TYLER, Texas (ChurchMilitant.com) – Amid the doctrinal confusion surrounding the ongoing Vatican Synod on Synodality, an American bishop is setting straight the Catholic record about salvation.
Painting of Hell
In his sixth pastoral letter, dated Oct. 10, Bp. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, is refuting a common theological error — prevalent even among Catholics — that God will not damn anybody to Hell.
The bishop notes, “The belief that all men and women will be saved regardless of how they live their lives … is false and is dangerous.” He adds that it “contradicts what Jesus tells us repeatedly in the Gospel.”
One of the dangers, according to Bp. Strickland, is the temptation to look at sin from “a human perspective rather than from the divine perspective.” As a result, “We make excuses for our sins, explaining that the things we do are ‘not all that bad.'”
Another temptation, he says, is to assume “a loving and merciful God will overlook our disobedience and failures even if we do not seek forgiveness because He is infinitely merciful.” This line of thinking progresses to what Strickland teaches is “the error of universalism” — the assumption that salvation will ultimately be offered to all people simply because God is infinitely merciful.
The error of universalism leads to something “very dangerous,” he says. It begs the question: “What then is the point of conversion of heart to Jesus Christ? Why bother following Christ at all?” “This is extremely dangerous,” he says, “as it prevents us from seeing the need for true and authentic repentance.”
Strickland emphasizes that conversion “lies at the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
The bishop cites the lives of several of the Church’s greatest saints to underscore his point:
St. Augustine, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Theresa Benedicta, to name only a few. Their stories involve a dramatic turn from sin and a clear choice to be forever changed and to follow Jesus Christ. The drama of their moments of conversion [is] then followed by a lifetime of turning more fully to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and more completely away from sin.
Strickland also devotes much of his letter to teaching how to achieve salvation through true repentance. “How do we move into the joy and the hope, as well as the freedom, that comes from true repentance and turning to Christ?” he asks. He then explains,
[i]n the simplest of terms, the answer to how we go about this is to live out our Catholic faith in Word and Sacrament. The Word of God contained in the Sacred Scriptures nurtures us throughout this journey and points us always to truth; and the sacraments — instituted by Christ Himself — offer us encounters with God’s grace that strengthen us along the way, changing us from sinner to saved.
A week ago, on Oct. 3, Bp. Strickland issued another letter in which he spoke of the dangers that have befallen both society and the Church as a result of changing sexual mores.
“The so-called sexual revolution that blossomed in the 1960s has overtaken human society in devastating ways,” he wrote, adding,
With a movement toward sexual expression no longer confined to marriage, many greeted it as a doorway to unfettered freedom but what freedom actually looked like was epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, tens of millions of abortions, rampant pornography, increase in rape and child abuse, [and] devastating effects on family and marriage.
For many readers, Strickland’s most recent letter refuting the errors of universalism will evoke the 2019 controversy surrounding Bp. Robert Barron’s response to the question of who will be saved and who will be damned. At the time, Barron waffled:
The official answer of the Church is that we don’t know. We are clearly warned about the real possibility of damnation. We do indeed know that there are many in heaven, for the saints are formally declared to be so. But there are no anti-saints in the Church; there is no one whom the Church has formally declared to be a denizen of Hell.
Therefore, without succumbing for a moment to anything-goes presumption, we are permitted to hope that all people might be saved.
Critics continue to accuse Barron of “staking out a middle ground” and adopting a “quasi-universalist” view.
Strickland ends his most recent missive by encouraging the faithful and directing them toward salvation as Jesus directed Thomas in the Scriptures.
“As we face the challenges in the world and the Church today — and in particular with the confusion of the Synod on Synodality raging even as I write this,” he says, “let us be reminded that there is only one way to eternal life.” Strickland quotes the Scriptures: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'”