{"id":9068,"date":"2016-09-15T17:15:07","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T21:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=9068"},"modified":"2016-09-15T21:02:25","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T01:02:25","slug":"fr-jaques-hamel-might-not-be-in-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=9068","title":{"rendered":"Fr. Jacques Hamel Might Not Be In Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was young, I received terrible catechesis from my Catholic grade school.\u00a0 I mocked most of the process and grew up to lose the faith just like the rest of us, but I did learn one thing:\u00a0 the reason that we went to the Sacrament of Penance was so that we could be free of any mortal sins on our souls.<\/p>\n

They would take us to Confession once a month.\u00a0 If we missed Mass on Sunday we needed to confess it, and we couldn’t go to Communion again until we had.\u00a0 Later we learned to disregard this instruction, but I did hear it.\u00a0 So today I must ask every single priest I know and almost every single Catholic I’ve met, “Is this still true?”<\/p>\n

The reason why I have to ask is that everyone seems to think that Heaven is for almost everyone now.\u00a0 You don’t need to worry about Confession or Communion.\u00a0 You don’t have to be Catholic, or even Protestant.\u00a0 You just have to be nice, generally.\u00a0 God has a plan and he’s merciful, and Hell would be ridiculously unfair.<\/p>\n

So, if that’s the case, then what was all that about mortal sin? If Protestants and ‘nones’ don’t go to the sacraments, yet they are Heaven-bound, then why am I wasting my time being Catholic?\u00a0 If Mother Teresa and my parish priests all think you can enter Heaven being faithful to your denomination or philosophy, why can’t I just be an Evangelical?\u00a0 The Methodist minister who lives next door to me is very pro-abortion.\u00a0 If he’s going to Heaven, why do I have to go to Mass on Sundays?\u00a0 Our Sunday Mass is really an ugly nightmare.\u00a0 Can I switch?<\/p>\n

No, um, that would be inappropriate, but for them it’s OK?\u00a0 Is the Catholic Church some kind of kiddie-pen?<\/p>\n

Nobody ever has an answer to these questions.\u00a0 They just live with the inconsistency of it, but they don’t live with easily.\u00a0 It’s a fallacy and it’s collapsing the Church like the World Trade Center.\u00a0 Unity with Christ and his Church absolutely must mean what it always has: living a sacramental life, in a state of grace, without heresy.\u00a0 Heaven is an orderly place.\u00a0 It tolerates no hidden heretical time bombs to unravel its realities down the road.<\/p>\n

So what then is a martyr?\u00a0 To Francis, a martyr is any ‘christian’ killed by a Muslim, perhaps anyone at all killed by a Muslim.\u00a0 But a martyr must be someone who is in Heaven.\u00a0 So if you are a baptized person and lead a terrible life, then get caught in a Church massacre, you’re now in Heaven?\u00a0 If you’re a Copt and ISIS combs through your village, rounds you up with twenty other men, puts you in an orange suit and shoots you, then are you in Heaven?\u00a0 If they gave you a chance to deny Christ and you refused, then I’d say that was quite different.\u00a0 But if you are a priest saying Mass in France and they ambush you, does that make you a martyr?<\/p>\n

Many, many of the priests we see and read about are not faithful Catholics.\u00a0 They teach heresy from the altar.\u00a0 Divorce, gay sex, contraception, suicide, are condoned.\u00a0 If a priest like that is murdered on a train, does he go to Heaven?\u00a0 Not unless he is in a state of grace.\u00a0 Father Hamel may have been a very liberal priest.\u00a0 Did his killers ask him to deny Christ and he refused?\u00a0 Was he openly breaking the anti-Christian laws of the state as in ancient times?\u00a0 Was he like Stephen, stoned for proclaiming Christ in spite of the danger?\u00a0 Did he stand like St. Francis, before the Saracen and tell him he’s going to Hell when he knew it was a death sentence?<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 Father Hamel had little reason to think he was risking his life doing what he’d done every day for decades.\u00a0 He probably was not given the option to deny the Faith.\u00a0 He was just killed, not because he stood up for Christ in the face of death, but because he wasn’t Muslim.\u00a0 He could have been accustomed to making sacrilegious Communions and giving deadly counsel for a lifetime.\u00a0 We don’t know.\u00a0 If he had been given the choice between the Faith in Christ and his life, that would have been horrible too, but that’s what martyrs do.<\/p>\n

If ISIS is able to nuke the entire United States, who will go to Heaven?\u00a0 Will it be:<\/p>\n