Hell — answers to the main objections

Catechism 1033-1037

The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives the official definition:

"We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves. [...] To die in mortal sin without repenting and without accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and with the blessed is called 'hell.'" — Catechism of the Catholic Church 1033^[3]

Hell is therefore first of all a state, not an imposed place of torture. It is the definitive and irrevocable consequence of a human freedom which, until death, refused the love of God.

1035 specifies the nature of the pains:

"The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire.' The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs." — Catechism of the Catholic Church 1035^[4]

And 1037 states an essential point:

"God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end." — Catechism of the Catholic Church 1037^[5]

Benedictus Deus (1336) — the dogmatic definition of immediacy

The doctrine was solemnly defined by Pope Benedict XII (Jacques Fournier, 1334-1342) in his bull Benedictus Deus of 29 January 1336, against the personal opinion defended by his predecessor John XXII (sermons of 1331-1332), according to which the souls of the just would enjoy the beatific vision only after the last judgment:

"The souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend immediately after their death into hell, where they are tormented by the pains of hell." — Benedict XII, bull Benedictus Deus, 29 January 1336 (Denzinger 1000-1002)^[6]

This is the reference dogmatic definition on the immediacy of one's lot after death. The eternity of the pains rests on its own proper sources: the word of Christ in Mt 25:46, the anti-Origenist anathemas of 543 (associated with Constantinople II, 553) and CCC 1035.

The major objection ("a God of love cannot will hell") rests on a confusion between two modalities of the divine will, carefully distinguished by Thomist theology. Lavagna explains:

*"The antecedent will is the first will one has with regard to a thing or a person. [...] In his antecedent will (which precedes all else), God wills that all men be saved. [...] By contrast, in his consequent (or permissive) will, God does not will the salvation of all.

Indeed, God's permissive will takes into account many other factors that may come to oppose his initial will. [...] In giving man free will, God voluntarily chose to create beings with the possibility of opposing his salvific plan."*

— Matthieu Lavagna, op. cit., p. 281-282^[7]

Saint Paul himself attests the antecedent will:

"God desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth." — 1 Timothy 2:4^[8]

But the consequent will respects the freedom of the creature. As Lavagna concludes:

"God therefore throws no one into hell — it is we who risk putting ourselves there all alone. And this hell is eternal precisely because the damned do not want to be forgiven. Their soul perpetually refuses to repent, out of pride. Faced with such a refusal, God can do nothing, since he himself decided to create free men. For it is impossible to force someone to love you freely. That would be a contradiction in terms!" — Matthieu Lavagna, op. cit., p. 284^[9]

Hell is not a medieval invention nor a late patristic accretion: it is Christ himself who speaks of it at greatest length in the whole New Testament. The Greek word gehenna (γέεννα) appears there twelve times, eleven of them on the lips of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels^[10]. Added to these are the mentions of "eternal fire" (Mt 18:8; Mt 25:41), "eternal punishment" (Mt 25:46), the "outer darkness" (Mt 8:12; Mt 22:13; Mt 25:30) and the Matthean refrain "weeping and gnashing of teeth" — six times in Matthew, seven with Luke^[11].

The centrality of the theme of judgment and eschatological punishment in Lucan preaching, from the inverted Beatitudes (Lk 6:24-26) to the synoptic apocalypse (Lk 21), is stressed by the Jesuit exegete Joseph A. Fitzmyer in his reference commentary on the third Gospel^[12].

Matthew 25:41-46 — the last judgment

At the last judgment, Christ the King pronounces the sentence on the goats:

"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. [...] And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." — Matthew 25:41 and 46 (Douay-Rheims)

The Greek word used for "eternal" is aiōnion (αἰώνιον) — the same word as for "eternal life." The eternity of punishment and of life is strictly symmetrical in the Greek text: a reading that rejects the eternity of hell must logically reject the eternity of paradise as well.

Mark 9:43-48 — Gehenna and the undying worm

"And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire. [...] Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished." — Mark 9:43-48 (Douay-Rheims)

Jesus quotes here Isaiah 66:24 — an apocalyptic verse of the Old Testament — applied to the afterlife. The threefold repetition (vv. 44, 46, 48) is a Semitic device of solemn insistence — with this text-critical reservation: vv. 44 and 46, which duplicate v. 48, are absent from the oldest manuscripts and critical editions (NA28); the Douay-Rheims follows the Vulgate here^[13].

Luke 16:19-31 — Lazarus and the rich man

The parable describes the damned rich man:

"Tormented in this flame [...] between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos." — Luke 16:23-26 (Douay-Rheims)

The "great chaos" (chasma mega) is impassable — the state is definitive and irrevocable.

Revelation 20:10-15 — the lake of fire

"And the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. [...] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the pool of fire." — Revelation 20:10 and 15

2 Thessalonians 1:9 — eternal perdition

"Who shall suffer eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." — 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (Douay-Rheims)

The Greek term olethron aiōnion (eternal perdition) confirms the Pauline doctrine of definitiveness.

The biblical names of hell

Scripture does not name hell with a single word. Five principal terms designate, at different levels, the abode of the dead, the place of punishment, or eschatological condemnation. Distinguishing these terms avoids modern confusions (notably the abusive translation of the Hebrew sheol as "hell" in the Old Testament).

Reading the table: the word hell as Catholic doctrine understands it corresponds above all to Gehenna in the preaching of Christ and to the lake of fire in Revelation. Sheol / Hades, in biblical language, more broadly designate the abode of the dead, before the eschatological clarification brought by New Testament Revelation and Christ's descent into hell (CCC 632-635). This distinction is decisive for answering objections of the type "the Old Testament has no idea of hell": it has it under the embryonic term sheol, which is progressively clarified (Wis 4:18-20; 2 Macc 7) up to full revelation in Jesus^[19].

Objection 1 — "Hell is incompatible with mercy"

Answer: God's respect for human freedom.

The great Anglican apologist C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) formulates the classic answer in The Great Divorce (1945):

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell." — C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, ch. 9 (1945)^[20]

And the shorter formula, now a maxim:

"The doors of hell are locked on the inside." — C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, ch. 8 (1940)^[21]

Hell is not God condemning against the will of the damned — it is the damned shutting himself against the will of God, and God respecting that closure to the very end. It is precisely mercy that makes hell possible: a God who forced someone to love him would not be love, he would be a tyrant.

Lavagna concludes:

"Paradoxically, hell must exist for God to be truly love, for love is a free act of the will. If God forced men to unite themselves to him, leaving them no alternative choice, then he could not be truly loving." — Matthieu Lavagna, op. cit., p. 285-286^[22]

Objection 2 — "A finite fault cannot deserve an infinite punishment"

Answer: the infinite dignity of the Offended.

The classic argument is due to Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) in his Cur Deus Homo ("Why God Became Man," 1098), book I, chapter 21. In summary: the gravity of sin is not measured by the duration of the act — temporal and finite — but by the dignity of the one offended; offending God, of infinite dignity, thus involves a gravity beyond all measure, answered by a punishment of infinite duration^[23].

The classic analogy: a beggar who slaps another beggar suffers a light punishment; a beggar who slaps a head of state suffers a grave punishment — not because the physical act differs, but because the dignity of the offended differs. A fortiori, offending God — infinite Good, Creator, Father — involves a gravity of another order.

Saint Thomas Aquinas takes up the argument in the Summa theologiae. On the gravity of sin committed against God:

"Sin committed against God receives a certain infinity from the infinite divine majesty; for the offense is all the graver as the one offended is of higher rank." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIIa, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2^[24]

And on the punishment incurred: what in sin corresponds to aversion from God — an infinite good — calls for an infinite pain of loss like that aversion, since it is the loss of God himself (Summa theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 4)^[25].

Important clarification: eternal punishment is not a prolonged vengeance but the permanent state consequent upon the definitive and irrevocable choice of the damned. It is the persistence of the refusal, not divine relentlessness.

Objection 3 — "Annihilationism is more just: the damned are annihilated"

Answer: the immortality of the soul, a defined dogma.

Certain Protestant branches (notably Evangelicals, following Edward Fudge in The Fire That Consumes, 1982, and John Stott) hold that the damned are annihilated after a time of torment — a solution that would seem less "cruel." But this position contradicts two dogmas:

1. The immortality of the soul, defined at the Fifth Lateran Council (1513) by the bull Apostolici regiminis of Leo X — the rational human soul is by nature immortal, created immediately by God (Denzinger 1440)^[26].

2. The eternity of the pains, which rests on its own proper sources — the word of Christ in Mt 25:46 ("eternal punishment," the same aiōnion as for eternal life), the anti-Origenist anathemas of 543 (associated with Constantinople II, 553) and CCC 1035 — and not on Benedictus Deus (1336), whose defined object is the immediacy of one's lot after death (see above). Annihilation "after a time of torment" contradicts this eternity as much as the natural immortality of the soul.

Annihilationism does not avoid the moral objection: God would create beings to last only a time — which contradicts the spiritual nature of the soul. It is in reality a flight from the difficulty, not a rational solution.

Objection 4 — "Apocatastasis: all will finally be saved, even Satan"

Answer: a doctrine condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council.

Apocatastasis (from the Greek apokatastasis, "universal restoration") is the thesis defended by Origen (c. 185-253) according to which, at the end of time, all the damned — including the demons and Satan himself — will finally repent and be saved. Lavagna notes:

"At one time, certain Fathers of the Church, like Origen, tried to defend 'apocatastasis,' a rather barbarous word for saying that the demons and the damned will finally repent at the end of time and be saved, but this theory was condemned very early by the Church." — Matthieu Lavagna, op. cit., p. 281^[27]

The synod of Constantinople convened under Emperor Justinian in 543 solemnly condemns this thesis, in the series of anti-Origenist anathemas associated with the Second Council of Constantinople (Fifth Ecumenical Council, 553), whose status as a formal conciliar act remains debated^[28]:

"If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and impious men is temporary, and that it will end after some time, or that there will be a restoration (apokatastasis) of demons and impious men, let him be anathema." — Anti-Origenist anathemas (synod of 543; associated with Constantinople II, 553), 9th anathema (Denzinger 411)^[29]

Apocatastasis nevertheless remains tempting to modern sensibility. The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) proposed in Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? (1986) a middle, nuanced position: we cannot affirm dogmatically that all will be saved (forbidden by Constantinople II), but we can and must hope that all will be, without knowing it. This is the "theology of hope"^[30].

Objection 5 — "The 'fire' is a primitive metaphor"

Answer: the poena damni / poena sensus distinction.

Catholic theology distinguishes two dimensions of the pains of hell:

• Poena damni (pain of loss) — the eternal privation of God, which is the essence of hell
• Poena sensus (pain of sense) — sensible sufferings, of which "fire" is the biblical image

Saint Thomas Aquinas establishes the primacy of the first:

"The pain of damnation is greater than all sensible pain. For God, being the sovereign good, the sovereign harm of the creature consists in being deprived of him." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Suppl., q. 99, a. 1^[31]

CCC 1035 confirms it: "The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God." The "fire" is therefore less an instrument of torture than an image translating the absolute intensity of this privation. As C. S. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain (1940, ch. 8), our language about hell is necessarily analogical — but the analogy points to a reality more terrible still than the image.

Objection 6 — "Why did God create those he knew would be damned?"

Answer: sufficient grace given to each one.

Lavagna answers this subtle contemporary objection in two stages:

"First, it may not be feasible to create a world in which everyone freely accepts salvation. Indeed, it is logically impossible to force persons to love you freely. Thus it may be that, in any possible world filled with free creatures, there will always be some who reject God, despite all the efforts he makes to save each one. Second, [...] as long as God gives sufficient grace to each person he creates, there is nothing unjust in those who freely and consciously reject him ending up in hell." — Matthieu Lavagna, op. cit., p. 286, note 431^[32]

This argument joins theological Molinism (Luis de Molina, De concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, 1588): God knows all futuribles (what each person would freely do in every possible situation) and created the world optimizing the number of the saved compatible with human freedom.

The modern objection often renews itself in the form: "one cannot imagine God filling his hell." Yet Scripture, far from evoking an empty hell, multiplies warnings about the narrowness of the way of salvation. Christ himself formulates the most uncomfortable sentence:

"Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat; for narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it." — Matthew 7:13-14 (Douay-Rheims)^[33]

And when a disciple explicitly asks him "Lord, are they few that are saved?" (Lk 13:23), Jesus does not correct the formulation and answers with an exhortation:

"Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able." — Luke 13:24 (Douay-Rheims)^[34]

Saint Matthew redoubles this word with the conclusion of the parable of the wedding feast: "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Mt 22:14)^[35].

The rigorist tradition: Augustine, Chrysostom, Thomas

The patristic and scholastic tradition generally read these texts in the strict sense. Saint Augustine teaches that the massa damnata ("condemned mass") is, without grace, the common lot of fallen humanity, and that the saved form a minority freely drawn from this mass^[36]. Saint John Chrysostom holds in his homily on the Acts of the Apostles that, even among Christians, the majority are lost^[37]. Saint Thomas Aquinas takes up this line in the Summa theologiae:

"The good proportioned to the common nature is found in most; but the good that exceeds the common nature is found in few. [...] That is why those predestined to supernatural salvation are few in number compared with those who are not." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 23, a. 7, ad 3^[38]

Saint Alphonsus Liguori and Cardinal Newman

Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists, devotes several sermons to the question of the "small number of the elect," which he considers one of the most solemn truths of Christian preaching. There he defends, relying on the strictest reading of Mt 7:13-14 and on the opinion transmitted under the name of Saint Bonaventure (Diaeta Salutis, tit. VII — a work of disputed attribution), that the great number of adult Christians risk damnation if they neglect the sacraments and conversion^[39].

Saint John Henry Newman (1801-1890), created cardinal by Leo XIII in 1879 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2019, meditates several times on these texts in his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834-1843), in particular in the sermon "The Strictness of the Law of Christ" (vol. IV, sermon 1) and "The Religion of the Day" (vol. I, sermon 24), where he recalls the demanding narrowness of the Gospel way against the modern temptation of a softened Christianity^[40].

The Balthasarian nuance — hope, not certainty

This rigorist tradition was nuanced in the 20th century by Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? (1986), who carefully distinguishes exhortative preaching (Christ's words on the small number are first a call to conversion, not a demographic count) and informative preaching (God alone knows the number of the saved). Without denying hell or contradicting Mt 7:13-14, Balthasar invites us to "hope for all," without being able to affirm it dogmatically^[41]. This position was taken up in tempered form by Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi 45-47.

Catholic position of balance: the Church does not define the number of the damned or of the saved. She dogmatically affirms the existence of hell (CCC 1035) and the known holiness of very many blessed and saints; she forbids universal apocatastasis (Constantinople II); she also forbids despairing for anyone, and invites prayer for the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:1-4)^[42].

Saint Augustine — De Civitate Dei book XXI (c. 426)

Saint Augustine devotes the whole of book XXI of The City of God (c. 426) to defending the eternity of hell against the misericordes ("the merciful") — a patristic current that invoked divine mercy to deny the eternity of the pains. Augustine rigorously demonstrates, from the words of Christ and from the very nature of human freedom, that the eternity of punishment is consistent with divine goodness:

"What Christian can deny that the happiness of the saints will be eternal, if he equally confesses that the pains of the wicked will be eternal? For Christ, who is to judge men, places both in the same discourse: 'Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire; the righteous, for their part, into eternal life' (Mt 25:41 and 46)." — Saint Augustine, De Civitate Dei XXI, 23 (c. 426)^[43]

The decisive Augustinian argument: one cannot cut the eternity of punishment in Mt 25:46 without also cutting the eternity of life. Both are bound by the same Greek word aiōnion in the same sentence.

Saint John Chrysostom — Homily on Matthew 24 (c. 390)

Chrysostom ("Golden Mouth," c. 349-407), bishop of Constantinople, comments on the narrow gate (Mt 7:13-14) in his homily 24 on the Gospel of Matthew, stressing the existential gravity of this word and exhorting to conversion^[44].

Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Justin

From the early 2nd century, hell is held as certain by the Apostolic Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred c. 110, writes to the Ephesians:

"Unquenchable fire awaits the one who has corrupted himself." — Saint Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 16, 2 (c. 110)^[45]

And Justin Martyr c. 155 in his First Apology:

"We are convinced that those who live according to good are judged worthy of remaining with God, suffering no pain, but that those who live in injustice and do not convert will be punished in eternal fire." — Saint Justin Martyr, First Apology 21, 6 (c. 155)^[46]

John Paul II — General Audience of 28 July 1999

Pope Saint John Paul II devotes the general audience of 28 July 1999 to a synthetic catechesis on hell, which masterfully clarifies the doctrine:

"More than a place, hell designates the state of the one who freely and definitively separates himself from God, source of all life and all joy. [...] Damnation cannot therefore be attributed to an initiative of God: in his merciful love, he can will only the salvation of the beings he created. In reality, it is the creature that closes itself to his love." — Saint John Paul II, general audience of 28 July 1999^[47]

This is the clearest and most quoted contemporary magisterial text on the relational and free nature of hell.

Benedict XVI — Spe Salvi (2007)

In the encyclical Spe Salvi (30 November 2007), Benedict XVI devotes 44-48 to eschatology. He distinguishes three categories after death: the saints (immediate paradise), the damned (hell), and the great majority who pass through purgatory. He refuses apocatastasis while remaining open to hope:

"With death, man's choice of life becomes definitive — his life stands before the Judge. [...] There may be persons who have totally destroyed in themselves the desire for truth and readiness for love. [...] In such individuals there would be nothing remediable left, and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what is indicated by the word 'hell.'" — Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 45 (30 November 2007)^[48]

Balanced position: hell exists (dogma) — the definitive and irremediable becoming of the refusal of love — without the Church deciding the case of any particular person.

Christian mystical experience — without dogmatic value — confirms the doctrine.

Saint Isaac the Syrian (7th century)

"As for me, I also say that those punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. What is more bitter and more violent than the punishment of love? The pain felt by the heart that has sinned against love is more heartrending than any other torment. It is absurd to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God." — Saint Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, homily 72 (7th c.)^[49]

Hell is the intolerable presence of a rejected Love, more than an exterior punishment.

The vision of Fatima (13 July 1917)

The first secret of Fatima (13 July 1917), entrusted to the three shepherd children and revealed by Sister Lucia dos Santos in her Fourth Memoir:

"Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls, as if they were transparent embers, black or bronze-colored, with human form, which floated in this conflagration, raised by the flames that came out of themselves together with clouds of smoke, falling on all sides, like sparks in great fires, without weight or balance, with cries and groans of pain and despair that horrified and made us tremble with fear." — Sister Lucia dos Santos, Fourth Memoir, vision of 13 July 1917^[50]

Saint Faustina Kowalska — Diary

"But sometimes there are souls of such hardness of heart that they consciously choose hell. They frustrate not only all the prayers that other souls direct to God on their behalf, but even the divine efforts." — Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary 1697 (1937)^[51]

Beyond dogmatic definitions and theological arguments, the Catholic tradition has always regarded meditation on hell as a powerful remedy against lukewarmness. Several of the greatest spiritual masters devoted striking pages to it.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola — meditation of the Spiritual Exercises (1548)

In the first week of the Spiritual Exercises (definitive Latin text approved by Paul III in 1548), Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Society of Jesus, proposes the fifth meditation: meditation on hell. His pedagogy has remained classic: composition of place (concrete visualization) followed by the application of the five senses (mentally seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching the pain of the damned):

"First point — to see with the eyes of the imagination the great fires and souls as in bodies of fire. Second point — to hear with the ears the weeping, the howls, the cries, the blasphemies against Christ Our Lord and against all the saints. Third point — to smell with the smell the smoke, the brimstone, the filth and the rotten things. Fourth point — to taste with the taste the bitter things, like tears, sadness and the worm of conscience. Fifth point — to feel with the touch how the fires reach and burn souls." — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises 68-72 (1548)^[52]

This meditation spiritually formed several generations of Jesuits, priests and retreatants since 1548. Its scope is not to terrorize, but — according to Ignatian pedagogy — to produce the contrition necessary to enter the second week, devoted to following Christ.

Saint Teresa of Avila — vision of her place in hell (Vida ch. 32, c. 1565)

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Doctor of the Church, recounts in chapter 32 of her Book of Her Life (Libro de la Vida, completed in 1565) a decisive vision of her conversion. The Lord shows her, in an instant, the place the demons held prepared for her in hell for her sins. She describes the entrance as narrow, low and dark, like a furnace. The physical pain of sensible fire there is, she says, slight before the spiritual "anguish, oppression and despair" that seize the soul^[53]. This singular grace was, by her own testimony, the origin of a new apostolic zeal and one of the spiritual motors of the Carmelite reform (1562-1582).

Saint Alphonsus Mary Liguori — Apparecchio alla morte (1758)

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church, founder of the Redemptorists, devotes several considerazioni of his great preaching work Apparecchio alla morte (Preparation for Death, Naples, 1758) to the last ends, and in particular to hell. His central thesis, taken up from the scholastic current, is that the essential pain of the damned is not sensible fire but poena damni — the irreparable loss of God, perceived with a lucidity all the more heartrending as the soul, stripped of the body, then clearly sees what it has lost^[54]. This spiritual master profoundly inspired Italian and French preaching of the 19th century, down to the Curé of Ars and Saint John Bosco.

Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars

Saint John Mary Vianney (1786-1859), patron of parish priests worldwide, preached to his parishioners homilies of burning intensity on the last ends. His Catechisms and Sermons collected in the 19th century contain several pages on mortal sin and hell: his hearers retained with what seizing insistence he preached the gravity of mortal sin — to hear him, to take the measure of what a mortal sin is would suffice to chill with dread^[55].

Saint Catherine of Siena — Dialogue of Divine Providence (1378)

Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Doctor of the Church, transmits in her Dialogue of Divine Providence (dictated in ecstasy c. 1377-1378 and published posthumously) the voice of the Eternal Father describing the pains of the damned. Catherine distinguishes four principal torments, the first and most terrible of which is the privation of God: the damned sees what he has lost and loses it forever. The Catholic doctrine of poena damni finds here one of its most striking mystical expressions^[56].

These spiritual testimonies add nothing to the dogma already fixed by Benedictus Deus (1336), but they show that hell was never for the saints a theological abstraction: it was a reality contemplated, dreaded and combated by prayer, fasting and apostolate.

An often neglected dimension: without hell, justice collapses. The executioners of Auschwitz, the torturers of the Gulag, pedophiles, bloodthirsty tyrants would receive the same eternal lot as their victims — which destroys all justice and all dignity of the victim. Joseph Ratzinger observes:

"Grace cannot be cheap. It cannot mean that God ultimately closes his eyes to everything, that his word would be without consequence. The whole biblical teaching on judgment protects the dignity of the victim and the freedom of the moral agent." — Joseph Ratzinger, Death and the Beyond: a short treatise of Christian hope (Eschatologie. Tod und ewiges Leben, 1977), Communio/Fayard, Paris, 1979, p. 218^[57]

According to a maxim often attributed to G. K. Chesterton:

"Hell is a tribute paid by God to human responsibility." — Maxim attributed to G. K. Chesterton, primary source not found^[58]

Hans Urs von Balthasar — Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? (1986)

The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), designated by John Paul II on 29 May 1988 to be created cardinal at the consistory of 28 June but deceased on 26 June before his creation, proposes a theology of hope in Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? (Was dürfen wir hoffen?, Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln, 1986). His thesis: without denying hell (forbidden by Constantinople II), we can and must hope (without knowing) that all men are saved. It is a hope, not a dogmatic certainty. This position was taken up by Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi^[59].

Régis Burnet — L'Enfer (Salvator 2017)

The French historian and exegete Régis Burnet (professor of New Testament at the Catholic University of Louvain, UCLouvain) signs with L'Enfer (Salvator, Paris, 2017, 192 pp., ISBN 978-2-7067-1488-2) an accessible and rigorous French-language theological introduction, retracing biblical and patristic doctrine and answering modern objections^[60].

C. S. Lewis — the apologetic trilogy

C. S. Lewis's apologetic work on hell remains one of the summits of 20th-century Christian theology:

• The Problem of Pain (1940) — rational defense of hell in face of the problem of evil
• The Great Divorce (1945) — allegorical fiction on self-exclusion
• The Screwtape Letters (1942) — reverse psychology of damnation

At the end of the journey the answer can be put in one sentence: hell exists because true love respects freedom to the end. God predestines no one to hell^[61]; he wills to save all. But he created beings capable of saying no, and this no, maintained until death, has eternal weight: it is the state of self-exclusion described by the Catechism^[62]. Without this possibility, freedom would be mere theatre and love coercion.

That is why the paragraphs on hell in the article on suffering refer here: the complete dossier, with its six objections and testimonies, stands at this address. And that is why the transversal article shows how the same love illuminates both mysteries at once.

• The answer to evil and suffering: the first part, on the mystery of evil.

• The love of God that explains evil and hell: the transversal article, on the free love at the root of both mysteries.

• Papal infallibility — who defines doctrine

• The Council of Trent — on mortal sin and justification

• The divinity of Jesus — who speaks of hell more than any other biblical source

• Our Lady of Fatima — who revealed the vision of hell on 13 July 1917