Can evil people repent?

[John Lamb]

A Catholic family who remain married, lost two sons to the war as heros, their daughter to the convent and grow old and stayed happily married with no grandchildren to console them as a result of their sacrifices.

In JUSTICE alone, such people merit Heaven if God is good.

If the parents and their sons all died with hatred of "the enemy" (Germans) in their hearts, do you think they'd go to heaven or hell?

[Greg]

But why assume either way?  Why not just say that it is unlikely but we don't know for sure?

For exactly the same reason that we tell Daniel NOT, under any circumstances, to buy lottery tickets.

Because the chances of winning the lottery are vanishingly small.  They "tend to zero" in mathematical speak.

People who buy lottery tickets are idiots.  There is a vanishingly small probability that Daniel could win the lottery and spend the money to become a priest.  There is a 99.99999% probability that he will both piss his money away AND adopt a philosophy of superstition and fatalism that will do him absolutely no good and never allow him to mature.  (He is already in his 30s)

People who think it is "unlikely" but not vanishingly small, buy lottery tickets.

People who understand the chances of RBG being saved tend to zero, are not perverse enough to pray for her.  People who believe she has ANY chance of being saved are going to tend to excuse their own sins and those of those around them that are less serious that RBG's sins.   This is human nature.

We don't call a vacuum, a "region of space where a few hydrogen atoms are floating around".  We call it a vacuum and the vanishingly small amount of atoms in that space are ignored, because they serve no useful purpose.

[Greg]

A Catholic family who remain married, lost two sons to the war as heros, their daughter to the convent and grow old and stayed happily married with no grandchildren to console them as a result of their sacrifices.

In JUSTICE alone, such people merit Heaven if God is good.

If the parents and their sons all died with hatred of "the enemy" (Germans) in their hearts, do you think they'd go to heaven or hell?

Heaven.  It is not mortally sinful to hate the country who destroyed your family.

Besides you are assuming their sin.

We don't have to assume RBG's.  She did it and she was PROUD of it.

[Jayne]

In JUSTICE alone, such people merit Heaven if God is good.

This is not Catholic teaching.  We believe that in justice alone, nobody merits Heaven.  Even the Blessed Virgin Mary is redeemed through the merits of her Son.

Faith is expressed through works, so they are important, but they are never enough to save us.  Everyone who is saved, even the greatest Saints in Heaven, is saved by the mercy of God.

[Greg]

This family visibly had faith, hope and charity.

So in justice alone they merit Heaven.

Our Lady did not need God's mercy.

[Jayne]

This argument derailing the Ginsburg death thread was just so tiresome. We get it, some of you are extremely holy and pious, just let the rest of us have 5 pages of being happy that witch is finally gone.

You should be grateful that I moved the derailment to a new thread then.   

For the record, I do not think there is anything wrong with being happy that her evil deeds have ended and that Trump may replace her with a pro-Life Justice.  That was my reaction to hearing the news.

[The Theosist]

And there's a budding psychopath in each of us.

Psychopaths love it when people say that.

Telling small lies to get ahead, not giving alms to a beggar because you think he must have done something to deserve to be in that position, taking pleasure in the pain or the downfall of an enemy, being envious of a more esteemed person or even a brother, being unhappy that someone has more wealth, strength, or beauty than you, lashing out impatiently at someone who inconveniences you, your first thought when hearing of a victimised person being glad that it's not you... This is in all of us, and psychopaths are just people who have cultivated this aspect of humanity to a high degree. If we weren't budding psychopaths, those action films where human beings are casually slaughtered with guns every other minute would not exist; instead, they are immensely popular.

"But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man."

No. That's not what a psychopath is, and no, none of those traits are intrinsically psychopathic or imply budding psychopathy. Neither does enjoying watching a heroic character dish out death to villains in a struggle. You're overreaching. Sit down.

[Greg]

For the record, I do not think there is anything wrong with being happy that her evil deeds have ended and that Trump may replace her with a pro-Life Justice.  That was my reaction to hearing the news.

For the record, you did not think there was anything wrong with using the wrong pronoun for a person out of an excessive desire to be "charitable". That was your instinctive reaction to Impy.

By doing so, you demoralised the Fisheaters forum and caused this forum to start up.  We are nearly all ex-Fisheaters members.

You appear to have learned nothing.

Jumping into these extreme cases to make a point or show how clever you are or how other people don't have your deep well of charity or sophisticated and nuanced understanding of God's mercy, merely leads to their demoralisation.

You are the theological equivalent of the National Lottery advertising jingle, It could be you.  Stress the Scottish car mechanic who wins $200,000,000 and becomes a Lord of the Manor in a Scottish castle and not the millions of poor people who don't pay their electric bill or the payday lenders who are chasing them and the 80% of the money spent building sport facilities for the middle classes.

"Could" is a dishonest word under these circumstances and does NOTHING to help ordinary people.  It should be reserved for theological experts.  Vanishingly small for ordinary folk is from a billion people like RBG, one is saved every 100 years.

Before you came along, 100% of Trads I had ever met since 1978, would think that no Traditional Catholic ever would use the wrong pronoun for a person under any circumstances ever.  After experiencing that, I would want to vet anyone who taught my children their Catechism even if they had been a Traditionalist for 20+ years.  Before experiencing that I would have trusted that a solid Traditional Catholic could not possibly be that perverse.  Now I am demoralised and distrust people because I have witnessed you (and a few others since) espouse the cause of Traditionalism and then do utterly perverse things.

[Jayne]

But why assume either way?  Why not just say that it is unlikely but we don't know for sure?

For exactly the same reason that we tell Daniel NOT, under any circumstances, to buy lottery tickets.

Because the chances of winning the lottery are vanishingly small.  They "tend to zero" in mathematical speak.

It's an asymptote, in even more mathematical speak. 

This argument makes sense to me.  For practical purposes, we could think of it as if such people always go to hell.  But the theoretical possibility of salvation does exist and has important theological implications.

[The Theosist]

In JUSTICE alone, such people merit Heaven if God is good.

This is not Catholic teaching.  We believe that in justice alone, nobody merits Heaven.  Even the Blessed Virgin Mary is redeemed through the merits of her Son.

Faith is expressed through works, so they are important, but they are never enough to save us.  Everyone who is saved, even the greatest Saints in Heaven, is saved by the mercy of God.

He's undeniably Pelagian. "Merit Heaven?

[Jayne]

This family visibly had faith, hope and charity.

So in justice alone they merit Heaven.

Our Lady did not need God's mercy.

You are denying the well-established Catholic teaching that nobody merits Heaven by justice alone.

God, in His mercy, preserved Our Lady from Original Sin that she might more fittingly bear Our Saviour.  She is redeemed by His merits.

For the record, you did not think there was anything wrong with using the wrong pronoun for a person out of an excessive desire to be "charitable". That was your instinctive reaction to Impy.

You always start talking about this whenever I call you out on saying something theologically indefensible.  Just because I made a mistake about that at first does not mean that you can ignore the clear teaching of the Church.  Ask anyone knowledgeable about Catholicism that you like.  They will tell you that nobody gets saved by justice alone.  This is not controversial.

[Graham]

This family visibly had faith, hope and charity.

So in justice alone they merit Heaven.

Our Lady did not need God's mercy.

You are denying the well-established Catholic teaching that nobody merits Heaven by justice alone.

And what does that matter, if JP2 is in heaven? Not to mention possibly Judas and Stalin? Greg is saying this bs scandalizes him

[Greg]

If our actions don't in anyway effect justice then why have justice?  It is redundant.

Why not simply say "everyone who is saved is saved through God's mercy"?

Justice SURELY must mean that in some circumstances very little mercy or no mercy at all (The BVM) is required to save people.  In other circumstances far more mercy is required because without it Justice alone would condemn them to Hell.

It's up to God how much justice and mercy He dishes out but there must surely be a limit where justice demands that no more mercy is provided.  Just like in Sodom and Gomorrah God had a limit of 10 just men.

There came a point where God said "no more" "10 is my limit".  Compared to the then population of Sodom and Gomorrah 10 just men was a much higher ratio than the chances of RBG making a perfect act of contrition or Daniel winning the lottery.

Ergo - Ruth Bader Ginsburg is burning in Hell and Daniel should not buy lottery tickets.

[Greg]

You always start talking about this whenever I call you out on saying something theologically indefensible. 

Because you always make the same mistake Jayne.

Stop it.

[Jayne]

By doing so, you demoralised the Fisheaters forum and caused this forum to start up.  We are nearly all ex-Fisheaters members.

This forum was planned (by FE members) long before Impygate and started up in late December 2012 a few months before Impy "came out" in spring of 2013.  To a large extent, SD was a reaction to already existing problems on that forum.  Almost everybody on SD at first came from FE because that is where the founders knew each other from. 

In those early months, most SD were members at both forums. With Impygate large numbers of FE members were no longer able to participate there in good conscience, including myself eventually. This probably did lead to an increase in activity here, but it is inaccurate to claim that it caused this forum to start up.