There’s no doubt that Pope Benedict the XVI is a holy man. While I would give him an “A” on his ETHICS, it is something more askin to a “C-” on His THEOLOGY. Ah, but who am I to characterize the Pope? Earlier this year he said, “Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanize the faithful. Hell really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more”. Guess why fewer and fewer people talk about!

We live in the 21st century, that’s why!

Most people no longer think the earth is flat, though some still do. Most people came to the conclusion that Newton and Copernicus were right centuries ago, in professing the heliocentric principle, over the geocentric one. But, of course it took the Catholic church more than 300 years to confess that those boys were right and to absolve them of their heretical scientific stands. I think it was in 1987 the the official church apology came.

It would have been nice had they done it when they were alive!

Dante’s Inferno and Hollywood’s depiction of hell and the devil are cute comedies and movie fantasy, but most people just can’t quite believe all the hoops that one has to jump through to believe that a loving God would be so cruel and sadistic to knowingly condemn billions of people to such atrocities.

Eternal punishment without correction and restoration is perversion!

If the Pope wants to lead his church back into the 5th century, if he wants to have Mass spoken in Latin again, if he wants to condemn all Protestants and reject Vatican II, that’s his choice for his church. I see those as “church rules” and it’s up to each leader to decide (even though there’s no one who can correct him). But, when he moves into the realm of beliefs in hell that he has, he’s just proven to me that while Papa, he IS FALLIBLE!

And I’m not knocking Catholics!

I’m commenting on the theology of a literal, everlasting hell!