This is well worth spending 55 minutes watching, in my opinion. Here’s the blurb:
Bishop Robert Barron speaks at Google HQ about religion and the opening up of the mind. Bishop Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Bishop Barron is a #1 Amazon bestselling author and has published numerous books, essays, and articles on theology and the spiritual life, in addition to his regular YouTube videos (@wordonfirevideo).
Bishop Barron discusses how our minds restlessly seek, and how religion, at its best, never shuts down the mind, but opens it up. He explores the nature of “beatitudo”, following the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to conclude that wealth, power, pleasure, and honor will never satisfy, but only God can satisfy the infinite desires of our hearts.
Look, I know how Bp Barron upset many traditionalists a while back by suggesting that the future population of hell may be much less than some have hoped for, but I’m sure that is now just water under the bridge.
Watch him engage the young clever seeking people of today, masterfully, and learn from it.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
Glad that Bp Barron could educate Google. I just hope he reached some open minds!
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BB:
“Look, I know how Bp Barron upset many traditionalist a while back by suggesting that the future population of hell may be less than some have hoped for, but I am sure that is just water under the bridge now?”
Firstly your, ….’population of hell is less than some have hoped for…’ is a rather bizarre comment. I know of no right minded Person/Catholic that would hope more souls go there.
The question of the number of souls lost to hell is one that has been debated many times on these pages. That few actually go there is contrary to established doctrine of the Church and is soundly based in Scripture, not to mention utterances from the Virgin Mother in her ‘discussions’ with various seers approved by the Church and many Saints of the Church. There can be little dispute, despite what anyone would or would not ‘hope for’, that sadly many, many can count that place as their final destination. This smacks of the fallacious current trend that suggests that God’s mercy would be sufficient to prevent great numbers ending up there. God possesses an equally potent and precise sense of Justice. To suggest that one has precedence over the other is a fallacy.
Then BB, you go further and propose that the insinuation by the Bishop can now be considered, ‘water under the bridge’, is cavalier and dismissive and similarly bizarre.
Someone said they were reluctant to call Catholics traditionalist because it infers there are other types.
There is only One True Apostolic Catholic. I have heard of others claiming the title, EG: Liberal Catholics, Modernist Catholics, Cafeteria Catholics, Catholics in name only (CINO) Luke warm Catholics, ill formed or ill informed Catholics… Too many think they may pick and choose. Reject one doctrine/Truth of the Bride of Christ and you reject them all…..All in MHO of course.
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Bishop Barron is a beacon for 21st century Catholic. I love his ability to articulate Catholic teaching with clarity and charity!
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Dear Geoff, I must apologise for provoking your ire: the post above was meant to provoke. It is what some poorer writers do to get readership.
I believe in One True Holy and Apostolic Church too, but as it is such a huge and complex corpus/organism, I can see how some parts of it misunderstand the other parts from time to time. I agree with Bp Barron that the threat of hellfire is a poor way to sell Heavenly ‘beatitudo’. I certainly believe that there is hell, but I believe its population is limited to those sad souls who persistently and obstinately deny that God could possibly forgive their sinfulness (the despairing) or those who similarly think they do not need God’s forgiveness (the presumptuous).
All the rest of us rely on Christ’s superabundant Mercy, and the Intercession of all the Angels and Saints, to make us hope-filled as we make the pilgrimage along.
None of us can judge another, for we are not God. The only gift in our gift is forgiveness, and we are commanded to exercise that to the max’. Please forgive me.
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”…those who similarly think they do not need God’s forgiveness (the presumptuous).”
…Do you think then, that simply being mistaken – can merit eternal damnation, Bto?
Is that divine justice? What is the least humans can do to merit Hell?
I’m glad you want to provoke us. Provoking is good.Censorship is bad.
It seems that some folk not only accept the obscene idea of Hell – they positively relish it.
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Nifty bit of tap-dancing..
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Dear Toad,
There is an old story about a teenage ugly thug, Jonny, who went to Confession:
Bless me Father…. I spend a lot of time in front of the bathroom mirror admiring my beautiful looks.
The priest, recognizing Jonny’s raspingly ugly voice, says “My son, that is not a sin!
That is just a mistake!”
Everybody’s moral life is near-infinitely complex. Only God in the company of the person themself can truly judge its ultimate worth and sentence. Moral theologians can conjecture this and that about hypothetical moral situations, but at the final analysis, Judgement Day, only God and oneself decides.
Once again, I stress that when one is up against the “final beak”, one should neither despair nor presume over His final judgement. An honestly repentant heart and soul will win Him over, every time.
That is the basis of the Joy that makes me a disciple of Christ.
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– they positively relish it.
What a strange and perverse concept. I’ve never yet come across anyone who relishes the idea of hell.
A more typical response would be to fear hell and to try to avoid it by living in a state of grace (strengthened by the Sacraments), invoking Divine Mercy as well as fasting and sacrificing for those whose souls are in mortal danger.
Saint Faustina Kowalska is one of a number of saints who was shown a vision of hell. Here’s how she described the experience:
St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska, often known simply as St. Faustina, was a Polish nun who claimed to have a large number of mystical experiences in the 1930s. Here’s an excerpt from her diary about one of her visions:
“Today I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is!
“The kinds of tortures I saw: the first torture that constitutes hell is the loss of God; the second is perpetual remorse of conscience; the third is that one’s condition will never change; the fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it – a terrible suffering, since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger; the fifth torture is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and, despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own; the sixth torture is the constant company of Satan; the seventh torture is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. […]
“Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned. There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. […]
“But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell. When I came to, I could hardly recover from the fright. How terribly souls suffer there!” (Diary of St. Faustina, 741)
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”What a strange and perverse concept. I’ve never yet come across anyone who relishes the idea of hell.”
Well, Mmvc – try Saint Thomas Aquinas, for starters:
”In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned … So that they may be urged the more to praise God …”
(Or Tertillian)
If that’s not evil – I’m a Jesuit.
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Toad, there is so much we cannot grasp here in our earthly exile. We are often unaware of the spiritual warfare going on around us – the battle between good and evil from the time that sin entered the world.
Our souls are immortal and they were created for the beatific vision in heaven by God, our Creator.
Satan, the father of lies, would have you believe that the other eternal dwelling place, hell, does not exist, because that is precisely where he wants you, along with as many souls as possible, to end up.
This is the battle for our souls.
The saints rightly praise God because they have freely chosen to embrace His gifts, and to follow His precepts, and have at their death and judgment inherited the Kingdom of Heaven. Their joy must be all the greater for recognising the horrors of a different choice.
You too have the free will to choose.
I pray that you choose well.
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”Satan, the father of lies, would have you believe that the other eternal dwelling place, hell, does not exist, because that is precisely where he wants you, along with as many souls as possible, to end up.”
If there were no Hell, Mmvc – would you have invented it?
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I am a mere creature,Toad, who believes and trusts in God and who respects all His decrees. God’s ways are inscrutable and unfathomable. Jesus asked us to be like ‘little children’ and that requires an element of humility with regard to the plans the Almighty has for us.
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”God’s ways are inscrutable and unfathomable. ”
Well, we can agree on that.
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