For the past 800 years, Christendom’s view of hades has been guided by Dante’s brilliant description of it in The Inferno.
We read of the Nine Circles and how those guilty of greater sin suffer the greatest punishment in the lower circles. Those who compound their sins with lies are sent to the lower areas where “Compound Fraud” is punished. There is an order amidst the ruins that reflects justice.
Is the orderly organization in hell that Dante describes “too good” for such a place?
Where God is, there is order. Heaven is an orderly place.
Hell is not an orderly place. It is chaos. It is “dis”. Hades, therefore, may not be a place of graduated pain. Punishment may be so unevenly applied that there is no logic to the punishments at all.
Billionaires who’ve sold their souls to promote the death of millions by abortion may receive equal punishment with someone guilty of occasional adultery. Hell’s greatest punishments may sometimes fall on the least evil, in some perverse reversal of justice that reflects the virus’s hatred of The Loving Programmer’s order.
Are hell’s punishments applied to souls in a random manner? That would be somewhat reasonable, and is, therefore, not likely.
It may be that the greatest pains are assigned by those who “just missed” being good enough for Heaven. As they suffer the torments of the damned, they are continually reminded how close they came. They can never forget how curbing a teeny-tiny bit of the vanity that separated them from The Church Jesus Founded would have replaced their eternal agony with unending bliss. “Why did I stay in my silly schism? Why was I so vain? What did I gain?” they cry in everlasting agony as the answer becomes ever clearer.
One thing we do know about hell: No Catholic who used at least the final few moments of time on earth to make a good Confession, receive Absolution from a priest in a living link with the Apostles, and receive The Last Rites is in hell. Not a single one. How the lost souls hate that!
There are many who agonize about that truth forever. They have found themselves to be living, eternal answers of “Who gets it worst in hell?”
How the lost souls hate that, both here and beyond!
