Judas is in Hell

Catholic Candle note:  The article below pertains to another scandalous error of the conciliar church.  However, a reader would be mistaken if he assumed that grave conciliar errors somehow mean that we do not have a pope.

Sedevacantism is wrong and is (material or formal) schism.  Catholic Candle is not sedevacantist.  On the contrary, we published a series of articles showing that sedevacantism is false (and also showing that former Pope Benedict is not still the pope).  Read the articles here: https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/faith/against-sedevacantism.html 

Here is what St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church, teaches concerning the need to recognize and respect the authority of a superior – such as the pope – even when he is bad:

Even should the life of any superior be so notoriously wicked as to admit of no excuse or dissimulation, nevertheless, for God’s sake, Who is the source of all power, we are bound to honor such a one, not on account of his personal merits, which are non-existent, but because of the divine ordination and the dignity of his office.[1]

However, even while recognizing the authority of the post-Vatican II popes and our duty to obey them when we are able, we know we must resist the evil they promote and do.  Read more about this principle here: https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/faith/against-sedevacantism.html#section-7

 

Judas is in Hell.
The Conciliar Church says he might be in heaven.

Faithful and informed Catholics know that Judas is in hell.

Our Lord declared that it would have been better for Judas to have never been born.  Here are His words:

The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had not been born.[2]

Our Lord’s words tell us Judas is in Hell.  For if Judas were ever to go to heaven, even if (hypothetically) he were to first spend trillions of years in Purgatory, then it would be better for Judas to have been born, because trillions of years are finite and are as nothing compared to eternity. 

When trillions of years are over, eternity would be just beginning (to speak metaphorically).  Any amount of time in Purgatory – however long – is insignificant compared to unending eternity in heaven.  Thus, Judas must be in hell because it is good to have been born for anyone who eventually goes to heaven.

Also, we know Judas is among the lost.  Our Lord says that none of His Apostles are among the lost except Judas, the son of perdition.  Here are Our Lord’s words:

And now I am not in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee.  Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou has given Me; that they may be one, as We also are.  While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name.  Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture may be fulfilled.[3] 

Thus, we know that Judas, the son of perdition, has been lost and is in hell.

The Doctors of the Catholic Church echo Our Lord’s clear declarations that Judas is in hell.

St. Thomas Aquinas, greatest Doctor of the Church, teaches that God could have saved Judas[4] but God knew that He would not save Judas and so He prepared a place in hell for Judas based on His (viz., God’s) foreknowledge that Judas would damn himself.  Here are St. Thomas’s words:

To save Judas would not be contrary to justice but rather would have been beyond justice.  Nonetheless, to save Judas would have been contrary to God’s foreknowledge and contrary to the fact that there was a place in hell for Judas because God knew Judas would damn himself [abusing his free will].[5]

Pope St. Leo the Great, Doctor of the Church, teaches that Judas never repented of his grave sin – but rather that he committed suicide out of despair, adding guilt to guilt. Here are St. Leo’s words:

The traitor Judas did not attain to this mercy, for the son of perdition (Jn. 17:12), at whose right hand the devil had stood (Ps. 108:6), had before this died in despair; even while Christ was fulfilling the mystery of the general redemption. Even he perhaps might have obtained this forgiveness, had he not hastened to the gallowstree; for the Lord died for all evildoers.  But nothing ever of the warnings of the Savior’s mercy found place in that wicked heart: at one time given over to petty cheating, and then committed to this dread parricidal traffic.  …  The godless betrayer, shutting his mind to all these things [expressions of the Lord’s mercy], turned upon himself, not with a mind to repent, but in the madness of self-destruction: so that this man [viz., Judas] who had sold the Author of life to the executioners of His death, even in the act of dying sinned unto the increase of his own eternal punishment.[6]

St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, declares Judas is in hell.  Here are St. Augustine’s words:

For if it is not lawful to take the law into our own hands, and slay even a guilty person whose death no public sentence has warranted, then certainly he who kills himself is a homicide.  …  Do we justly execrate the deed of Judas, and does truth itself pronounce that by hanging himself he rather aggravated than expiated the guilt of that most iniquitous betrayal, since, by despairing of God’s mercy in his sorrow that wrought death, he left to himself no place for a healing penitence?  …  For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked man, and passed from this life chargeable not only with the death of Christ, but also with his own: for though he killed himself on account of his crime, his killing himself was another crime.[7]

The Council of Trent Catechism teaches that Judas lost his soul and thus, is in hell:

Furthermore, no one can deny that it is a virtue to be sorrowful at the time, in the manner, and to the extent which are required.  To regulate sorrow in this manner belongs to the virtue of penance.  Some conceive a sorrow which bears no proportion to their crimes.  Nay, there are some, says Solomon, who are glad when they have done evil.  Others, on the contrary, give themselves to such melancholy and grief, as utterly to abandon all hope of salvation.  Such, perhaps, was the condition of Cain when he exclaimed: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.  Such certainly was the condition of Judas, who, repenting, hanged himself, and thus lost soul and body. Penance, therefore, considered as a virtue, assists us in restraining within the bounds of moderation our sense of sorrow.[8]

The Council of Trent Catechism further teaches that Judas’s apostleship brought him only eternal ruin.  Here are the catechism’s words:

Some are attracted to the priesthood by ambition and love of honors; while there are others who desire to be ordained simply in order that they may abound in riches, as is proved by the fact that unless some wealthy benefice were conferred on them, they would not dream of receiving Holy Orders. It is such as these that our Savior describes as hirelings, who, in the words of Ezechiel, feed themselves and not the sheep, and whose baseness and dishonesty have not only brought great disgrace on the ecclesiastical state, so much so that hardly anything is now more vile and contemptible in the eyes of the faithful, but also end in this, that they derive no other fruit from their priesthood than was derived by Judas from the Apostleship, which only brought him everlasting destruction.[9]

In addition to the Doctors of the Church, the Church’s traditional, public prayers tell us that Judas is in hell.  Here is the traditional Collect both for Holy Thursday and Good Friday:

O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession: grant unto us the full fruit of Thy clemency; that even as in His Passion our Lord Jesus Christ gave to each a different recompense according to his merits, so having cleared away our former guilt, He may bestow on us the grace of His resurrection: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth ….  (emphasis added).

Commenting on this Collect, Dom Guéranger explains that the Church “reminds our heavenly Father of His justice towards Judas and His mercy towards the Good Thief”.[10]  This “justice towards Judas” is Judas’s eternal punishment.


Conclusion of this section of the article

We know Judas is in hell from:

·         Our Lord’s words;

·         The teaching of the Doctors of the Church;

·         The Council of Trent Catechism; and

·         The Church’s Traditional public prayers.

 

The conciliar church says that Judas might have saved his soul

The conciliar church is a different and anti-Catholic religion.[11]  The conciliar church says that Judas might be in heaven or might go to heaven in the future.

On April 8, 2020, Pope Francis said that Judas might have saved his soul.  Here are his words:

Something that calls my attention is that Jesus never calls him [viz., Judas] “traitor”: [Jesus] says he will be betrayed, but he doesn’t say to [Judas], “traitor.”  He never says, “Go away, traitor.”  Never.  In fact, he calls him, “Friend,” and he kisses him.  The mystery of Judas ….  What is the mystery of Judas. I don’t know … Don Primo Mazzolari explains it better than me … Yes, it consoles me to contemplate that capital [viz., the heading of the article] of Vezelay [an author]: How did Judas end up?  I don’t know.  Jesus threatens forcefully here; he threatens forcefully: “woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”  But does that mean that Judas is in Hell?  I don’t know. I look at that capital. And I listen to the word of Jesus: ‘Friend.’”[12]

Pope Francis is here promoting universal salvation (i.e., everyone goes to heaven) by suggesting that even Judas might go in heaven. 

Although Pope Francis has a penchant for grabbing attention for his modernist pronouncements, his evil suggestion that Judas might be in heaven is not the first time the conciliar church has suggested that Judas might be saved.  In 1994, Pope John Paul II specifically denied the meaning of Our Lord’s words showing Judas’s damnation.  Here are Pope John Paul II’s words:

Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Mt.26:24), His words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.[13]

Conciliar (false) “theologian” Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was a close associate of Cardinal Ratzinger (former Pope Benedict XVI), also promoted the idea that Judas might be in heaven or might go to heaven.  In his book, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?”, von Balthasar stated:

I would like to request that one be permitted to hope that God’s redemptive work for his [sic] creation might succeed.  Certainty cannot be attained, but hope can be justified.  That is probably the reason why the Church, which has sanctified so many men, has never said anything about the damnation of any individual.  Not even about that of Judas ….  Who can know the nature of the remorse that seized Judas when he saw that Jesus had been condemned (Mt. 27:3)?”[14]

On December 11, 2019, conciliar (so-called) “archbishop” Vincenzo Paglia, the President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, goes so far as to declare that anyone who says “Judas is in hell” is a heretic.  Here are Paglia’s words:

I always celebrate funerals for those who commit suicide, because suicide is always a question of unfulfilled love.  We must also remember that, for the Catholic Church, if someone says that Judas is in hell, he is a heretic.[15]

It seems that the conciliar church’s only “heretics” are those that profess the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings.

Why does the conciliar church teach that Judas might be in heaven (or might go to heaven)?

The conciliar church promotes three of its goals by suggesting that Judas might be in heaven or might go to heaven:

1)    It promotes change:  This error (that Judas might be in heaven) is one of countless revolutionary changes which the modernists favor because the modernists despise the Church’s traditional teachings and have a “blind and unchecked passion for novelty”.[16]

2)    It promotes universal salvation:  This error (that Judas might be in heaven) promotes the heresy of universal salvation.  Judas’s damnation is an obstacle to the conciliar church promoting of the heretical “hope” that all men are saved.[17]

 

3)    It promotes acceptance of suicide:  The (supposed) salvation of Judas helps to reduce an obstacle to the conciliar church’s leaning toward accepting suicide and assisted suicide.[18]

Conclusion of this article

Judas is in hell, although the conciliar church promotes three modernist goals by suggesting that Judas might be in heaven.

Consider the parallel between Judas and the modern hierarchy:

·         Judas was one of the original twelve bishops and “princes of the Church”.

·         Judas’s betrayal did as much as he could do to destroy Our Lord.

·         Judas’s reputation is being whitewashed by the modern “Judases” who are the current princes governing the Church and who are doing as much as they can do to destroy Our Lord in His Mystical Body (viz., the Church).

Although we cannot pray for Judas (since he is in hell), let us pray for the modern “Judases” who are betraying Our Lord’s Mystical Body! 

Let us also do reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for the great evil those modern “Judases” do, which offends God so much and which brings so many souls to damnation!


[1]           Quoted from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Third Sermon for Advent, entitled: On the Three Advents of the Lord and the Seven Pillars which we ought to Erect within us.

 

[2]           St. Matthew’s Gospel, 26:24.


[3]           St. John’s Gospel, 17:11-12.

[4]           God could have saved Judas but chose (for God’s inscrutable reasons) to allow Judas to damn himself.  Sacred Scripture shows the truth that God can turn the heart of any man, to Himself:

The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever He will He shall

turn it.

Proverbs 21:1 (emphasis added).

For a further explanation of the Traditional Catholic truth that God could save anyone He chose to save but allows people to damn themselves by abusing their free wills, read this article:  https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/priests/williamson-bishop-williamson-teaches-the-heresy-that-even-god-is-powerless-to-save-some-men.html

 

[5]           Quoted from St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the work called The Sentences, written by Peter Lombard, the great medieval theologian called “The Master”, Book 4, dist. 46, Q.1, a.2, quaestiuncula 4, solutio 2, ad 3 (bracketed words added).

Here is the Latin:

ad tertium dicendum, quod damnare petrum, cui ex beneficio gratiae sibi collatae salus debetur, esset contrarium justitiae; unde hoc Deus non potest, loquendo de potentia ordinaria. sed salvare Judam non esset justitiae contrarium, sed praeter eam, ut patet ex dictis; sed tamen esset contrarium ejus praescientiae et dispositioni, qua ei aeternam poenam paravit; unde justitiae ordo non impedit quin posset salvare judam; sed impedit ordo praescientiae et dispositionis aeternae.

[6]           Sermon 62, De Passione Domini, in The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, F.M. Toal, D.D., translator, Regnery, Chicago, ©1955, vol. 2, p.183, (parenthetical citations are in the original; emphasis added; bracketed comments added to show the context).

 

[7]           The City of God, Bk. I, Ch. 17 (emphasis added).

 

[8]           Council of Trent Catechism, section The Sacrament of Penance, subsection Penance Proved To Be A Virtue, (emphasis added).

 

[9]           Council of Trent Catechism, section: The Sacrament of Holy Orders, subsection: The Right Intention, (emphasis added).

 

[10]         Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, the volume called Passion and Holy Week, James Duffy, Dublin, ©1886, Second Edition, p.464 (emphasis added).

 

[11]         Although the conciliar church is a different religion, this does not mean that the pope is not the head of the Catholic Church although he is also a leader of the false conciliar religion.  To read more about the conciliar church being a different and false religion, read these articles:

 

Ø  https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/priests/sspx-to-aid-a-deal-i-e-a-personal-prelature-with-pope-francis-and-the-false-conciliar-church-the-sspx-relies-on-the-big-lie.html

 

Ø  https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/faith/nothing-good-conciliar-church.html

 

Ø  https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/faith/archbishop-lefebvre-the-conciliar-church-is-not-the-catholic-church-nor-a-mere-mindset-but-is-a-new-church.html

 

[13]         Crossing the Threshold of Hope, by Pope John Paul II, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, ©1994, p.186.

[14]         Words of von Balthasar quoted from his book, pages 185-187, published in a book review found here: https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Hope-That-All-Saved/product-reviews/B00JYIDM7M?pageNumber=3 (emphasis added).

 

There are other problems with von Balthasar’s words quoted here.  We do not discuss those other problems, such as his declaration that God’s redemptive work was “for” His creation.  Von Balthasar’s words fit with Vatican II’s heresy that “[M]an … is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself”.  Gaudium et spes, §24.  The truth is that God’s motive for doing all He does is for His own greater glory, rather than “for” His creatures.  Any other motive is unworthy of God.  Read a fuller explanation of this truth here: https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/priests/leroux-another-false-teaching.html

 

[16]         Pope St. Pius X describes modernists in terms of their break with tradition and their embrace of novel doctrines:

 

[T]hey pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which “they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the Holy and Apostolic Traditions.”

 

Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907, 13, quoting from the encyclical Singulari nos of Pope Gregory XVI, June 25, 1834 (emphasis added).

 

[17]         Von Balthasar’s book, in which he says Judas might be in heaven, is called: Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?”  https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Hope-That-All-Saved/product-reviews/B00JYIDM7M?pageNumber=3

 

On April 23, 2020, so-called “bishop” Georg Bätzing (current head of the German bishops’ conference) promoted this same heresy of universal salvation when claiming that the coronavirus is not a punishment from God because: “My God has not known such thoughts since Jesus died for us.  That is when God made his decision for life.  God does not punish”.  https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/head-of-german-bishops-coronavirus-not-divine-punishment-since-god-does-not-punish (emphasis added).

 

[18]         On December 11, 2019, conciliar “archbishop” Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, connected Judas’s partial “rehabilitation” with the treatment of others who commit suicide:

 

“I always celebrate funerals for those who commit suicide, because suicide is always a question of unfulfilled love.  We must also remember that, for the Catholic Church, if someone says that Judas is in hell, he is a heretic.”  …

 

“I would like to remove ideology from these situations forever and for everyone,” the archbishop said.  “For me, those who take their own lives manifest the failure of the whole of society, but not of God.  And God never abandons anyone.” 

 

Everything within the block quotation is from the news report found here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/abp-paglia-on-judas  The quotation marks show the words of (so-called) archbishop Vincenzo Paglia in this report.