* In 16 English translations of the Holy Bible, including those used by Catholics, this word is translated as "narrow," from the Latin word "angustam" in the Vulgate, the official Catholic Bible, based on the written colloquial Latin works of St. Jerome. In the King James Version, referenced here, the English word is "strait."

"Christ died for us!" is the fundamental message of Christianity that colors every other message of the Gospel. The "us" in that statement is taken by Catholics to mean all human beings, everywhere, for all time!

A few weeks ago, one of our preachers remarked that The admonition of Jesus to "Strive to enter through the narrow gate," implies that "Not everybody goes to heaven." I was reminded of my 7th grade teacher, whom I shall call Sister Mary Martin, RSM, who had posted at the front of her classroom the expression, "Someday I will be somewhere for all eternity." She estimated that about 4% of the "people in this room" would "end up in hell." This filled my seventh grade psyche with dread that still occasionally interrupts my sleep with nightmares of "going to hell." Privately, we students suspected that one of them would be Sister Martin herself, because she knew so much about hell that we considered it likely that she had been born and raised there, and considered it her home!

I think what our preacher meant was that "Probably not everybody goes to heaven," because there are some really BAD people on this planet walking around loose! Hypocrites! Multiply convicted criminals! Wife cheating adulterers! Race-baiting, tax cheating, investor swindling, worker shafting, dictator loving, pathologically lying, attorneys general bribing, philandering narcissistic serial con artist bribe soliciting oath breaking bullies who love money and hate their enemies!

Actually, closer examination of the Gospel story reveals a tactic Jesus often employed to illustrate a point by not answering the question. (Luke 13:23) I have written commentaries about some of the others.

Tribute to Caesar (Matthew 22:17. Mark 12:14, Luke 20:22) (The difference between Caesar and God)

What shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25) (The Good Samaritan), and Luke 10:29. (Who is my neighbor?)

And (Casting the first stone) (John 8:7)

In each case, it appears to me that the answer implies an "IF/THEN" conditional relationship, where an outcome (the "THEN" part) depends on a condition being met (the "IF" part). "IF something belongs to Caesar, THEN give it to him." "IF you know the what the Scripture prescribes for eternal life, THEN tell me and do it." "IF somebody treats you like a neighbor, THEN he meets the Scriptural criterion." "IF somebody is without sin, THEN he is allowed to cast the first stone."

In the context of Luke 13:25, IF the master has locked the door and you come late, THEN you won't be able to get in.

What Jesus did NOT say is that there necessarily are, have been, or will be any like that. Maybe he thought the people who asked the question didn't really need to know, and should focus on minding their own business!

Matthew 25:31-46 is often cited as an argument that many people will be thrown into "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," but here again, the conditional situation is implied. "IF you didn't feed me, or IF you didn't give me anything to drink, or IF you didn't take me in, or IF you didn't give me anything to wear, or IF you didn't visit me while sick or in prison, THEN. you will be thrown into "everlasting fire."

There is an additional idea here that I think is often missed. The "everlasting fire" is "prepared for the devil and his angels," not necessarily for people. The point here is that IF you ally yourself with the rebellious angels, THEN you will suffer the same fate. But the punishment was specifically prepared for them, not necessarily for you!

This implication is also present on the teaching about hell (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] paragraph 1033). IF souls die in a state of mortal sin, THEN they descend into hell and suffer the punishments thereof. A "state of mortal sin" is a really bad state to be in! It is that of an unrepentant really great sinner, through his own most grievous fault!

The Catholic Church's teaching on purgatory (CCC paragraph 1030) contains a similar implication: IF any die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, THEN after death they undergo purification, "so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven."

The Baptist Confession of Faith expresses an apparently similar, but subtly different belief, that after death "The souls of the righteous being then made perfect in holiness are received into paradise..." The meaning here appears that there are "righteous," who will be saved (purified) no matter of what (if anything) they die guilty, by God's prior intent, and others will be eternally damned by the same decree. The Confessions do not quote Revelation 21:27 for this view, which seems to me to be its strongest argument, that there is a "Lamb's book of life" that contains a list of only those predestined to be saved, regardless of what they have done in life. Anyone not on the list is headed the other way, no matter what he ever tries to do about it!

The catholic view of Revelation 21:27 is that one must be perfect to enter heaven, but mortally guilty to be cast into hell. The logical implication for us is that those who are only slightly guilty must undergo a period of purification in a place or state where that occurs, before ending up at the final destination of heaven, because they are still not perfect. We agree with Baptists that there are only two final destinations for each soul: heaven or hell,

Where we disagree is that there is a third temporary destination, purgatory, in which the "purification process" about which we both seem to agree, takes place. We Catholics call this "temporal punishment," and those there "poor souls." They are also "holy souls," because they are guaranteed salvation after their sojourn in purgatory. We spend a lot of time and energy praying for these "holy souls" that their period of purification will quickly end and that they will be admitted into paradise to experience the glory of God. The Baptists point out that "besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none" But "Scripture acknowledgeth none" about all sorts of things: the ancestry of the Blessed Mother, the existence of North America, the planet Neptune, etc. We don't think absence of Scriptural reference is necessarily proof of non-existence, no offense intended.

For those who feel that this appears to contradict the assertion that baptism is "necessary for salvation" (CCC paragraph 1257). The position taken by many non-Catholics, and some Catholics like my St. Ambrose Academy religion teacher, the allegedly reverend Robert "Bucky" Walters, is that unbaptized infants go straight to hell! We all know emphatically that is NOT the teaching of the Church he represented. We assert that: "As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them." (CCC paragraph 1261) It appears to me that this includes the unborn, who are certainly "children." (I find the fact that the unborn are surrounded their entire life by water, the matter of the sacrament of baptism, to be interesting, but not particularly significant.)

Our official position, for those who do not know, is that, "the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery." (CCC paragraph 1260)

Scripture, and the early Church, appear to regard death as an event. Before death you are alive, and after death you are dead. Recent church practice, however, appears to allow for death being a process, before which one is doing things, like breathing, and afterward is putrefying somewhere. There seems to be a period between the two conditions in which an individual is only "partially dead," such as when the heart stops beating, but before cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) gets it going again.

I have a friend who claims that his heart stopped while undergoing surgery and that he watched from above as the staff used an external defibrillator to revive him. He claims that he found himself suddenly back in his body again. Was he dead for a while and then brought back? I don't know; I wasn't there!

Father Michael Kerper, writing for the Diocese of Manchester in New Hampshire claims that "A priest may administer the sacraments "conditionally." This may happen if the person has just expired or if there is any doubt that the person is truly dead. In cases like this, the priest will administer the sacraments with the assumption that the person is still alive. Most priests will do this if the apparent death happened within 20 or 30 minutes" Our preacher is probably more familiar than I with these concerns, since he is, or used to be, a fire chief, in the business of resuscitating supposedly "dead people." He no doubt has a prescribed protocol for administering or withholding the Last Rites of the Church from possibly, but not definitely still living people who are in the process of dying.

Given the IF/THEN situations that Jesus described, the belief that baptism is necessary for salvation but unbaptized infants and others can still be saved, and assuming that death may not be an instantaneous event, I believe that both Scripture and Church practice implicitly hold out the hope that even great sinners can repent before "death" terminates that opportunity forever. I submit the fact that, while the Church recognizes thousands and thousands of canonized saints who have been saved and are "in heaven" now and for all eternity, she does not claim that anybody today is actually "in hell!" Not a single soul, including some truly infamous Christians.

"In suffering and death his [Jesus'] humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men." (CCC paragraph 609)

In my study of Islam, I ran across a statement of belief, the source of which I cannot now remember, that "God's infinite mercy is ten times as great as His infinite justice." I think that is right.

So, while I firmly support the necessity of "entering through the narrow gate," of confessing and repenting for sin, and for seeking the grace and healing of the sacraments, especially Reconciliation, I think it may be too soon to claim positively that "Not everybody gets into heaven." That is certainly a good rule of thumb, to avoid the sin of presumption, but I think there is room to believe otherwise and still be a good Catholic, for the foregoing reasons.

I am sensitive to this philosophy because my father was a Lutheran, for whom sinning was essentially a learning experience, to be made right, if possible. He was saved by FAITH, He was a good and holy man, and I cannot believe that a just and loving God would hold him in contempt for living his life in a way that he sincerely believed was his sacred moral responsibility to his Lord. You can read about him at here, the eulogy I gave at a mass said for him after he died.

My state in life brings me into contact with all kinds of people, many, perhaps most, of whom are working out their salvation as I am, trying to do what they believe is right, avoiding what they believe is wrong, and getting up and starting again when they are knocked down. We used to claim that only Catholics in good standing could be saved, because "Outside the Church" there is no Salvation."

Chapter II, "On the People of God" of The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, promulgated on November 21, 1964 by Pope Paul VI, begins at paragraph 9 of the Constitution with the statement that "At all times and in every race God has given welcome to whosoever fears Him and does what is right." Paragraph 16 expounds on this assertion by listing several religions other than Catholicism that are associated in various ways with the teaching, belief and practice of the Catholic Church. Perhaps a more appropriate statement of doctrine is that "whosoever fears Him and does what is right," regardless of how he perceives those terms, is a member of the People of God, the Church, "outside of which there is no salvation," because there may not be anybody outside.

I find the idea the that some people are destined for damnation to be incompatible with my concept of divine mercy and justice, as if Adam's sin were somehow more powerful and encompassing than Christ's redemption. We Catholics take the opposite view, that God's gift of eternal life is, and has always been available to all men, that is, all human beings, as it was initially to all the angels, without exception. (Matthew 16:27, Luke 16:16 John 1:7, 9; 5:23-24; 6:45, 51; 7:17; 9:31; 10:9; 12:26, 32, 47, Acts 10:34; 17:30; 17:31; 22:15, Romans 2:6, 10; 5:18; 12:3, I Corinthians 3:5, 8, 10, 13, 14, 18; 4:5; 7:17, 24; 11:3; 12:7, 11; 15:23, II Corinthians 8:3; 9:7, Galatians 6:4, 5, Ephesians 3:8, c; 6:8, Colossians 1:28, I Thessalonians 3:12; 5:14, 15, I Timothy 2:1, 4; 4:10, II Timothy 2:24, Titus 2:11; 3:2, Hebrews 2:9; 12:14, James 1:5, I Peter 1:17; 2:17; 3:15; 4:10, I John 2:1; 3:3, Revelation 3:20; 20:13; 22:2)

Catholics recognize, of course, that the term "elect" or "election" is used 28 times in the King James Bible, possibly because the translators intended their Bible to say what they wanted, rather than what was implied by earlier documents. We consider that in all cases in which it can be taken to indicate a prior predestination by God, it can also be understood to mean those whom God in His unlimited knowledge of past, present and future, knows will be saved through freely cooperating with His saving grace, which is available to all mankind, without exception. He knows who will freely reject those graces that are utterly sufficient for their salvation for which they are created, loved, and blessed. (I Timothy 2:4) To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore He establishes his eternal plan of salvation, He includes in it each person's free acceptance or rejection of His grace.

We do not pretend to understand, with the limitations of our human intellect, how God can elect who will be saved, in the sense of knowing beforehand what their free choice will be, and yet not are not predestined by Him for that end. Catholics believe absolutely that the saving power of the merits of Jesus is infinitely greater than the condemning power of the sin of Adam. We maintain that salvation through Jesus Christ is at least available to all those tainted by the rebellion of Adam unless, like Adam, they make a positive, deliberate, conscious choice to reject it.

I personally believe that our unshakable belief in the unlimited saving power of Christ's Redemption, and in the equally unlimited love and mercy of God, holds out the possibility that everyone, without exception, eventually may be admitted to the glory of eternal salvation. Each of us accomplishes this by our cooperation with the grace given us through the merits of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which are absolutely sufficient. Regardless of our prior sinfulness, we might do that at the moment of our death and then rid ourselves of the last unclean vestiges of residual love of our (previously forgiven) sins in purgatory, no matter how long it takes.

Of course, the best course of action is to stay on the straight path and narrow way ("the path He has chosen" for Muslims), to try to live a blameless life of virtue and holiness, and to immediately repent if we fail. Catholics have a Sacrament of Reconciliation to help us do that.

I think that the parables of the Good Shepherd and the Lost Coin are direct refutation of the idea that any individuals are "left to act in their sin to their just condemnation," as if the Savior of the whole world had come to call only the righteous, and not sinners, to repentance! The Divine Physician came for the sick, not the healthy. Indeed, what proves God's love for sinners is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!

What do you think?

John Lindorfer