THE VAST majority of people in our world have retained some kind of conviction, however shadowy, in the immortality of the soul. “Well, wherever he is now, I’m sure he’s happy,” people might say at a funeral (or a “celebration of life,” as they call funerals today). This conviction is the legacy of centuries of a Christian social order that no longer exists. Very few Westerners believe in reincarnation or total oblivion.

However, most also believe that it is only just and fair that someone who was basically decent should be happy in the afterlife. By basically decent, I mean someone who fulfilled many duties to family and friends, never broke the law, had minor defects but was good-hearted. It greatly offends modern sensibilities to think that this kind of niceness and decency is not rewarded by God or that it is even punished.

The problem with this view is it’s not what God has revealed about eternity. It substitutes human judgment for divine reason.

It also doesn’t make sense.

Heaven is not earth. It is a supernatural state. In order to pass from the natural into the supernatural sphere, we must acquire supernatural virtues. In order to qualify for the Olympic Games, to use one analogy, one must meet certain athletic qualifications. The belief that someone can get to Heaven because they have been generally decent and good is similar to the belief that someone who is a great software engineer should be able to compete in the decathlon.

To take another analogy, in order to live on Mars, we need oxygen. In order to live in heaven, we need spiritual oxygen, which is a supernatural gift — a gift from God which we can refuse or accept — and involves not just works but faith.

As Thomas Nelson writes in his introduction to Liberalism Is a Sin, by Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany:

Heaven … is a supernatural state, an end or objective above man and beyond his ability to again, a goal which man on his own cannot achieve. It is the presence of God. It is the eternal vision of God and an eternal sharing in the life of God Himself. But this is not something within the nature of man to achieve or possess. It is rather a special, supernatural gift from God, an unwarranted (on man’s part), gratuitous GIFT OF GOD. We do not deserve it. We can only attain it but the special, supernatural assistance which God has given us through the knowledge of the “faith of God” (Rom. 3:3) and the help of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, the divinely revealed religion. These Sacraments were given by Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, to the Church and are supernatural means to give us supernatural assistance to save our souls and attain Heaven, a supernatural end.

The sad fact is, we can be pretty sure that many “good people” are in hell. Of course, we never know who those people are and we certainly should never presume to conclude that anyone we meet or know will meet this end. Unfortunately, when these common sense points are made the person making them is often accused of somehow relishing the idea that good people are damned. This is a monstrous accusation. It is a form of rhetorical aggression, meant to deflect attention away from the meat of the matter. As Frank Sheed wrote in his book Theology and Sanity:

The gulf between non-living and living is not so great as the gulf between natural life and supernatural. The purpose of this supernatural life … is that in Heaven we may see God direct. But we do not wait until then to receive the supernatural life. It is given to man in this life. Everything else is incidental, on the fringe, of no permanent importance. When we come to die we are judged by the answer to one question — whether we have the supernatural life in our soul. If we have, then go to Heaven we shall surely go, for the supernatural life is the power to live the life of Heaven. If we have not, then we cannot possibly go to Heaven, for we could not live there when we got there. Grasp clearly that the supernatural life, which we call also sanctifying grace, is not simply a passport to Heave: it is the power to live in Heaven. (Fulton Sheed, Theology and Sanity; Sheed and Ward, New York, 1946; p.151)

— Comments —

Margaret writes:

Is this not the purpose of purgatory?

Laura writes:

No.

Purgatory is where souls are cleansed of venial sins. A sin against the faith is the greatest of sins, not a venial sin. Those without divine faith can never enjoy the vision of God.

“He who will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” Matt, xviii. 17.

Sophia writes:

Another simple way of explaining why “decency” (whatever that really means) doesn’t get one heaven is that it would leave the question of why God put us here in the first place, taking into account the Fall or not, with a very boring answer. Why would He not just send us all to heaven in the first place? I suppose people who believe in mere decency believe that the murderers and rapists are being weeded out, but we would have to insist that they consider the eternal God more seriously. What a mundane appreciation of existence people have. The answer “to know, love, and serve” Him paints an entirely different picture.

I politely object to your use of “good.” Good people don’t go to hell, because goodness is necessarily of God. The atheists are wrong: One cannot be good without God, etymologically- and ontologically-speaking. We should not perpetuate the language of religious indifferentism by conceding that someone worldly was a “good person.” Just as with existence, we have to take language seriously. “Goodness” and “[the] good” are especially important words.

Laura writes:

No one is without goodness. But, yes, it’s arguably not the right word. I meant good, by the world’s definition of good.

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