This made my ultra-catholic mother really angry. If non-catholic people didn't go to hell, then what was the point of all the effort she was putting in? She went to church every day. She followed rules like not eating meat on Friday. To her, it was really unfair that someone might get to go to heaven without having to put in all that work. How is anybody supposed to be a good person if they're not constantly terrified of hell?

Needless to day, despite following the rules, I don't really think she lives by the spirit of her religion.

I hope the next pope can be as good as Pope Francis was

My mother is a divorcée. In 90s Ireland, she was demonized by the Catholic Church, and was publicly refused communion by the local priest after she left my (at the time alcoholic and abusive) father. She had a crisis of faith after all that and accepted the "fact" that she was doomed to hell while her five children would go to heaven. She quietly accepted this and from then on refused communion at all events, making up excuses with us none the wiser.

In the mid 2000s, I came out as gay and following that, spurred by the church's cruel treatment of my mother, left the church via apostasy. I had to tell my mother in detail as I was no longer allowed to be buried in a Catholic graveyard. She laminated the letter confirming my leaving of the church from the bishop.

In the mid 2010s she and I campaigned for Marriage Equality together. She told me about her crisis of faith. She also told me how I helped her through the other side of it just by existing. Before she thought all her children would be separated from her after death. But heathen that I was had equally doomed myself to join her. Logically that would make hell lesser. Logically that means the more sinners in hell, the less hellish it is. Therefore hell in its most hellish is empty, and the whole threat is bullshit whether you believe in an afterlife or not.

The fucking POPE saying something like this is huge, and very important for people that carry a burden of Catholic guilt. Good on him, and RIP.

If there were more men like Francis in the church, I might still count myself a Christian. Alas, I actually read the gospel, and read it deeply in independent study, and found that the US has no Christian churches. There is only a shitty wealth cult that's like a fleshgait imitation of Christianity.

Fleshgait Jesus says: "buuuuuuuuyyyyyy buy buy buy the Ford F-150, sinner sinner siner sinUR SNER SINNER"

I sometimes joke that I hope my late best friend has gone to evangelical Christian hell, because he was a bisexual punk who loved tabletop roleplaying games (like Dungeons & Dragons).

I was raised vaguely Christian, and when I was realising I didn't believe in God, I felt a lot of conflict, because I was still scared of going to hell. I was getting stuck on the idea that if all good morality came from God, does that mean that I would be evil as an atheist?

In the end, I concluded that if all morality came from God, that the many atheists who lead good and virtuous lives must still have the favour of God. On the other hand, morality existed independently of God, but that unbelievers would go to hell no matter how good they were in life, then I'd rather be defiantly good and go to hell than be coerced into belief.

This was before I understood that hell has historically often been understood as just a place without God (which, to a Christian view, is a hellish existence).

The old testament did not even mention hell and thus Jews don't believe it. Hell is a Christian invention to control the masses through threat of eternal damnation for disobeying the authority.

I can't speak for god or anything

- the guy speaking for god

Well, he is right, hell is empty, but then again, so is heaven

3 days have passed, it's time for bergoglio.ai

Neither heaven nor hell exist, so you can all stop worrying about them.

Enjoy your life because it's the only one you get.

What a pleasant thought for the child diddling priests he did nothing about.

Yeah, he really was decent for a pope. And I think he might have been more decent as a pope if he had his way entirely. He really seemed like he wanted more compassion and change than he was able to make happen.

They only added Hell in the Middle Ages (even the name comes from the Vikings). It’s like when comics make the canon needlessly complicated in later years because they have to keep going no matter what.