Pie

Fr dear Fr: Is it all pie in the sky, this preoccupation people have when they die and go before the Pearly Gates, since surely most of us have a jolly good chance to be saved, as Bp Bob says in his mild universalism talks in California, and since God is a good and nice God in the Church of Nice who is kind and merciful to everyone, whose mercy knows no bounds, concur?

There is little doubt that God is a kind and merciful God who is good to people, but the question is other, can he actually and physically save everybody? Certainly in the mild universalism of Bp Bob, cleverly expressed as a subjective hope rather than objective fact, so he does not get into trouble with the Holy Inquisition in faraway places whatever local agents like KJ say about him, it would seem that God not only can save everybody but wills to save everybody. The understanding being in the usual naif Sixties fashion that the individual judgement just involves the soul and his good and kind God. Nice session for nice people with the nice God being nice. Certainly up to the Revelations of Catherine of Sweden in the 1300s this was always believed to be the case and the individual judgement of the individual believer was depicted in music especially as a private session of judgement between the individual and his Good God, no intervening third parties to spoil the happy little party. Catherine and Mozart and the whole Don Giovanni opera changed that.

But with the Revelations of Catherine, based at the Swedish Convent in Rome right next door to the French Embassy, where much opera still takes place, and where my loving dying father and kindly mother and sister also singers and vocalists also met Placido Domingo, it appears that in those experiences, sometimes, for the famous and rich and celebrity and politician and magistrate souls, the dark Lord would demand an audience too when they came up for judgement, and he would put in his penny ha’penny too, often demanding souls that had little spirituality and done no penance or even done no bread and soup atonement in their lives for sins that were crimes, and these were souls who had confessed their sins and had been reconciled to the holy mother Church at the end at the last minute dot com, certainly yes confessed their sins but critically and britically these souls had left no TIME for penance in their lives, but who had done no atonement for the temporal punishment due to their sins, especially grievous sins against economic justice. The dark Lord would often appear and demand that those souls belonged to him - they had had lots of fun, lots of enjoyment, never any crosses minor or major in their lives, no sacrifices, no penance, always out and about partying, no thought for the poor at the gate sort of thing. A sobering picture of Dives and Lazarus.

So with Catherine of Sweden, the third parties of the dark side are now from the 1300s also depicted at the judgement of the individual, even the loving and caring and now saintly Fra Michelangelo is forced to depict the loss of souls too now in his frescoes of the Sistine. So it is not a question of doubting that there is a good God who is merciful and kind, certainly he would love to save everybody, as the clever and cunning Bp Bob puts it so nicely in the Californian Church of the Nice being Nice, but that is not the whole story, since because of the ancient millennial wars between the angels, truces have been called, and there are some souls he would like to but cannot save, in his power, because he does not really know them, mysterious souls, all of their tickets are lying down below with the dark side, who know their man intimately whatever the kind and loving Father feels about them, giving them second chances and the like, so these are the rich and powerful and celebrities and famous who because of scandal to the poor and the weaker brothers and weaker sisters and to the lame have a reserved space with the dark Lord as a matter of overall principle, even though they can still be saved, so as and when or rather if Mary or the Saints otherwise intervene for them at this late stage of judgement - always hope even for the famous. The Prayer of St Catherine is also useful for these occasions. But Catherine is the decisive saint for this materiellen quellen.