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| Remorso de Judas (1880) by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior |
IS JUDAS IN HELL?
“Is he in Heaven? Is he in Hell? That
damned elusive Pimpernel.”
—Baroness Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
ANSWER: WE DON’T KNOW
Ask a Franciscan: What Really Happened to Judas?
franciscanmedia.org
The Despair and Fate of Judas
Q. What happened to Judas? Is Judas in hell? He despaired. What happens
when other people fall into despair and kill themselves?
A. Concerning the fate of Judas, the following statement appears in
Basics of the Faith: A Catholic Catechism, by Alan Schreck (Servant Books): “The
Catholic Church teaches that we cannot judge or determine whether any
particular person has been condemned to hell, even Hitler or Judas Iscariot.
The mercy of God is such that a person can repent even at the point of death
and be saved.”
A Scripture professor reminds me that Scripture does not explicitly use
the word despair concerning Judas. And other than to define it, not many
manuals or catechisms speak much of despair. An American Catechism, edited by
George Dyer (Seabury Press), however, says of despair that it seems to be: “Besides
a distortion of faith itself, more a psychological and emotional crisis,
perhaps generated by past sins, than a mortal sin in itself. Obviously despair
is a grievous matter.
“But it is very difficult to conceive how a person who despairs could
fulfill in this act the other conditions requisite for mortal sin. It is
particularly difficult to believe that a person who despairs does so with full
consent of the will or in a radically free act.”
—Pat McCloskey, OFM, “What Really Happened to Judas?” Ask a Franciscan
Ask the Register: is Judas in hell?
Southern Nebraska Register
Diocesan News
Friday, 18 May 2018
Q. Recently, the readings at Mass indicated that Judas was replaced by
Matthias after taking his own life. Does the Church teach that Judas is in
hell?
A. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles describes the election of
Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas as an Apostle. The choosing of
Matthias as one who would replace Judas tells us something of the way that
Christ designed the Church.
The Apostle Peter, the first pope, leads these proceedings, and
determines that the replacement of Judas should be narrowed down to two men:
Joseph (called Barsabbas) and Matthias. And Matthias is chosen. Peter takes on
the leadership role in this election, which is indicative of the particular
authority given to his Office by Christ. Jesus is never quoted in the Gospels
about how the replacement of the Apostles would occur. Nevertheless, we have
biblical witness of this succession happening in the early Church.
Judas is a tragic figure. He was given great authority by God to share
in a ministerial way in the three-fold mission of Christ as priest, prophet and
king. However, the fact that he ended his own life reveals to us that even
those who are given great authority must rely upon the grace of God to
persevere to the end.
Judas’ greatest mistake was not his betrayal—even though that was a
grave sin—but his despair, in not accepting God’s Divine Mercy. The Apostle
Peter also betrayed Jesus by denying that he even knew Jesus, but he was
repentant and sought the Lord’s forgiveness. Judas’ suicide and Peter’s return
to grace remind us that we should never despair of God’s mercy.
While the Church canonizes saints, and in doing so declares them to
have entered into eternal glory, the Church does not declare someone to be in
hell. This is not to say that there is
no such thing as hell.
Eternal damnation is the result of the free, human choices of
individuals here in this world. When people commit mortal sins, they cut
themselves off from God—it’s their choice, and not God’s choice.
St. Paul in his letter to Timothy states that God “wills everyone to be
saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). A mortal sin is
committed if it is a serious matter, done with sufficient reflection about the
seriousness of the sin, and executed through the free consent of the will. If
people die in this state of mortal (or deadly) sin, they have chosen to be
apart from God for all eternity.
We can say with certainty that Judas’ suicide is an objectively evil
action and a serious sin. Suicide is the taking of innocent life, and it goes
against the dignity of human life. It has many evil effects, including the
heartbreak inflicted upon the loved ones of the deceased.
However, we never know the subjective parts of the morality of an act.
We don’t know what was in the intellect and will of Judas when he took his own
life, and so he can’t be “declared” to be in hell. Thus, the Church does not
formally “declare” an individual to be in hell.
—“Ask the Register: is Judas in hell?” Southern Nebraska Register (May 18, 2018)
Cache (text only):
Theologically, the accurate answer to this question is, “We don’t know.”
It is interesting therefore to consider arguments that conclude Judas is indeed
in Hell.
ANSWER: YES
The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Rev. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap.
catholicculture.org
…Do Scriptures, Tradition, and the Magisterium clearly teach anything
about the end of Judas and the possibility of universal salvation? Let’s
investigate.
The Gospel of John 17:12
The certainty of Judas’s damnation does not primarily rest on Matthew’s
statement: “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Mt.
26:24). Rather, as St. Augustine demonstrated in his Homilies on the Gospel of
John, it is John 17:12 that indicates Judas’s eternal punishment:
The Son therefore goes on to say: “Those that thou gavest me, I have
kept, and none of them is lost, but [i.e., except] the son of perdition, that
the Scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn. 17:12). The betrayer of Christ was
called the son of perdition, as foreordained to perdition, according to the
Scripture, where it is specially prophesied of him in the 109th psalm” [in some
Bibles 108th Psalm] (Tractate cvii, No.7, ch. xvii. 9-13).
When Jesus stated, “that the Scripture might be fulfilled,” He was
referring to Psalm 109. St. Peter applied Psalm 109:8 to Judas, when he said: “It
is written in the Book of Psalms, ... ‘May another take his office’” (Acts
1:20). By applying Psalm 109:8 to Judas, Peter also pointed to Judas’s
damnation, because Psalm 109:6-7 says of the very same person mentioned there: “Set
thou the sinner over him: and may the devil stand at his right hand. When he is
judged, may he go out condemned and may his prayer be turned to sin.” Verse 7, “May
his prayer be turned to sin,” or “May his plea be in vain,” foretells Judas’s
(the betrayer’s) final impenitence. So, John 17:12, Acts 1:20, and Psalm 109:7
together indicate the betrayer’s eternal damnation.
St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, also maintained that Judas suffered
eternal punishment because he died without final repentance and forgiveness.
St. Ambrose in his Concerning Repentance said: “For I suppose that even Judas
might through the exceeding mercy of God not have been shut out from forgiveness,
if he had expressed his sorrow not before the Jews but before Christ.” St.
Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica stated: “Thus; as men are ordained to
eternal life through the providence of God, it likewise is part of that
providence to permit some to fall away from that end; this is called
reprobation” (1a, q. 23, art. 3). And in De Veritate St. Thomas said: “Now, in
the case of Judas, the abuse of grace was the reason for his reprobation, since
he was made reprobate because he died without grace” (vol. 1, q. 6, art. 2).
St. Thomas certainly judged that “Judas was reprobated.” (“Reprobated” means
rejected by God and beyond hope of salvation.)
Again, according to St Catherine of Siena, God the Father pointed out
Judas’s eternal punishment when He explained to Catherine the meaning of the
sin against the Holy Spirit. God said:
This is that sin which is never forgiven, now or ever: the refusal, the
scorning, of my mercy. For this offends me more than all the other sins they
have committed. So the despair of Judas displeased me more and was a greater
insult to my Son than his betrayal had been. Therefore, such as these are
reproved for this false judgment of considering their sin to be greater than my
mercy, and for this they are punished with the demons and tortured eternally
with them (No. 37, emphasis added).
Thus, Judas perished not simply because of his part in Jesus’ trial,
but because of a final act of “despair” or “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”
(Mk. 3:29) at the “moment of death,” says St. Catherine.
Finally, other saints taught that Judas’s perdition was certain. For
example, the great scholar St. Thomas More in The Sadness of Christ said: “The
place of Scripture which predicts that Judas would perish is in Psalm 109,
where the psalmist prophesies in the form of a prayer: ‘May his days be few,
and may another take over his ministry.’” More explained:
the fact that this prophetic utterance applies to Judas was suggested
by Christ [Jn. 17:12], was made clear by Judas’s suicide, was afterwards made
quite explicit by Peter [Acts 1:20], and was fulfilled by all the apostles when
Mathias was chosen by lot to take his place [Acts 1:26] and thus another took
over his ministry.... He [Christ] has spoken: “Father, I have guarded those
whom you gave to me, and none of them has perished except the son of perdition.”
I think it worthwhile to consider here for a moment how strongly Christ
foretold in these words the contrast between the end of Judas and the end of
the rest, the ruination of the traitor Judas and the success of the others. For
He asserts each future outcome with such certainty that He announces them not
as future happenings but as events that have already definitely taken place....
St Thomas More referred to Judas’s act as one of “refusing to be saved.”
He also stated: “Infallibly certain about the fate of the traitor, Christ
expresses his future ruin with such certainty that He asserts it as if it had
already come to pass.”
The Gospel of Luke 13:23-24
A second scriptural passage that abolishes the possibility of universal
salvation, and with it Balthasar’s hope that all men be saved, is Luke
13:23-24. Luke states: “But someone said to him, ‘Lord, are only a few to be
saved?’ But he said to them, ‘Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I
tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able’” (Lk. 13:23-24). Now, “many
... will not be able ... to enter” means that “many” will not be saved.
Jesus’ words in Luke 13:23-24 cannot be false. Pius X “condemned” the
statement that “Divine inspiration does not so extend to all Sacred Scripture,
that it fortifies each and every part of it against all error.” (Enchiridion
Symbolorum [Denzinger] 30th edition, Nos. 2011, 2065 [a]. Texts from this
standard work will be cited as Denz.) And the Second Vatican Council states
that “the books of Scripture” “teach” the “truth” of God “without error” (Dei
Verbum, No. 11). Thus, there is divine, infallible, or absolute certainty that
many will not enter the Kingdom of God.
Balthasar in Dare We Hope admitted that St. Augustine’s belief that
many go to Hell was clearly held by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, such
as “Gregory the Great ... Anselm, Bonaventure, and Thomas [Aquinas],” and by
Church scholars such as the Venerable Cardinal Newman. Balthasar blamed St.
Augustine for misleading the Church about the “numerous inhabitants” of Hell.
But in fact it was Jesus, not Augustine, who first said that “many” would be
lost (Lk. 13:23-24). Also, Jude 1:7 says that, “Sodom and Gomorrah ... have
been made an example, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.” The Council
of Quiersy in 853 stated that, “not all will be saved” (Denz. No. 318); the
Third Council of Valence in 855 referred to those “who from the beginning of
the world even up to the passion of our Lord, have died in their wickedness and
have been punished by eternal damnation” (Denz. No. 323); and Pius II in 1459
even condemned the opinion “That all Christians are to be saved” (Denz. No.
717[b]).
Thus, even though the Magisterium has not yet condemned Judas by name
or the mere “hope” for universal salvation, the Church is not in doubt about
this matter. Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium certify that Judas and
others have perished. Consequently, Balthasar’s “hope” for universal salvation
would necessarily be a “hope” that contradicts Scriptures, Tradition, and
Magisterium.
—Rev. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap., “The Inflated
Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Catholic
Culture, April 19, 2018
The time of mercy is now. After we die, there is no longer any mercy,
only the perfect justice of God.
Praised are you, my Lord, for our
sister bodily Death,
from whom no living man can
escape.
Woe on those who will die in
mortal sin!
Blessed are they who will be
found in your most holy will,
for the second death will not
harm them.
—Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle
of the Creatures
Public domain image
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Gonzalinho
Saint Catherine of Siena in “A Treatise of Discretion” relates the following private revelation to her from God the Father.
ReplyDelete“The despair of Judas displeased Me more, and was more grave to My Son than was his betrayal of Him. So that they are reproved of this false judgment, which is to have held their sin to be greater than My mercy, and, on that account, are they punished with the devils, and eternally tortured with them.”
Gonzalinho
“When the Church approves private revelations, she declares only that there is nothing in them contrary faith or good morals, and that they may be read without danger or even with profit; no obligation is thereby imposed on the faithful to believe them.”
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—“Private Revelations,” Catholic Encyclopedia
Gonzalinho