Robert T. O’Gorman

Recent videos and news stories on WSMV-TV and in The Tennessean gave Nashville the views of Father Joe Pat Breen on the existence of hell.

Monday’s Tennessean reported that the Methodist bishop of Tennessee, William T. McAlilly, had prepared a letter for Gov. Bill Haslam protesting the use of the electric chair and capital punishment and subsequently a rally was held at the State Capitol.

Hell and capital punishment have some similarities. One could say hell is religious capital punishment. It would be interesting to see in a poll how popular response to these two issues might correlate. Both are an exercise in ultimate control.

Father Breen’s position on hell is certainly a reversal of about 20 centuries of Christianity’s teaching about hell. For most of that period, churchmen believed that a very small portion of humanity would not go to hell — following the famous dictum that outside the church, there is no salvation.

In the Catholic Church, this position radically shifted at Vatican II. Father Breen’s thinking is very much in line with one of the great theologians from that council: Karl Rahner, who held forth the possibility that no one ever goes to hell, pointing to the omnipotence of the universal salvific will of God, the redemption of all by Christ and our call to hope for salvation.

Pope John Paul II, following the spirit of that council, taught in 1999 that hell is not a place but the state of those who separate themselves deliberately from God, and even went on to say that we have no divine revelation of human beings who have chosen that state of being.

Father Breen’s preaching and ministry is all about freely choosing to be in love with God and not the capital punishment of coercion.

Robert T. O’Gorman is professor emeritus of Loyola University, Chicago, and a parishioner at Christ the King, Nashville.