From: Uncle Vic 

In article ,
 "_ Prof. Jonez _"  wrote:

> POPE PROCLAIMS HELL 'EXISTS AND IS ETERNAL'
> Post Wire Services
>
> March 26, 2007 -- ROME - Hell is a place where sinners burn in an eternal
> fire,
> and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope
> has
> said.
> God's mercy and love are great, but those who reject him should know that
> hell
> "exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any
more," Pope
> Benedict XVI proclaimed during a weekend visit to a Rome parish.

Let's see if the Pope can offer proof of hell.

>
> The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine,
> noted
> that "forgiveness of sins" for those who repent was a cornerstone of
> Christian
> belief. He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the "woman taken in
adultery" and
> prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: "He that is
without sin
> among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

Circular argument.

>
> God had given men and women free will to choose whether "spontaneously to
> accept
> salvation...the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone."

Except above where he says those who reject "God" (his god, I'll
bet) should know that hell exists and is eternal...

>
> As a theologian, the pope wrote about hell on several occasions. In the 1968
> book, Introduction to Christianity, he described hell as a state of
> existential
> abandonment, "the loneliness into which love can no longer reach."
>
> In "God and the World," a book-length interview in 2000, he
said the church
> reminds people of heaven and hell in order to underline that "there is a
> responsibility before God, that there is a judgment, that human life can
> either
> turn out right or come to disaster."
>
> Vatican officials said that the Pope - who is also the Bishop of Rome - had
> been
> speaking in "straightfoward" language "like a parish
priest." He had wanted
> to
> reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that Hell is a "state of
> eternal separation from God," to be understood "symbolically
rather than
> physically."
>
> According to historians, Hell was misused in the Middle Ages to scare the
> impressionable with "horrific visions" of damnation, as
described in Dante's
> Inferno. It's pedigree, however, went back to Ancient Egypt and the Greek
> idea
> of Hades, and was described by St Matthew as a place of
"everlasting fire"
> (Matthew xxv, 41).
>
> The problem historians say they find, is not only that our sense of sin has
> declined, but also that the world wars of the 20th century created a Hell on
> Earth as bad as anything imaginable.
>
> In 1999 Pope John Paul II declared 

Nope, no proof.  Only declarations.

--
Uncle Vic  aa Atheist #2011

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