Pope Francis Tries to Rehabilitate Judas, Part II: Mercy for Judas the Betrayer, But Not for Trump..

[Gnarwhal]

I see it more as an attempt to resolve a guilty conscience among some powerful clerics. Most of us know when we do wrong. The normal Catholic way to fix a guilty conscience is to repent and confess the thing one is guilty of. But if one can pretend that God doesn't care about what I did because God forgave even Judas ... means I can do anything I want, any nasty thing, and I'm still saved. It turns a guilty conscience into just a bad feeling. I can be a priest or bishop or cardinal debauching young adults. It's OK. OK because it all works out in the end. I don't have to confess it or face any consequences. God saves me anyway. No need to give up any vices. No need for a moral code.

That goes way beyond modern Jesuit. It goes straight to clericalism. And if it spreads too much farther into the laity we can, wait! Isn't this a brand of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism? I wonder.

And on the face of it with so many accusations that the hierarchs are Judases, it softens the blow to make their mascot a little less diabolical.

 

[narnia59]

I suppose.

I'd like to think the clergy were more prophetic and didn't check to see first whom they would offend.

I see the canonization of Judas as a way of saying no sin is significant any more and we're all quite OK as we are.

I'd like to think that too, but I also think they're afraid of losing the $$ associated with parishioners. Many of them anyway. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but when you get to the point you can't pay the bills anymore it's not a minor problem either. And the bishop is quite likely to pull you if that's the case. I really don't think it will change until we're willing to give up a lot of nice things -- nice facilities, nice programs, nice music.... and the list can go on. Are we willing to do with a lot less material to have better spiritual? Are we willing to let a lot of people walk out the door and go to the nifty mega church down the street that has all the nice things, leaving us with closed and consolidated parishes, longer drives to Mass, and the bare basics?

Side story but it reminds me of a woman I ran into one time who told me she used to be Catholic but was now going to a mega church because she liked the music better. She had talked to the priest about needing to change the music but he hadn't accomodated her so she went packing to someplace that she found more appealing. I told her I would never be able to leave the Eucharist and she informed me they had communion there. I said but it's not the same. She insisted it was. I suggested she inquire sometime about what they did with the leftovers. She asked what do Catholics do with the leftovers? She had converted when she married her husband, but she clearly didn't pay much attention all of those years. So when he died, her preferred style of music was more important to her. I think our pews have a good number of people just like her unfortunately.

I guess I don't equate the possibility that Judas isn't in hell as a canonization. None of the recent 3 popes have stated he's in heaven; they've simply said we don't know. That doesn't sound like much of a canonization to me and it certainly doesn't meet the definition.

The reality is some very major sinners will be in heaven. The question isn't about the magnitude of the sin but if there is genuine acknowledgement and repentance of that sin. And only God can judge that.

What I do know is that Christ loves Judas and it would be his heartfelt desire that there was true repentance and he be saved.

 

[Bob Crowley]

My old Protestant pastor said to me once "I think the Catholic Church soft-pedals judgement. I think they do anyway."

I think he might have been right.

From what I gather, prior to Vatican II it might have been the other way around. It was all judgement. In true human fashion though, we've all run the other way such that the "mercy" gunwhale of the boat is almost going under.

I'm well aware of judgement as I've often said that the night my own father died he appeared in my room. He materialised near the door and moved towards the foot of the bed. We talked and argued, but at the end he gave this absolutely terrifying scream and then just disappeared. It was obvious something was coming for him.

Most of the time he was looking over my head at something that seemed to either awe him, or appall him such that he tried to hide his face behind his hands. But I could see nothing but him. I wasn't allowed to see what he could see.

I've had a couple of people try to tell me he might have gone to Purgatory, but they didn't see the scream. Nobody who saw it would think he was going to heaven (that was obvious) or purgatory. It was just sheer horror.

On Judas, Saint Veronica Giuliani allegedly had a vision of hell (or several of them). In one of them she described Judas as serving as Satan's chair. That would be a position which I think would qualify as "It would be better for that man if he had never been born".

Saint Veronica Giuliani had various visions of the Hell / Inferno

The first (place in hell) is the location where Lucifer is shackled, and with him is Judas, who serves as his chair (seat), and there are all those who were followers of Judas.

Incidentally if her vision was correct, the worst places are those for careless religious, with us carnally minded laymen only rating a mere seventh place out of seven.

Or if you like, if God's so soft, why has He allowed, in the last century two world wars (including the use of two nuclear weapons), Gulags and concentration camps, and in this century several wars, and two tidal waves, one of which killed nearly 300,000 (generally) poor people almost overnight, and more recently Covid-19.

Christ's warnings about judgement and Hell meant what they say. He died in extreme agony so we could avoid them.