Father Barron's Hope of Universal Salvation is Wrong and Heretical

And I saw a great white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was no place found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works.  And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell gave up their dead that were in them; and they were judged every one according to their works.  And hell and death were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death.  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the pool of fire.

Edit: There are some people out there who are already making false statements about Father Barron's disinformation and frankly modernist conception of Hell, which he doesn't actually believe is a physical place.

Hell is a place of terrible proportions and frequently mentioned in the Scriptures, and the history of the Church.  It's always described as very densely populated.  Catholics have always believed this way, but now there are those who are trying, against the evidence, to suggest otherwise.

Most people go to Hell.  It was widely considered that as it is written, "wide is the path of destruction",  that Hell was full of sinners.  It was and remains a real place of torment.  Yet as is usually the case with many among the apologetics mafia, that's not good enough, how our forefathers believed.  Yet as in all ages, there are many who want to believe false doctrines and follow false teachers.

Their ears are itching after novelties. Not a few people  want to oppose a modern view never held by Catholics, that Hell might be empty.  One of the poisons administered is to suggest that if Hell is so full, it would make us despair.   Clearly men are incapable of being a sign of contradiction, of accepting the hard sayings, and suffering and trusting God's word.

After this many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him.

 Dante populated Hell with friends and enemies alike in his Divine Comedy,  there were points it seemed  that the whole world was going to Hell, but this didn't stop Dante believing or hoping in his own salvation, or perhaps those close to him.  Most Catholics had no trouble believing these two, non-contradictory ideas about Hell, God's mercy and his justice.   Pope Benedict XVI. especially taught that  there is a place called Hell, again in contrast to those timely fashions:

Pope Benedict XVI stated: "Jesus came to tell us that he wants us all in heaven and that hell, of which so little is said in our time, exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to his love. "[Holy See, website]

As to the idea that Hell might not have any human beings in it, which *is* a statement of universal salvation, a clearly heretical doctrine, Theologian Ludwig Ott writes:

God, by his eternal decree, has predestined certain persons, in anticipation of their [unrepented mortal] sins, to eternal reprobation [or punishment].[Cf Is Hell Empty?]

Meanwhile, on some parts of the internet, Voris legitimate exception to Father Barron's all-too-familiar heterodoxy remains unchallenged.

 Also, there is nothing in Spe Salvi which says that Hell may be empty.




“Often, when it is the king or some other monarch or potentate that he (the judge) has to deal with, he finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever; he finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of perjury and wrong-doing ...; it is twisted and warped by lies and vanity, and nothing is straight because truth has had no part in its development. Power, luxury, pride, and debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and ugliness that when he has inspected it (he) sends it straight to prison, where on its arrival it will undergo the appropriate punishment ... Sometimes, though, the eye of the judge lights on a different soul which has lived in purity and truth ... then he is struck with admiration and sends him to the isles of the blessed” [Cf. Spe Salvi, Gorgias 525a-526c.]

Image of Hieronymous Bosch from Indianapolis Institute of Art.

AMGD

The Devil's Servants in Religion

Edit:  Father Barron is often horrible, or just uninspiring, of dubious orthodoxy.  Of course, an Episcopalian woman dressing up as a bishop is a slow moving and easy target, but here's an excerpt:

But Bishop Jefferts Schori reads it as a tale of patriarchal oppression and intolerance. She preaches, "But Paul is annoyed, perhaps, for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it." The Bishop correctly points out that the girl was saying true things about Paul and his friends, but demons say true things all the time in the New Testament. Think of the dark spirits who consistently confess that Jesus is the Holy One of God. That a Christian bishop would characterize the demonic possession of a young girl as something "beautiful and holy" simply beggars belief. 

But things get even more bizarre. We are told in Acts that the girl's owners are furious that Paul has effectively robbed them of their principal source of income and that they therefore stir up controversy and get him thrown in prison. But on the Bishop's reading, Paul is just getting what he deserved: "That's pretty much where he put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she too shares in God's nature, just as much as he does -- maybe more so!" She seems to rejoice that a mid-first-century Philippian version of the liberal thought police had the good sense to imprison the patriarchal Paul for his deep intolerance of fallen spirits! You see why this sermon reminded me of that New Yorker cartoon. 

That night in prison, we are told, Paul and Silas sang hymns of praise to God and preached the Gospel to their jailors. Jefferts Schori reads this, strangely, as Paul coming to his senses at last, remembering God, dropping the annoyance he felt toward the girl, and embracing the spirit of compassion. Wouldn't it be a lot simpler and clearer to say that Paul, who had never "forgotten God," quite consistently showed compassion both toward the possessed girl and the unevangelized jailor, delivering the former and preaching the Gospel to the latter?

Link to RealClearReligion....