A number of folks didn’t seem to cotton to the idea of canonizing anti-saints, as can be seen from the comments to the prior post and the original post.
I provided some responses here, but I thought one person’s response struck close to the mark of what many people are likely to feel on the subject, and I thought I’d respond to it here.
A reader writes:
What possible purpose could there be for us to know in this life who is damned? The purpose of knowing who is in heaven is not merely to satisfy curiosity but to give us certain knowledge that particular individuals can intercede for us in a special way because they are in God’s presence.
I also think “canonizing the damned” would create too big a temptation to “write off” people who haven’t yet been “canonized as damned” but seem –to us — to qualify. Those people then, who may have achieved salvation through final repentance, would be deprived of our prayers if they are in purgatory.
I know that there is a huge temptation to unofficially canonize saints (i.e., “I just know Mom went straight to heaven”), and that is a temptation that must be fought; but I can’t help but think that it would be an even worse temptation to unofficially canonize “anti-saints,” and that may be one reason why the Church has never done so. Not even with Judas, whose salvation just might be the ultimate “Surprise!” awaiting us in heaven.
It’s certainly true that if my interpretation of what Jesus says about Judas is wrong then he could be in heaven. I would be very surprised, but also glad, as I desire not the loss of any soul.
I also agree that it is problematic to unofficially canonize anti-saints. We may legitimately form the impression intellectually that, given what we know about an individual, it does not look likely that they made it (i.e., because they appeared to be a person with the faculty of reason who nevertheless lived a life of apparently knowing and deliberate grave sin right up to the end), but we can never know what happened in the privacy of their own mind in the last few seconds of their life, and God can work miracles even then.
But the case of Judas is different. In his case we aren’t simply guestimating based on the person’s observed manner of life. We have a statement by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself that appears to pertain directly to the fate of Judas. Our Lord obviously meant something by it and meant people (at least some people) to understand it. That changes matters. It is therefore legitimate to us to treat the damnation of Judas differently than we treat that of anybody else.
As far as what might motivate the Church to define the damnation of certain souls and whether it would be prudent for it to do so, it doesn’t strike me as a particular risk that defining Judas and potentially a few others as damned would discourage people from praying for those in purgatory. In fact, it seems to me that, if anything, it would do the opposite. Here’s why:
We live in an age in which the great majority of people take their own salvation for granted. By defining that Judas is in hell, the Church could hold him up as an example (which is what Jesus was doing, after all) of how hell is a real possibility.
This would force people to take a new look at the salvation of their own souls, and the souls of others. It could lead to renewed attention to what happens after we die, renewed evangelization, renewed praying for those who have died (though this would not benefit the damned, obviously), renewed attention to the need for confession, and renewed attention in general to our own need for grace. In short, in a society like ours, defining the damnation of a few individuals could do a world of good . . . and result in fewer people actually going to hell.
There would, of course, be costs as well (e.g., the media would have a violently negative reaction), but there would also be plusses, like those mentioned above. Whether the plusses outweigh the minuses in making such a definition . . . is for a wiser head than mine. 🙂
Those reasons you give are certainly food for thought. It does seem the case that such definitions might put a quite proper fear of God — in its proper sense — into people and cause them to doubt the certainty of their own salvation.
But we also live in an age that glamorizes evil. While the effects you outline would be what should be hoped for by such definitions, there is also the danger of people modeling themselves on the “anti-saints” and holding them up as role models. After all, that’s what the Church does with its saints, doesn’t it?
Perhaps such definitions might benefit the Church Militant, but I am not confident that the generation that would benefit most would be our own.
If your interpretation of Jesus’ statement about Judas is correct, then doesn’t that mean that certain parts of the Catechism should be changed, namely §1058 and §1821?
Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?
Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray that “all men” be saved, if we know, on the basis of your gloss, that one of them is damned?
On a slightly different note, I’m struck by the tone of JPII’s encyclical Dives in Misericordia.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia_en.html
Facing basically the same cultural situation as the rest of us, JPII in this encyclical emphasizes the mercy of God. An interesting pastoral/theological choice. I think that might be one factor behind his reluctance to declare the actual damnation of any specific person. As he says:
“The Church lives an authentic life when she professes and proclaims mercy” (part vii, para 13)
It’s one of those things, you never know if Judas repented in his heart while he lay dying. We don’t know if the last thing that went through Hitler’s mind (before the bullet) was “I’m sorry God” with enough honesty to put him in sanctifing grace. The thought that if someone like that can change enough to get into heaven (with about 3.5 trillion years in purgatory), well it doesn’t make my sins look insurmountable.
We live in an age in which the great majority of people take their own salvation for granted. By defining that Judas is in hell, the Church could hold him up as an example (which is what Jesus was doing, after all) of how hell is a real possibility.
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Good point. I hadn’t considered this side of the argument. As a Church, we seem to be sliding toward universalism. This might be part of the remedy.
Good discussion, on both sides. I had never really thought about this before. I have one thought I would like to add, though, to counter Jimmy’s reasons that canonization of the damned would be good in today’s culture.
If a few people were pronounced to be in hell, then they would probably be just a very few of the absolute worst ones (ie Judas, Nero, and the like). I think people in today’s culture, while generally assuming most people go to heaven, would be more than willing to concede that a few REALLY bad guys are in hell like Hitler, etc. So canonization of the damned might just strengthen their belief that only the super-duper-really-bad guys end up there. You know, the old “I’ve lived a basically good life, and I’m certainly no Nero or Hitler, so I’m sure I’m headed for heaven.”
In this sense I think it would be counter-productive. There would be no way to do it so this didn’t happen–we’d have to pronounce some pretty good people as “damned” in order to make people apply the possibility to themselves, in my estimation.
We have a tendency to compare ourselves to those around us, especially those who we see as not as good. It makes us feel like we are really good. Just watch the news (or the movies)–all that bad stuff going on, and I never do anything like that!
Now if we compare ourselves to the saints, and remind ourselves that we are all CALLED to be saints, that can be very helpful. We see that we still have a lot of growing to do. But comparing ourselves to the “canonized damned” seems like the complete opposite–the worst thing we could do. It would just make us feel like a saint in comparison!
Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?
Not at all, because in doing so we’re praying for people in the wayfaring state, rather than people who have already died and been judged.