world, the end result of His judgment being admission to a state of eternal happiness in heaven, or dismissal to a state of eternal perdition in hell. We know of the existence of heaven and hell only because God has revealed to us the fact of their existence. They necessarily still remain mysterious to us as regards their nature, for whatever we are told about them apart from the fact of their existence must be in a language on our own level according to our experiences of this world. It follows that the ideas and imagery used for descriptions of them are bound to be inadequate, leaving a residue of mystery surpassing the capacity of the human mind. But where we do not see, we accept the revealed facts because of our faith in God who sees all. The noted scripture scholar, Father J. L. McKenzie, put things well by saying: "No theological hypothesis can be biblical which reduces the ultimate destiny of righteousness and wickedness to the same thing, even though the details of the afterlife are not disclosed except in imagery." It is essential to keep these principles in mind. There is a heaven, attractive of its very nature, and a hell, repellent of its very nature. But if anyone puts before us a heaven and hell fully intelligible in terms of our this-worldly experience, his doctrine will not be that of the Christian religion.

Firstly, that as a result of their particular judgment immediately after death souls go in their disembodied state to heaven; or to hell; or, if not good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell, to purgatory where, by purification from their deficiencies, they will be fitted for heaven. Both heaven and hell are terminal states which will endure forever. Secondly, we are obliged to believe that the essential happiness of heaven will consist in the beatific vision and love of God, while the sufferings of hell will consist in unending remorse over the loss of God and in afflictions by agencies of the created order which was violated by rebellious transgressions against the Will of God. Thirdly, it is of faith that on the last day the general resurrection will occur, that all bodies and souls will be reunited, and that both body and soul will share in each person's eternal fate, the complete human being finding his or her lot among the saved or lost, as the case may be. Such are the basic facts. Interpretations of the biblical imagery and of various secondary aspects connected with these facts are left to theologians, their conclusions having degrees of probability or merely possibility according to the worth of their arguments for them.

Scripture tells us, in a stark and realistic way: "It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment." Heb., 9:27. Man consists of both a material body and a spiritual soul. These form one substantial personality, death dissolving the partnership of body and soul. Obviously, however, once dead, the material body cannot answer for the kind of life a person has led in this world. It is no longer a conscious living organism. If there is to be a judgment immediately after death, it is only the soul or spirit of man that can be there to encounter it, retaining its spiritual powers of memory, intelligence and will. What happens at death, then, is that the body begins to disintegrate while the soul survives, to be judged by God.

That will never be possible. The New Testament declares: "By one man sin entered into this world and by sin, death; and so death passed upon all men." Rom., 5:12. We know by divine revelation, therefore, that all men are subject to death; which means that scientists will never find a way of preventing man from dying. It should be noted here that death is as natural to man as to any other living material organism. If death is said to be due to sin, that is because exemption from death was a supernatural privilege granted by God provided man did not sin. By sin, that supernatural privilege was lost and man reverted, as it were, to death as the natural fate of all material organisms. Writing on "Rejuvenation" in a medical manual, Dr. G. Somerville says, from a purely scientific point of view: "Death results from a general abatement of the physiological processes of the body, the universal tendency to wasting and degeneration of highly-specialised cells. Granted no hereditary defects, special strains, accidents or diseases, death is simply the climax of a completed life-cycle." He says that the Russian scientist, Voronoff, claimed to be on the way to rejuvenating man by in-grafting monkey-glands, but he says that such local replacement treatment can have only temporary effects and cannot restore degenerated tissues in general. "The dream of some means of giving perpetual youth to man," he writes, "has intrigued the human imagination from the earliest ages of civilisation. Today we know there are no secret remedies resulting in longevity."

That is true from the viewpoint of physical experimental science. But the problem lies beyond the range of physical science, and is a matter for philosophical reasoning, or additionally, faith in the divinelyrevealed truth. We know, of course, that Spiritualists and Societies for Psychical Research claim to offer experimental evidence for survival in an after-life, but they have not been able to offer anything like convincing proofs. However, the God who made us tells us that there is a next life. As the New Testament puts it: "God, who spoke in times past by the prophets, has in these days spoken to us by His Son . . . by whom also He made the world." Heb., 1:1-2. That Divine Son, born into this world under the name of Jesus Christ for our salvation, bade us not to fear those who can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul (Matt., 10:28), and to lay up for ourselves, not perishable goods on earth, but imperishable treasures in heaven (Matt., 6:19-20). He who made us, knows also the provision He has made for our future. To reject the truth of this teaching, one has to deny all the facts of Judaeo- Christian history, the whole series of events from Abraham through to Christ and the Apostles, manifesting God's interventions in human affairs. Man's reason has full scope for inquiry into this historical evidence on our own earthly level, which provides more than enough justification for faith in what God has revealed to be true precisely because He has so revealed it.

That desire, in one form or another, is a constantly recurring one. There are no more haunting words, even in Shakespeare, than his reference to "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns;" and in an age when man is reaching out to explore new worlds of space, curiosity about the world beyond the grave remains as acute as ever. So, at some time or other, all, office boy and cabinet minister, atheist, democrat, communist, scientist and philosopher, ask themselves the question: Is there a life after death? And not all the natural science in the world, even with the aid of parapsychology, will help to unlock the door to the mystery and provide a satisfactory answer to it. Recourse must be had to the teachings of divine revelation; and even those, while stressing the reality of life in the world to come, will to a great extent leave unsatisfied our curiosity about the actual details of it.

What becomes of them is the important question, not where they are. When we speak of "where", we inevitably think in terms of space measurements. For example, localities on the surface of the earth are determined by degrees of longitude and latitude. If we think in terms of space and ask where is the moon we "locate" It within the solar system; and the solar system itself is located in relation to the stars. But the soul, immortal of its very nature, is a spiritual entity. It is useless to ask where the soul has gone in the same sense as that in which we are told that a friend about whom we are inquiring has gone, say, from Europe to America. The soul has gone from this world altogether and we have to ask what has become of it rather than where it has gone. We know by divine revelation the answer to that, as in n.654 above. The term "where", in the sense of locality as we understand it from our present experience in this material universe, cannot apply strictly to any of the three possible states, although we naturally tend to think in such a way.

They could not; but we must not confuse man's material body with his spiritual soul. Even though body and soul are combined to form a unity of human personality in this life, they differ in structure. After death, the soul will continue its purely spiritual activities, but senseactivities which depend upon material bodily organs will share the fate of the body when it dies and no longer be operative. The immediate fate of the body after physical death, however, is not its ultimate fate. In the general resurrection on the last day, as Our Lord has declared, it will be restored to life, being reunited with the soul, to share with the soul in whatever may be the eternal destiny awaiting it.

Yes, although it explains things more clearly. The epistle to the Hebrews, 9:7, tells us: "It is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment." There are two significant statements there. Firstly, we die once, not over and over again in any series of reincarnations. Secondly, when a doctor says of a patient "he is dead" — if the doctor is right — we can say "he is judged"; and that means, of course, by God. Concerning this judgment Jesus gave various lessons in the form of parables, outstanding among which were those of the foolish virgins (Matt., 25:1-13); the prodigal son (Lk., 15:11-32); the rich fool (Lk., 12:16-20); and the ten talents (Matt., 25:14-30). These four parables stressed four important points: (1) It is wise to serve God perseveringly, ever ready to meet Him; (2) There is mercy always available for any sinner, however depraved, provided he sincerely repents; (3) Presumption, however, is excluded, for while forgiveness is promised to the repentant, there is no promise of time to repent; (4) Those who do save their souls will be rewarded in heaven proportionately to the good use they have made of the opportunities God gave them.

The kind of life we will have hereafter will depend on the kind of life we have lived here on earth. To the inquiry of a young man, our Lord said: "If you will enter into life, keep the Commandments." Matt., 19:16. The significance of the "if" lies in its warning that should one not keep God's Commandments his prospects of a life of happiness hereafter are seriously compromised, to say the least. As for how life here affects life hereafter, the New Testament gives the answer: "The just judgment of God will render to every man according to his works." Rom., 2:6. The question we should continually be asking ourselves is: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?" Mk., 8:36. The only sensible choice is to live the kind of life here which will involve no risk of losing our souls when death has put an end to our period of probation on earth.

In the literary world, Dante's "Purgatorio," and in the musical world, Sir Edward Elgar's setting to music of Newman's "Dream of Gerontius," have made most people too familiar with the idea for them to be shocked by it. On the other hand, religiously, the vast majority of Christians, over 600 millions of Catholics and 200 millions belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, believe in the existence of purgatory. To believers in purgatory — a most merciful doctrine — it seems altogether too severe to hold that all who at death are not fit for heaven have only one other alternative, that of absolute rejection by God. Few people are wholly good or wholly evil; nor does the merely physical act of dying suddenly change the sort of personality one has developed during this life. Such considerations are leading more and more thoughtful Christians brought up with no belief in purgatory to speak of a progressive growth and understanding after death, fitting one for that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." Heb., 12:14. This, of course, without calling it purgatory, is to believe in an intermediate state between heaven and hell, a belief which seems to them more in accordance with both faith and reason.

It is not a question of words, but of realities. The word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, but it expresses the truth that in the one God there are the three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whose name we are baptised. As for purgatory, both Old and New Testaments contain prayers for the dead. That supposes them neither to be in heaven where they would not need our prayers, nor in hell where prayers could not help them. In the Old Testament we read in 2 Maccabees, 12:46 that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins." In the New Testament we find St. Paul praying for the soul of his benefactor, Onesiphorus: "The Lord grant unto him to find mercy in that day." As for the actual teachings of Christ, in Matt., 12:32 He speaks of a sin so malicious that "it shall not be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come." In Lk., 12:59, having described different forms of retribution for sin, He declares that there will be no release until the "last mite" due to divine justice has been paid. In Lk., 16-19f. He made the intermediate state the basis of His parable about the rich man and the beggar, Lazarus. He depicted Lazarus as being in a state of happiness after death, but the rich man as consigned to a state of suffering. The Gospel describes the rich man as being "in hell," but that expression was used in the Hebrew sense of "sheol" or the netherworld, not as indicating a state of eternal reprobation to which modern usage restricts the word hell. In fact, the rich man, amidst his own sufferings, is shown, in vv. 27-28, as filled with charitable concern for his five brothers. These passages impelled the Anglican Bishop Gore to say that they strongly point to a middle state of purification. Finally, I Peter, 3:19 tells us that, between His death and resurrection the soul of Christ went to preach "to those spirits that were in prison," a reference which the non-Catholic Peake's revised "Commentary on the Bible" (1962) declares to be best interpreted as indicating the souls of those who had died in previous ages. From all this it should be clear that the Catholic doctrine of purgatory is not an unbiblical teaching.

One should really ask when it was first denied. Right back to apostolic times we find the Christian Church, both in the East and the West, teaching an intermediate state of purification for souls after death, whom we can help by our prayers for them. All the ancient liturgies contain such prayers. Both Greek and Latin Fathers teach the doctrine which Tertullian, born in 160 A.D., declared to be derived from apostolic tradition, confirmed by custom and maintained by faith. The Christian outlook was well reflected in the words of St. Monica when dying in 387 A.D. To her son, St. Augustine, she said: "Lay this body where you will. This only I request, that you will remember me at the Lord's altar wherever you may be." ("Confessions of St. Augustine." Bk. 9). The real problem confronts a professing Christian who holds that the whole Church, which Scripture declares to be "the pillar and mainstay of truth" (I Tim., 3:15) taught a seriously erroneous doctrine.

The Church has no official teaching on that matter. Accordmg to Catholic theologians and spiritual writers, the souls in purgatory are inexpressibly happy and inexpressibly sad, from two different points of view. They are inexpressibly happy in the knowledge that they have saved their souls, in their absolute certainty of attaining to the Vision of God, in their love of Him, perfect conformity with His Will, charity towards one another, and a peace they never knew in this world. From another point of view, freed from the distractions of this world, they have a much keener realisation of how great a misery it is to be deprived of the Vision of God even temporarily, of how great an evil is sin which comes between God and ourselves, and of their own responsibility for the unfulfilled desire of the Vision of God with which they are consumed. From the former point of view they are happier than we are, who are still in a state of probation; and they would not change places with us who still have to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling," as St. Paul puts it (Phil., 2:12). From the latter point of view, they know a sorrow we have never experienced and need our prayers even as we hope that others will pray for us when we also are in the position that is now theirs. Without anxiety, but with true faith and piety and charity, we remember and pray for them.

That we must leave to God. We do not know what purgatorial time or duration means; that is, what there corresponds to our ideas of time-measurements by days and months and years. Holy Scripture tells us that "a thousand years are but as a day in the sight of the Lord;" whilst even our own experiences of time are so relative to our psychological dispositions that in some circumstances we say "time went like a flash," in others that "time seemed to drag as never before!" However, granted some form of duration in purgatory whatever its nature, prayers for the souls there could avail for diminishing it, or for the alleviating of the intensity of sufferings being endured, or for both. More than that we cannot say.

The Church has no official teaching on that matter; but it is the common opinion of Catholic theologians that the departed souls, separated from their bodily means of seeing and hearing what is going on in this world, cannot have direct knowledge of ourselves and our activities, but that indirectly they can know in so far as God reveals to them whatever is of particular concern to them. In any case, they certainly pray for us as we pray for them, slight as is our knowledge concerning their other-worldly conditions. We believe in the communion or commonunion of saints which links in grace and prayer the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Suffering in purgatory, the Church Militant on earth.

Five things. Firstly, it exists; secondly, it will be a state of unimaginable remorse and suffering; thirdly, it will be endless; fourthly, the souls of those who die in unrepented serious sin go there at once, without waiting for the Final Judgment at the end of the world; fifthly, on the Last Day, when the general resurrection reunites all human bodies and souls so that people will be saved or lost as complete human persons, their bodies will share in the destiny souls have chosen for themselves. Such are the five infallibly defined doctrines. If a Catholic rejects any of them, either he has lost the faith, or he is so ill-instructed that he does not know what his religion requires him to believe. Apart from those five factual statements, the Church has defined nothing. Of its very nature, hell is as much a revealed mystery as heaven and all else that has to do with our life beyond this one of our present every-day experience. Descriptions of it are necessarily symbolical; and additional statements about it are more or less probable theological opinions. But the revealed facts are enough for all practical purposes. They may not satisfy our curiosity, but they are enough to bring us to our senses and make us realise the seriousness of the life given us in this world as a preparation for one of two possible and eternal destinies in the world to come.

There is nothing more certain than that Christ taught the possibility of an individual bringing upon himself an eternal and irrevocable misery. "I will tell you whom to fear," He said. "Not those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But fear Him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell." Lk., 12:4-5. He spoke of those going to hell as going "into the fire that never shall be quenched," where the worm of remorse within them "dies not." Mk., 9:43-4. He gives as the sentence on the unrepentant wicked at the Last Judgment: "Depart from me you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt., 25:41. With all allowance for metaphorical description, the fate of the devil and his angels can be ours. As St. Augustine said long ago: "Are you going to believe in everlasting life because you like it, but not in everlasting punishment because you don't like the thought of that?" In both cases our Lord used the same word for "everlasting." The simple truth is that, as good and evil exist in this world, so these have good and evil counterparts in eternity. Our very hope of salvation supposes an eternal and heavenly happiness to which we can possibly attain, and an eternal hell from which we can possibly be saved.

If, as our Lord said, it was prepared for the devil and his angels, the reason can only be that God, in His wisdom and justice, regarded it as the fitting state for those who, immortal of their very nature, have chosen to render themselves irrevocably evil despite their having been under no necessity of making such a choice at all. St. Peter tells us that "God spared not the angels who sinned." 2 Pet., 2:4 St. Jude, in his epistle, verse 6, says: "The angels who did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been consigned to eternal chains and darkness." The language there used was but a human way of saying that a loss of light and liberty, resulting, not in repentance, but in a burning remorse and misery, had already become the lot of the rebellious angels; and our Lord warned us that a similar fate could become ours if we choose to be so obstinate in evil as to deserve it.

That interpretation is excluded by the clear distinction made in the preceding words of the same verse: "Fear not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul." The physical death of the body, therefore, does not mean the death of the soul. Also, in the Greek text the word translated as hell in English is not "hades", meaning the netherworld in general, but "gehenna", meaning a netherworld of suffering. The soul, which cannot be killed by the killing of the material body, can have all its hopes of happiness destroyed by the endless misery of gehenna. That there can be a living death to spiritual levels of life is clear from St. Paul's words to the Colossians: "When you were dead in your sins." Col., 2:13. To go from this world still dead in one's sins is, not to be annihilated, but to encounter destruction in the sense of entering into perdition or the state of lost souls.

Not when one thinks twice about it. Hell, in fact, is the inexorable consequence of human dignity, of the possession of intelligence, freewill and moral responsibility. Eric Gill, the sculptor, says in his book "The Necessity of Belief," p. 135: "The doctrine of hell is the most stupendous compliment to man humanly conceivable. It is not disbelieved because people can't think God would be so unkind, but because they have slipped down from the lofty eminence on which religion placed them — an eminence upon which they stood as men meriting to receive the uttermost praise or the uttermost blame — into an easy place where they can grovel comfortably." There are good and evil in this world, and good and evil counterparts in eternity, heaven and hell. And certainly, if sin is bad enough to cause the death of Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, on Calvary, it is bad enough to deserve hell for the man who goes from this world obstinately identifying himself with seriously malicious dispositions of rebellion against the Will of his Creator. In any case, it is impossible to soften the severity of Christ's warnings against the enduring consequences of unrepented sin; and the sentimentalism which seeks to do so results in a distortion of New Testament teaching. People may persuade themselves that there is no hell, but that makes no difference to its reality. If they live and die in such a way as to deserve it, they will go there; and Holy Scripture tells us it is there awaiting them, if such be their choice.

Man has only a limited and not an infinite intelligence. He would have to be God to see things as God sees them, finding no mystery in other-worldly realities. But we are told enough about hell for all practical purposes. Divine revelation is not primarily concerned with speculative questions. "It is not for you to know," was our Lord's reply to those. Problems which we cannot completely solve nor rightly expect to solve we can safely leave to God, unwavering in our acceptance of information ordained to the salvation of our souls and clearly put before us in the Bible as the Word of God.

If we imagine a hell which is in conflict with God's attributes, our imagination is at fault. There is a God, infinitely loving, just and merciful; and there is a hell of eternal punishment. God, infinitely wise, must see how these are not incompatible; we, not infinitely wise, may not fully comprehend this. That, however, at most gives us reason to doubt, not the facts God has revealed to be true, but our own capacity to understand them as He does.

God does not really do that. He ratifies a person's own self-condemnation to hell. We can turn our back on God's love; and if that choice becomes fixed and eternal, our banishment from God's presence becomes fixed and eternal. But God cannot want anyone to go to hell, or He would not have "so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son" (Jn., 3:16); also Scripture tells us that God wills that "all men should be saved." I Tim., 2:4. This means that grace is always available so long as a man is in this life, to enable him to put himself right with God. No one need go to hell. But if a man won't put himself right with God, then hell is the logical consequence of not being able to reject God's mercy and have it. And surely we ourselves, endowed with a soul made in God's image and likeness and therefore immortal, and endowed with a free will enabling us to merit with the help of God's grace a destiny of eternal happiness, should be the last to complain of the eternal consequences of unrepented abuses of our freedom by rebellion against God — abuses of which we need not be guilty and against the consequences of which we have been well and truly warned beforehand.

God hasn't got to justify Himself to our minds. He is our Judge. We are not His judge. However, in God no one divine attribute can violate another. God is Love and Mercy and Power and Justice. These attributes are equally one in Him. If any hell we imagine is really opposed to God's Justice, then hell isn't like that. But we must remember, too, that our ideas of justice are inevitably limited to relationships between human beings, and there is an infinite lack of proportion between those and the relationships between the Creator and His creatures. The justice of hell will be found to depend on the injustice of sin as a serious, fully-deliberate and unrepented offence against God's infinite majesty. But in the presence of whatever element of mystery confronts us here, we can confidently leave it to God to safeguard His own attributes. We haven't got to worry about that. What we can understand is that one who goes from this world rejecting God deserves to be rejected by God. People horrified by the thought of hell are no longer horrified by the thought of sin; and they are not indignant because they are concerned with God's good name but because in their self-centredness the thought of such a possible fate for themselves they find intolerable. The saints who, instead of loving themselves even to the contempt of God, loved God even to the contempt of themselves, would be shocked by our indifference to sin, which, if bad enough to bring about the death of Christ on the Cross, is bad enough to deserve hell for those who, refusing to repent of it, die irrevocably identifying themselves with it.

We must take complete, and not incomplete views. We must see, not only the results of repudiating God's forgiveness by one who does not want it; we must see also God's merciful dispositions of readiness to forgive which are an essential and abiding characteristic of His very nature. He Himself declares: "I will not the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live." Ezek., 33:11. If a man commits serious sin and obstinately refuses to be converted right to the end of his probation in this world, it is not so much that God sends him to hell as that he himself chooses to go there. As for God's mercy, there can scarcely be a greater abuse of it than to make it one's excuse to offend Him the more, practically saying to Him: "There's no hell. Whatever I do, you've got to forgive me in the end; so your commandments will remain a dead letter as far as I'm concerned." Against the fallacy that we can not only sin but persist in doing so with impunity, Scripture rightly warns us: "Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap." Gal., 6:7.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was a devout Methodist throughout his life; and the lines you quote contain, not a theology of hell, but a condemnation of the dispositions of pharisaical pride in one's own imagined virtues, with a tendency to see only the vices of other people. They express the lesson taught in Christ's parable of the pharisee and the publican (Lk., 18:9-14). The genuine Christian thinks of hell as a possible doom for himself rather than for others. He esteems others as better than himself; or, if he sees faults in them of which he knows he himself is not guilty, he says — in the words attributed to so many of the saints — "There but for the grace of God go I." Dunbar's lines contain no indication of unbelief in hell on his part; and, in any case, would not make any difference to the reality of hell if they did.

Of that problem St. Paul had to say: "Behold, I tell you a mystery." I Cor., 15:51. A mystery is a reality of which we know by divine revelation but which is beyond our full understanding. To the Corinthians St. Paul wrote: "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." I Cor., 13:12. That is, we now know only imperfectly realities of which we will be fully aware in the next life. This much, however, can be said. Heaven is essentially spiritual. When Jesus said: "God is a Spirit" (Jn., 4:24) He meant that God is quite different from the material things of the world — so different that heavenly things cannot be fully explained in earthly terms (Jn., 3:12). At the same time, Scripture promises a glorious transformation of this material universe which will be "spiritualised" in a way of which we can have no idea now, lifting it to heavenly levels. So we are told that there will be a "new heavens and a new earth." (2 Pet., 3:13; Rev., 21:1). Our own material bodies will be raised as "spiritual bodies" (I Cor., 15:44) to fit us for participation, both body and soul, in the fulness of heavenly happiness as members of the risen, ascended and glorified Christ. In this sense, heaven is both spiritual and material, whatever is material as we now know it having undergone a mysterious transfiguration.

Everyone with even an elementary education knows that such expressions are figures of speech, as when we speak of one person having "high ideals", or of another as being of "low morals." "High" and "low" are spatial ideas used metaphorically for non-spatial characteristics. Where heaven and hell are concerned, spatial concepts are used symbolically; of heaven, as an invisible, spiritual and transcendent realm proper to God and beyond time and space altogether, not by distance, but in kind or nature; of hell, as a disastrous other-worldly sphere of existence which Christ said was "prepared for the devil and his angels" — which does not suggest any "up" or "down" in the material sense of those words. The spiritual impact of Christianity upon ourselves is not lessened by the use of metaphorical expressions. No difference is made to the daily lives of Christians by the fact that the New Testament tells them to seek "the things that are above," the word "above" being a spatial concept used, not literally, but symbolically for "higher" spiritual ideals and realities as contrasted with "lower" material and earthly interests.

Such an idea would be even more opposed to common sense than thinking heaven or hell to be literally "up" or "down" there, or anywhere spatially and relatively to this material world. Scripture stresses the "otherness" of the next life as compared with that on earth. As regards heaven, it tells us that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, not has it entered the heart of man, what God has prepared for them that love Him" (I Cor., 1:9). Heavenly conditions will be quite different from anything we have seen or heard on earth. The destiny we hope to attain will be supernatural of its very nature. Christ bade us: "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth . . . but treasure in heaven" (Matt., 6:19). He said that in heaven "men shall be as the angels" (Mk., 6:25); and it was when He was on the verge of leaving this earthly scene that He said: "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you also may be" (Jn., 14:2) — using the terms "place" and "where" only by analogy with our ways of thinking in our present human condition. Our eternal lot is beyond the here and now, the space and time limits of this earth where, as Heb., 13:14 puts it, "we have no abiding city but seek one that is to come," a destiny beyond and very different in kind from life as we know it here.

As regards those two particular references, yes. The word paradise has several different meanings. It is derived from the Persian "Pairidaeza", meaning a luxuriant enclosed park. So, in the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, the Garden of Eden in which our first parents were placed is translated as "paradise." Later, the word paradise became the symbol of a place or state of happiness beyond the grave; and this could be either a temporary state or one of permanent and eternal beatitude in heaven itself. In Rev., 2:7, our Lord says: "To him that overcomes I will give to eat of the Tree of Life which is in the paradise of my God." The reference there was to heaven. But paradise as a temporary state of other-worldly happiness not involving the very Vision of God was described by the Jews as "Abraham's bosom" (Lk., 16:23), which we speak of as the "limbo" of the just — an intermediate state which is neither heaven nor hell. When our Lord said to the dying thief: "Today you will be with me in paradise," He was referring to limbo as the temporary abode of the just after death. It was enough to find oneself anywhere with Christ to be in a paradise of happiness, even though it fell short of the full beatitude of heaven for the time being. So St. Paul said simply: "I desire to depart" — from this world —- "and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better." Phil., 1:23.

He was not referring to heaven as the eternal state of happiness beyond this world. He was referring to the visible universe which seemed to His listeners so solid and stable, and for the sake of emphasis told them that, even though the whole visible universe were to collapse, His teachings would remain permanently true and valid. We use a somewhat similar illustration of our meaning when we urge someone to be true to his principles "though the heavens fall," the last thing we would expect to happen. We know from other passages in Scripture, that as a matter of fact the "heavens and the earth" as we know them will eventually pass away when, on the Last Day there will be a complete and mysterious reconstitution of this whole universe in ways known only to God; but our Lord was not alluding to that in the words you have quoted. He meant merely that the heavens and the earth as they appeared to His listeners were not more durable and lasting than the truth of His teachings.

What primarily and essentially makes heaven is the direct, immediate and beatific Vision of God as the supreme and supernatural goal of our existence. This does not exclude the secondary happiness of the company of others whom we have loved and who also have attained salvation; but even without that, God alone would be enough to make heaven for us. Our present ideas are inadequate to grasp this mystery of our faith. On earth our natural love goes out directly to our fellow human beings for their own sake. But in heaven God Himself will be the direct object of our love. Merely natural love will merge into a supernatural love primarily and directly centred on God, overflowing to others in so far as they participate in and reflect the goodness and holiness of God. If this baffles our limited understanding now, we should be more astonished still if it did not. For we are not in heaven yet.

That is the more common opinion, but not a definite Article of the Catholic Faith. The reasons for the opinion are threefold: firstly, our Lord's words: "Unless one be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (Jn., 3:5); secondly, lacking the use of reason, such infants are incapable of "baptism of desire;" thirdly, no one can go to hell except for unrepented personal mortal sin, of which infants are incapable. Theologians argue, therefore, that a limbo or intermediate state somewhat like the limbo of the souls of previous generations awaiting the saving death, resurrection and ascension of Christ must exist to provide for such unbaptised infants.

It would be unjust for a soul innocent of personal sin to be consigned to hell. But that certainly does not happen. It would not be unjust for an unbaptised infant to be granted an eternal natural happiness, but to lack the higher supernatural happiness of heaven to which it had no just claim.

That we cannot say, beyond holding that, although the unrealised supernatural happiness of the immediate and beatific Vision of God would be absent, no form of suffering would be experienced. I remember maintaining years ago in a theological discussion that since the souls of unbaptised infants could not go to hell, they could not be regarded as lost. My opponent argued that since they could not enter heaven, they could not be regarded as saved. We both accepted the doctrine of limbo. Concerning its nature, there was of course much inconclusive citation of ecclesiastical documents and opinions of various theologians. To put our positions simply and in a humanly imaginative way, while he regarded limbo as a kind of painless "suburb of hell," I maintained that it was better thought of as a kind of happy "suburb of heaven."

Individual Catholic theologians are not endowed with infallibility. When they are not citing the official teachings of the Church, they but express personal opinions and their reasons for them. Other theologians may challenge their opinions and dispute the value of their arguments. As regards the existence of limbo for unbaptised infants, I know of no Catholic theologian who positively denies the doctrine, although some contemporary theologians cast doubts about its likelihood. All Catholic theologians agree that the doctrine has never been defined as a dogma by the Church. All agree that it is possible that God has some way He has not made known to us by which He enables all unbaptised infants to enter heaven. Those who hold it to be likely that He does so argue that, since our Lord died for the salvation in the fullest sense of the word for all mankind, too great a proportion of mankind would be excluded from heaven if all unbaptised infants failed to benefit by His redemptive work. How God would make salvation possible for such infants — if He does — is as much a matter of conjecture as the theory itself. Some think that at the moment of death a special grace may enable such infants to experience a "baptism of desire;" others that at least in the general resurrection on the last day as "part of mankind" — guilty of no personal sin — they will have conferred upon them the benefits of the redemption Christ wrought for mankind. In this latter case, there would be a temporary limbo for unbaptised infants until the last day, but it would not be an endless state for them. One may hold these new theological opinions as possible or even likely, but not as certainly correct; and the Church is insistent that we must do our best to see that infants are not allowed to die without having received the Sacrament of Baptism which Scripture declares to be necessary without informing us of any special provisions God may make for unbaptised infants in ways known only to Himself.

In the Apostles' Creed, all Catholics profess as part of their faith that Christ "rose from the dead and ascended into heaven" and that "from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead." The Catholic Church certainly teaches, therefore, that as surely as there was a first coming of Christ to this world by His birth in Bethlehem, so there will be a second coming of Christ in His majesty and glory as the Eternal Son of God to judge all mankind. That judgment will put an end to human history on this earth as we know it, resulting in one of two possible destinies in eternity for human beings who have attained to the age of responsibility for their conduct, heaven or hell; the one destiny sublime; the other tragic. There will be no setting up of any temporal kingdom of Christ on this earth, over which He will rule for a thousand years (often spoken of as the Millennium). The Catholic Church rejects any idea of that as erroneous and based upon a misinterpretation of Scripture.

Christ Himself undoubtedly taught that there will be a dramatic end to human history in this world, with a final judgment of all mankind and the establishing of God's heavenly kingdom in the fulness of its perfection. But He also taught that the kingdom of God was already and initially present in this world by the very fact of His having come into it as our Redeemer. He began His public mission by saying: "The time is accomplished and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe the gospel" (that is, the "good news") Mk., 1:15. Christ, therefore, inaugurated the kingdom of God in the sense of the "Rule of God" over the souls of men. In Christ and in His saving activities, then, the old order was supplanted by a new age, in which we now exist. So we are told, in Heb., 1:1-2, that God who spoke in times past by the prophets "last of all in these days has spoken to us by His Son." St. Peter, in turn, wrote that Christ has been "manifested in the last times for you" (I Pet., 1:20) while St. John said: "It is the last hour . . . even now" (I Jn., 2:18) that is, the last age of this world. It is true that Jesus taught an end to come of this present age, a "Last Day" of these "Last Days," when He would come again for the Final Judgment of all mankind; but He made it clear that it was not part of His mission to proclaim and that He was not interested in predicting when the final consummation of the kingdom would occur. His interest was in the progressive coming of the kingdom within men themselves as they increasingly accepted the gospel He preached, took their place among His disciples and in the Church He established, and laboured at the work of sanctifying themselves and of extending the knowledge of Him and His influence among as many others as possible. Those who do this are already members of the kingdom of God initially operative among us.

One passage in the Bible should of itself be enough to tell you that what you seek is not in the Bible. In Acts 1:7, we have our Lord's reply to the direct question of His disciples: "It is not for you to know the times or moments, which the Father has reserved to His own authority." If it is not given to man to know, it is quite certain that calculations based on obscure biblical passages mean wasting one's efforts in what is bound to be a futile search. The keynote of our Lord's message to us all is found in His words: "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He comes, shall find watching . . . for at what hour you think not the Son of Man will come." Lk., 12:37. This is as true of His calling us individually to our judgment at death, as it is of His final coming to judge all mankind. The one thing necessary is to do our best to serve God, keeping in His grace and love and friendship. If we do that, whether the end of the world itself comes sooner or whether it comes later will not be of any great practical importance for us.

Obviously not, since our Lord declared that the Father had no intention of giving men any definite information on that subject. Usually the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel is quoted in this connection. In that chapter, Christ predicted with many details the fall of Jerusalem which occurred in 70 A.D. and which meant for the Jews the end of their world. But He also presented this event as a type or symbol of the end of the whole world's history, an event in the far-off future at a time known neither to the angels nor to men, and of which there were to be no indications. His descriptions of what will happen when the day of general judgment comes were given in a highly symbolical way denoting simply judgment and renewal. A literal fulfilment of all the details of such descriptive symbolism is not to be expected.

They did not teach the early return of Christ as part of the divinelyrevealed gospel they had been commissioned to preach. They did look forward to the full manifestation of the glory of Christ and, not knowing when it would be, expressed their hopes and pious expectations that it would be soon. St. Paul, however, warned the Thess'alonians: "Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet Him, we beg you, brethren, not to be easily shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand." 2 Thess., 2:1-2,

No argument can be based on such considerations. Take the description of the conduct of even professing Christians in the then state of society, written by St. Cyprian in his treatise "De Lapsis," 250 A.D. "All," he wrote, "are out to accumulate money. Forgetting what was the conduct of believers under the Apostles and what ought to be their conduct in every age, with insatiable eagerness for gain they devote themselves to the multiplying of possessions . . . There is no mercy in good works, no discipline in behaviour. Women colour their complexion with paint. Their eyes are changed from what God made them and a false colour is given to their hair. The hearts of the simple are misled by treacherous artifices and brethren become entangled in seductive snares. Ties of marriage are formed with unbelievers. Members of Christ are prostituted to the heathen. Not only rash, but false oaths are rife. Persons in high places are puffed up with contemptuous pride; poisoned calumnies fall from their lips; and men are divided by continual quarrelling." The fact that we ourselves are living now (1963), over, 1,700 years later, shows how mistaken would have been a conjecture from the evils of the times in 250 A.D. that the end of the world must surely be imminent. One cannot but become very diffident about similar conjectures based on the evils of our own days.

The idea of a feverish last-minute preparation based on conjectural calculations, as if the time and not the fact of a Second Coming of Christ were the important thing, is not in accordance with the New Testament outlook. It is the fact, and not the time, that is supremely important. This doctrine excludes the idea of the ancient Greek pagans — and that of modern secularists — that the course of history is only an endless cycle of processes, an interminable series without ultimate purpose or meaning; a system breeding the thought that there is no particular point in living at all. With Christian doctrine, as St. Augustine put it, that "infernal cycle collapses." Our earthly history has an end to be attained, a direction and a significance of which the pagan world knew nothing. But each of us as individuals has one life of probation on earth only, and a short one. Even granted that we manage the full span, not cut off by disease or accident, when our time is up we'll feel as if we have scarcely lived. From the time point of view, much more important is the warning: "You fool, this night your soul will be required of you." Lk., 12:20. A man well-prepared for his own death is by the very fact well-prepared for the Second Coming, whenever that happens.

Holy Scripture does not say so. In Matt., 24:27-29, He does speak of a cosmic catastrophe, suddenly disrupting the present physical order of the universe; but in verse 30 He says that all men will then see Him coming in power and glory. Also, in John 5:28 He says that, in preparation for this, all who are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son of God and have part in the general resurrection preceding the Last Judgment. The cosmic changes, therefore, whatever their nature may be, will not mean the destruction of the world by fire.

St. Peter did not intend that as a literal explanation of what will actually occur. There was a wide-spread idea current in those times among Persians, Greeks and Romans that the original element of the universe was fire and that the world would return in the end to a condition of fire from which it arose in the first place. St. Peter used this idea as imagery to symbolise the failure of the world, the supremacy of God, and the future judgment of mankind. He goes on, in verse 13, to speak, not of the annihilation of the universe, but of its transformation and renewal as a "new heavens and a new earth." His purpose was to signify, in conventional terms then acceptable, that the present corrupt world would undoubtedly end, yielding place to the triumph of Divine Justice.

Scripture suggests that there will be a "new heavens and a new earth;" that the Second Coming of Christ will bring with it a cataclysmic shock to the existing order of material creation itself, affecting not only the earth but the whole universe; and that there will be, in some way quite beyond our present comprehension, a perfect adaptation of all created things to the manifestation of the glorified Christ and of the redeemed both body and soul as the children of God. We have here a mystery not to be solved in terms of natural science. There have been many and various speculations of the subject, such as those of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin; but the only safe thing to say is that, whatever happens, the redeemed, in their state of heavenly glory, will see the whole of material creation under a very different aspect from that confronting us now.

However extensive the devastation, it is not by such means that the whole of humanity will perish and human history in this world be brought to an end. We know from the Scriptures that the end will come by a special intervention of God, Christ coming again, no longer in poverty and humility, but with great power and majesty, to judge the living and the dead (Matt., 24:30-31). The picture is not of something coming out of this world's chaotic distress, but of the God-man, Christ, coming into it again. The end of human history will not be brought about by any work of man but by an Act of God, the intervention of His own infinite power. And the decision rests with Him as to when this will be. No temporal disasters brought upon themselves by men, resulting from their misuse of science and technology, will be the deciding factor.

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 5

601. Euthanasia means putting incurably sick people to death, yet according to the enclosed press report the Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen supports it.

602. The report says that Bishop Sheen, addressing the American Medical Association, said it was "permissible under certain circumstances to allow a person to die".

603. Bishop Sheen said: "If I were a hopeless cancer patient, kept barely alive by a battery of tubes and other devices, I would ask for them to be taken away. I find no moral difficulty in this".

604. I see no difference between killing and withholding treatment to keep a patient alive.

605. Surely decisions about his own life rest with the patient, not with the doctor.

606. Did the Vatican Council permit Catholics to choose cremation rather than earth-burial for the disposal of their remains?

607. What precisely is the position of the Church in this matter now?

608. If a Catholic is eligible for the Last Rites of the Church, would the priest attend at the Crematorium itself and offer prayers there?

609. As regards censorship of what Catholics may read, did the abolition of the "Index of Forbidden Books" in 1966 mean the end of censorship of any kind?

610. What was the nature of the "Index", and when was it first introduced?

611. As far as Catholics are concerned, what is the position today?

612. Am I wrong in deploring the abolition of our customary abstinence from the eating of meat on Fridays?

613. If any duty in this matter remains, how serious is it?

614. Why does not the Catholic Church declare alcoholic drink of any kind to be a morally evil thing in itself and condemn it as such?

615. Does not the overwhelming weight of biblical evidence show fermented wine to be a very great evil?

616. Paul, in 1 Cor., 10:31, says: "Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God",

617. Could Jesus possibly condone the drinking of fermented wine?

618. All alcoholics who have ruined themselves, broken their homes, and even killed people on the roads by drunken driving, have in all sincerity started as only moderate drinkers.

619. The Catholic Church professes great respect for human life by forbidding contraception, abortion, and euthanasia; yet permits the destruction of human life by State capital punishment and men killing each other during wars between nations.

620. Does the Church regard war as a good thing or as a bad thing?

621. If war is a bad thing, why does not the Church condemn all wars unconditionally and forbid the faithful to participate in them?

622. can we hope for world-peace if the nations adopt no practical measures to ensure it?

623. Can men determine to have their own way according to their own false scale of values even hope for peace?

624. Does not the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" forbid all killing of fellow human beings, even by capital punishment for crimes or in wars declared necessary for self-defence?

625. Responsible scholarship shows the right translation to be "Thou shalt not kill", without any qualifications differing between murder and forms Of justifiable homicide.

626. Even in the military defence of their country, soldiers are sent to kill enemy soldiers opposed to them.

627. Is it right to quote the Old Testament, ignoring the fact that Christians are not under the Mosaic Laws but are bound by the Lord's teachings?

628. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said God does not discriminate between just and unjust men in the present life (Matt., 5:45). War, therefore, even of the just against the unjust, cannot be reconciled with God's will.

629. Christ also said: "Resist not evil, but if one strike you on the right cheek, turn to him also the other." Matt., 5:38.

630. In Matt., 5:44, Jesus said: "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you."

631. Also, in Matt., 5:9, Jesus said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be the children of God."

632. At His arrest, Christ said to Peter: "Put away your sword; he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." Matt., 26:52.

633. Is it not scandalous that Christians should go to war in order to kill many decent fellow Christians who may be among the opposing forces?

634. We are taught we are all brothers and are given the precept: "Love your neighbour."

635. Did not the early Christians refuse to engage in any military service at all?

636. Did the Vatican Council declare all war so evil that no Catholic could with a good conscience participate in any war?

637. Did the Vatican Council condemn nuclear warfare?

638. Quoting Pope Pius Xll's 1956 statement that in a defensive war "a Catholic cannot invoke his own conscience in order to refuse to serve and fulfil those duties which the law imposes," you said a Catholic would have an erroneous conscience who felt obliged to refuse such service.

639. Vatican Council said in its "Constitution," n.79, that State law should make humane provision for persons who in conscience refuse to bear arms, provided they agree to serve the community in some other way.

640. If a conscientious objector chose to be shot rather than undertake military duties involving the killing of others, would not God reward him for such self-sacrifice?

641. I myself know of some Catholics who have sought exemption from military service on grounds of conscientious objection.

642. What did the Vatican Council say about pacifism in particular?

643. Has the Church ever officially expressed any direct opposition to pacifism?

644. Jesus said: "Love your neighbour as yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do to you."

645. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us to help others to achieve a well-being we ourselves think necessary for a contented life.

646. To show love, one does not first show hate. Hatred and killing breed revenge.

647. If animals were killed by disembowelling, burning, or maiming, there would be a great outcry. Are men less than animals?

648. Yet the foul weapons of modern warfare are accepted by the majority without a murmur!

649. Auxiliary-Bishop Butler, of Westminster, is reported as having told a meeting he does not share the "Better dead than Red" view that life would be unbearable under Marxist Communism, and that his position is: "Better Red than Kill."

650. What would be the position of a soldier who, confronted with an enemy, threw away his weapons through love of his neighbour and was shot by that enemy?

651. I am a pacifist, not for unworthy motives, but because of my real conviction that we should rely, not on armed opposition, but on the persuasive force of love to overcome our enemies.

652. Did not Christ die an unresisting death on the Cross, although by divine power He could have willed the death of His aggressors?