The Narrow Gate

Church Militant and Bishop Robert Barron are in public disagreement on how many souls go to hell. Bishop Barron, expressing a not-uncommon Catholic view, also promoted by Hans von Balthasar, says we are free to believe that there is actually nobody in hell. Church Militant responds that it is plain from the Bible that many are.

Pope John Paul II writes, perhaps clarifying the matter:

Can God, who has loved man so much, permit the man who rejects Him to be condemned to eternal torment? And yet, the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew's Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matt. 25:46). Who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement…

Matthew 25:46 reads:

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It gets worse. Bishop Barron's optimistic view conflicts with such passages as:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7)

So the Bible actually seems to say that most people will go to hell.

My interpretation of this particular passage, however, is a little different. I see it as a warning that morality is opposed to going along with the crowd.

This is a critical point, because most people seem to want to believe that the two things are the same: morality consists in going along with the crowd and always getting along with those around you. This is, for example, the essence of the postmodern concept of ethics: ethics are “socially determined,” “socially constructed.”

Logically, this cannot be so. If you are simply going along with the crowd, you are not making a moral choice. You are delegating that to the crowd. You have waived the opportunity to act morally.

What the crowd, or your peer group, or your society, or your government, or your profession or class, does or advocates may happen to be morally right. If so, that is no reflection on you. You have only done what is to your own advantage. As Jesus said, “You already have your reward.”

If, on the other hand, what your peer group, society, or government does or advocates is morally wrong, you do not avoid guilt on the claim that you were “only following orders.” In this case, you do bear personal guilt. Going along with the crowd would have made you happily kill Jews in Nazi Germany, or whip slaves in the Antebellum South.

Following the crowd, or substituting consensus and getting along with those around you for morality, is intrinsically morally evil. You cannot behave morally by doing so, only immorally. It is the broad gate leading to destruction.

Conversely, it is only possible to behave morally when you are going against the social consensus around you. This is the narrow gate, and few find it.

Moreover, some punishment is warranted for this moral failure, whether or not it must be eternal.

Therefore, nothing could be more immoral, and more pernicious, than the current insistence that morality is socially determined.

And the issue arises constantly: it is at the core of life.

Look at current news. Maxime Bernier is being condemned by many for not being “a team player,” not compromising his principles for the sake of his party, as though this were a moral failing on his part. John McCain, who just died, was often condemned for the same. Immorality here is being popularly promoted as morality, and morality as immorality. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission bases its entire report on the premise that all cultural values are equal and there is no objective moral standard by which they may be measured. Ndeed, it is oppressive and immoral to suggest otherwise. Nobody seems to notice that this position is immediately self-contradictory.

And the current crisis of clerical abuse in Pennsylvania is transparently based, as Pope Francis has pointed out, on bishops going along with those nearest to them, their peer group, rather than following objective morality: protect your colleagues, your fellow priests, your organization, and never mind about right and wrong.

There is a reason that the Devil is called the God of this World.