Fr. Dwight LongeneckerDuuuh. Father. For forty years you’ve told people that everyone is going to heaven no matter what. The people are not stupid. They’ve drawn the obvious conclusion that they therefore don’t need to go to church, or that it doesn’t matter what church they go to. If everybody’s going to heaven there is no such thing as mortal sin and if there’s no such thing as mortal sin why bother with God, religion, Jesus, Mary and Mass?
If we’re all going to heaven on an express escalator when we die why bother with being good or having faith?
If God is so cuddly as to take everyone to heaven why make the effort?
The other result of universalism is that churches cease being places where souls are saved and start becoming social centers. This follows logically. If everyone is going to be saved anyway, then the reason to come to church is removed. If everybody’s going to heaven, then what is the raison d’etre of the church?
Well, I guess it’s there to have nice social evenings for the old folks, to have youth groups to keep the young out of trouble and learn new life skills, to set up soup kitchens, raise money for charity and perhaps lay on driver education classes, teach teens about ‘safe sex’ etc. etc.
Again, before long people are saying, “But what’s religion got to do with all that? I pay taxes to do all that stuff don’t I?” The church is irrelevant.
Universalism is a false doctrine that kills Christianity, and those who preach it are false teachers and anti Christs.
Suddenly there’s an old gospel song tune running through my head…”Gimme that ole time religion, gimme that ole time religion, gimme that ole time religion, it’s good enough for me.”
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