“The Word took on our humanity and in exchange human nature was raised to the divine dignity. The second act of the exchange consists in our real and intimate participation in the divine nature of the Word.” — Benedict XVI, General Audience, January 4, 2012
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.” — Saint Paul, Romans 1:24-25 (RSV-CE)
If we had to sum up the meaning of Christmas in just a few words, we would be hard pressed to improve upon “O admirabile commercium: O marvelous exchange!” The First Antiphon of Evening Prayer for the just-celebrated Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, begins with that phrase, then continues: “Man’s Creator has become man, born of a virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity” (see CCC §526). As Fr. David Meconi, S.J., wrote in this 2010 Homiletic & Pastoral Review editorial, “On Christmas morning we see how in becoming a man, the Son of God ‘exchanges’ his heavenly privilege for humanity.”
He further noted:
This metaphor of the Son’s enfleshment exchanging God’s humanity for man’s divinity was arguably the most common image used in teachings on Christmas in the ancient Church.
Is that the case anymore? Quite obviously not so in the larger culture, but I’m hardly climbing out on a limb in suggesting it’s an idea—a reality!—rarely heard by or discussed among most Catholics, even during this most wonderful time of the year (something I reflected on at length in this recent essay for SimplyCatholic.com.)
Yet the admirabile commercium, or “the formula of exchange” as it is often called, is foundational to understanding the incredible heights and depths of Catholic Christology and soteriology. This, in turn, goes hand-in-hand with an orthodox anthropology, which insists that we, as creatures, are offered a real and lasting participation in the Trinitarian life, so we can become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). It is through the kenosis (self-emptying) of the unique and uncreated Son that we can experience theosis (deification), and thus become sons of God by grace. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” explained St. Paul to the Corinthians, “that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).
(It’s worth noting here as a quick aside that, contrary to the passing and shallow sentiments of our age, we are not all “children of God”; rather, there are those who are “children of God” and those who are “children of the devil,” as the theologically-triggering St. John the Evangelist emphatically insists [1 Jn 3:1ff].)
But the Apostle Paul wrote about another exchange, which is also an essential part of salvation history. In the opening chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he has a lengthy section on the sinfulness of man and natural theology. One of his many points is that the pagans, even without divine revelation, have the capacity and responsibility to know certain truths about God:
Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. (Rom 1:20-23)
Paul’s first focus is the failure to recognize, acknowledge, and worship God; the second, writes Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J., in his commentary on Romans (1993), is the “moral degradation to which [the pagans’] idolatry has brought them: to the craving of their hearts for impurity. Their idolatry has to moral perversion: sexual excess (1:24, 26a) and homosexual activity (1:26b-27).” At the heart of this Pauline passage is the following summation:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. (Rom 1:24-25)
The word for “exchanged” (ἤλλαξαν) is more literally translated “they changed”; there is, in other words, a real sense of creatures willfully seeking to becoming creators—first, by refusing to worship the true God and, secondly, by using and manipulating their own bodies for disordered ends, “dishonorable passions,” and “unnatural” relations. Fitzmyer bluntly states that “Paul sees homosexual conduct as a symbol of the perversions stemming from idolatry. … The human being who fails to acknowledge God and turns him, who is the source of life and immortality, seeks rather a vicarious expression of it through the misuse of the natural procreative faculty.”
Fast forward to January 2000, when a well-known and powerful politician remarked: “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.” As it turns out “always” is not forever. Within a few short years, Hillary Clinton was backing away from the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law in 1996 by her husband; in June 2014, asked if her views had evolved, she said, “I think we have all evolved, and it’s been one of the fastest, most sweeping transformations.” She was referring specifically to “gay marriage,” but what was really “evolving”—or changing, in the Pauline sense—was a fundamental understanding of the human person, sexuality, and “gender”. Despite some bumps along the way, Clinton is fully on board the trans-train, stating a few weeks ago that “Trans rights are human rights”.
Barack Obama was also closely monitoring the winds of the prevailing Zeitgeist, and “evolved” so quickly on same-sex “marriage” that you might be forgiven thinking that evolution was a process of hours, not millions of years. Meanwhile, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court exchanged “Baker v. Nelson” for “Obergefell v. Hodges”, with Justice Kennedy, a Catholic of the non-Catholic persuasion, stating:
It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage. The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.
Is. Now. Manifest. We are told repeatedly, by the high priests of the culture of insanity, that things are new. Enlightened moderns have, at last, opened their eyes! But things are actually quite old, as old as the slithering declaration in the Garden: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” But, as Joseph Ratzinger noted in the book In the Beginning (1986, 1990):
… at the very heart of sin lies human beings’ denial of their creatureliness, inasmuch as they refuse to accept the standard and limitations that are implicit in it. They do not want to be creatures, do not want to be subject to a standard, do not want to be dependent. … Thus human beings themselves want to be God. When they try this, everything is thrown topsy-turvy.
And, in a remark that should give pause, the brilliant Ratzinger notes: “Human beings who consider dependence on the highest love as slavery and who try to deny the truth about themselves, which is their creatureliness, do not free themselves; they destroy truth and love.”
Yet, on cue, the celebrities of the moment are “Britain’s most modern family”: A woman pretending to be a man giving birth to a baby with a “non-binary” partner, using the sperm of a “trans woman” and assisted by a “transgender” doctor. And, of course, as famed author J.K. Rowling—as modern and hip as liberals from, say, pre-2106 could ever be—is being taken to the cyber-rack for uttering the most basic of truths: men are men and woman are women. Love? Truth? So very pre-2020. We are now, to borrow from Ratzinger, “surrounded by a world of untruths, of unlife…”
In April 2014, right in the middle of the past decade, I wrote an editorial titled, “Welcome to the Reign of ‘Gay'”, and stated:
In a certain sense, the Sexual Revolution is over; at the very least, the walls have been breached and the consequences are serious and long-lasting. The Reign of “Gay” is proud, loud, and quite unwilling to tolerate dissent or discussion. And until we face that fact and come to grips with the situation as it really is, we will not be able to respond, regroup, and rebuild in any meaningful way.
We have now moved quickly into the Tyranny of Trans. What follows, exactly, is hard to say, but I suspect it will be worse for a time to come. The final spasms of revolutions are usually both banal and destructive. Unmoored from reality, humans become inhuman monsters; those who are willing to mutilate themselves will not hesitate to destroy those who refuse to bow low before the faux creators. And so this next decade promises to hold many dark days. But the truth about the Triune God cannot be destroyed, and the realities of human nature cannot be obscured from those with minds yearning for truth and heart open to supernatural love. In the words of Benedict XVI, uttered almost exactly eight years ago:
The Gospel is not a light to hide but to set upon a stand. The Church is not light but receives the light of Christ, receives it to be illuminated by it and to radiate it in its full splendour. And this must also happen in our personal life. Once again, I cite St Leo the Great who said on Holy Night: “Recognize, O Christian, your dignity and, enabled to share in the divine nature, do not wish to relapse into your former base condition with unworthy conduct. Remember who is your Head and to which Body you belong. Remember that you were snatched from the power of darkness and transferred into the light and into the Kingdom of God”.
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How far we have fallen that stating such a simple and obvious truth — that men are men and women are women — will be viewed now as controversial. Courageous even.
We cannot avoid this topic. And we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated.
We must — all of us — continue to express this truth.
Yes. Intimidated. I got online and had made a ‘bumper sticker’ that is pretty simple. It has the male and female symbols entwined and along side these words, “That’s Organic!”. I have had my truck door ‘keyed’ my tire slashed ($350) and it torn off and stuck to my windshield- I am afraid the fight will spill into the streets. Gird thy loins.
Correct. It will spill into the streets. So be it.
Bring it. Let’s get it over with.
Leftism is a satanic death cult. Even if it sweeps everything else before it, the truth will stand.
If a woman pays for a test from 23 and Me or similar companies, it reveals the MtDNA haplogroup passed down from her mother, not her father’s YDNA group. She would need a brother or another male relative on her paternal side of the family to be tested to know that.
You can surgically remove parts of your body and cosmetically alter appearances but a DNA test reveals the truth.
According to the urology department in the hospital where an in law’s employed, even infants born with genital anomalies will overwhelmingly have their correct gender revealed through a simple DNA test.
Should we demand that DNA tests correspond with our gender confusion? Perhaps that’s next.
We read: “Barack Obama was also closely monitoring the winds of the prevailing Zeitgeist, and “evolved” so quickly on same-sex “marriage”…”
Obama’s “evolution”?—OR a lie within a lie?
“Now that abortion is institutionalized and commonplace, close observers report that same-sex ‘marriage’ did not so much evolve onto the front page as it was imposed by well-planned and executed public relations campaigns. The cover story was that the attitude of the supportive President of the United States had ‘evolved’ between 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election year President Obama said ‘I believe marriage is between a man and a woman; I am not in favor of gay marriage.’”
“This was a flat out lie according to his political advisor at the time, David Axelrod” (Recounted by Thomas McArdle, “Is Al Smith Dinner Still Worthwhile,” National Catholic Register, October 30, 2016).
The above an excerpt from my book: A Generation Abandoned, Hamilton Books, 2017; CWR author interview at: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/29/a-generation-abandoned-why-whatever-is-not-enough/
Excellent analysis, Mr. Olson. I can remember first reading Romans 1 some thirty-odd years ago and struggling to understand how people could act so foolishly. “Certainly,” I thought, “such a thing could never happen again.”
Well, here we are. Paul’s writings to the 1st century Romans read as if they were meant for 21st century Americans. I’ve heard it said, “History rarely repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Well, this is one of those supposedly ‘rare’ instances where history actually seems to be repeating itself.
So tragic!
Thank you for your beautiful commentary.
I believe all that the Holy Roman Catholic Church teaches. That includes God’s intention and purpose for marriage.
Thank God that The Church , through the Holy Father has its heart in the right place , to thus add to all the good patrimony from all the previous Father figures –
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-01/pope-francis-mass-mother-of-god-women-dignity.html and on dignity of women , in simplicity of words that can touch families world over ..
He has also talked, not too long ago , with great love about what ‘ our Lady ‘ did for a nation that was under serpentine lies ..
That love for The Mother , to be magnified in love and honor for The Lord , to call on His Holy Name in trust and reverence , by persons world over , for all the good it can bring , esp. into the many lives in desperation, who have tried all else , thus to help sweep away the bestial spirits and their manifestations and confusions speedily enough .
Blessings !
Anomaly, what is expected devolves into contradiction within unprincipled Liberalism [the brand enshrined by SC Justice Kennedy in Planned Parenthood E PA v Casey]. For example we would expect within Govt that liberals would rush to protect free speech – as was not the case with Rowlings and religious freedom as was not the case during the Obama administration. Nancy Pelosi for all her sanctimony over her Catholicism will be as liberally anti Catholic as Protestant Buttigieg or Catholic Joe the moral chameleon Biden who quickly dropped his opposition to same sex unlimited abortion when advantageous. The heart of the matter in Editor Olson’s Exchange of Truth for a Lie is the congressional declaration that deviate behavior, behavior that abrogates Natural Law as well as Common Law the basis for a sound civil ethics is an absolute right. Whereas Catholics other conservatives hold to the Constitutional rights of Man would permit homosexual behavior as a protected choice. Are we dumb bunnies? No. Catholicism has long held that morality insofar as sexual behavior should not be subject to lawful transgression as it was in Colonial New England. That was rightly corrected by the sanity of the Kings imposition of the Royal Charter which enforced the Common Law protecting civil liberties [surprise that monarchical England upheld basic human rights?]. Liberalism has run amok and will destroy the Nation if it continues to gain popular support. The young have been fed liberal propaganda for decades by liberal professors and the ultra liberal teachers union. Trump an anomaly for some represents a possible turning point if only Catholicism and the USCCB and the Pontiff were to back him, which they are not. The slim hope resides in a religious counter reformation against what’s occurring at the Vatican. Our primary religious leaders by office defenders of the faith cardinals and bishops are that slim hope.
In addition to making deviate behavior an absolute right Liberals have ‘sanctified’ a moral abomination turning the Christian tradition of the founding fathers and the cultural tradition of Common Law upside down legislating that any disagreement or freely held view to the contrary is discriminatory and unlawful.
True, due to the fact that they deny that private morality and public morality will always serve to complement each other and can never serve in opposition to one another.
“If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party nor is society affected,” he writes.”
Sin done in private is sin.
Let us not forget the father of all lies, that sin done in private is not sin:
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/pope-francis-against-gay-adoption-every-person-needs-male-father-and
“The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.” What is this “fundamental right to marry” and how is limiting it to “opposite sex” couples inconsistent?
I guess what Kennedy means is that he has redefined marriage. I guess the Supreme Court can redefine anything it wishes so as to permit anything it wishes.
Apparently, but it cannot change the fact that some orifices are for exit only.
Had not realised that today is also World Day of the Sick along with Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus – http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-solidarity-subsidiarity-needed-to-provide-medical-care-to-all
Words spoken with compassion and truth , to bring healing and care to the topic at hand as well and may be The Church would take up rules that prohibit treatment in related areas , as a matter of religious freedom .
https://aleteia.org/2020/01/01/8-ways-to-honor-the-holy-name-of-jesus-this-january/
on ways to honor the Holy Name ..and done in increasing love and trust , to be free from the Judasic spirits of pride , presumption and contempt , to bring healing , into every heart that ever needs His grace .
The Truth, Jesus Christ Himself, came to live in a human body and now transfigured, still lives in that same human body He chose to incarnate in, even with the wounds of the Cross still there after Resurrection (John 20:27). Satan hates human bodies with infinite hatred. God loves human bodies with Infinite Love and so much so, that He chose one to live in for all eternity. The Cosmic Battle for Authentic-Real-Truth begins in the mind but its true Cosmic Battleground is the human body, where God’s True Divinization (theosis) is replaced by the ultra-cheap impostor of the delirium of disordered, perverted, sinful, drug-like orgasms, which are a short-lived delusional state not an eternal condition as Divinization is. The battleground to keep us eternally away from the Cosmic Gift of God’s True Divinization is in the human body: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body”, (1 Corinthians 3:18).
All the Pachamamas, all the false idols, all liberalism, cowardice and compromise, all the “accompaniment” of dictatorial homosexuality, all the forced approval of tyrannical transgenderism, etc.; they are all aimed at destroying the human body As-It-Is-And-Ready-For-Divinization through Catholic Faith revealed in Christmas, into It-Is-What-I-Say-It-Is–And-I-May-Change-That-Later, getting us ready for Hell in our human bodies. Its vanguard, radical homosexuality, turns their “partners” into nothing more than living, breathing sex toys, easily replaceable in gay’s core, ever increasing promiscuity. Transgenderism and tanshumanism seek further dehumanization, mutilation and destruction of “our defective human bodies that need radical “improvement”.
Our human bodies don’t need the “super-intelligent”, ultra-advanced, technologically “glorious” improvement brought by lies and idolatry in Humanism-Marxism-Homosexuality-Islam. Our human bodies need Jesus-Truth in Catholic Truth as divine food so, day by day, moment by moment, our frail, limited, aching human bodies can truly become divine forever (2 Corinthinas 4:16-17): “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an ETERNAL GLORY that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. Lies are temporary, Divinization is eternal. Choose wisely, moment by moment, repent quickly when you must. We are all called to be divine in the Divine in Jesus The Divine Catholic!!
“It’s worth noting here as a quick aside that, contrary to the passing and shallow sentiments of our age, that we are all “children of God”,,,”
Unfortunately even bishops like Jose Gomez and the current bishop of Rome Francis have made this mistake of using this language in an unscriptural manner, saying that all human beings (regardless of whether they have been baptized or not) are children of God.
Language like, “Unmoored from reality… those who are willing to mutilate themselves will not hesitate to destroy [others],” used in connection with trans people, is really not fair.
I find that these days, many essays whose analysis I otherwise want to support, or whose witness for the Faith may be inspiring, are nevertheless disfigured by unduly spiteful or bombastic statements directed against trans people.
One can indeed believe unswervingly that “men are men and women are women” without vilifying the trans people who are trying to find a fitting and workable way to live amid the circumstances, social and personal, which we find ourselves in. We do not all intend on becoming revolutionaries and radicals to upend society.
I don’t know what gives rise to the trans experience. I don’t believe it’s ontologically as deeply rooted in God-willed reality as male and female are, but rather that it is probably among the sequelae of the Fall.
Nevertheless, it is not just about privileging “feelings,” while denying biology in some delusional, fanatic way. This trope is played out, too simplistic, does not advance the discussion, but only allows trans people to be dismissed at the stroke of a pen.
There is evidence trans people have existed for millennia, under varying cultural inflections. We are not merely offspring of liberal modernity, undoing godliness and advancing a far-reaching transhuman agenda. Some of us are even sincerely trying to be good Catholics.
But we don’t get a lot of help from anyone, either from the progressives who will all too readily repeat the most jejune maxims of the “new trans orthodoxy” as long as it doesn’t cost them too much, or from more traditional types who evince no willingness to meditate on the religious, interpersonal, and human sides of the trans question with any intellectual depth or warmth of feeling. One of the biggest questions of my life deserves more than this.
I’m sorry if people have grown weary of hearing about “trans this” and “trans that” so frequently in the media. In my own life this is certainly something very personal and private, and I have had more than enough of the headlines and clickbait myself.
I also know that there are trans activists who have become shrill, bullying, who insist on getting their way without sufficient regard for the effects on others, or on society as a whole.
But I don’t think someone can claim the moral high ground, appropriate high-flown language like, “the truth about the Triune God cannot be destroyed, and the realities of human nature cannot be obscured from those with minds yearning for truth and heart open to supernatural love,” and just dismiss us, we who bear the stigma of trans, out of hand, or the genuine questions posed by our lives, for which have not been found adequate answers.
I am not your enemy. And though I am indeed a sinner, I pray God, who at my baptism delivered me from the power of darkness, who shed His Blood for me on the Cross, will have mercy on me and guide me into the fullness of His truth, so that I may not be His enemy in eternity.
Who will have egg on their face if it is found at the Judgment that, although I died a more or less broken trans person, in a world of more or less broken people, I hoped in the Lord, and the works of God were, despite it all, made manifest in my life?
Todd, yours is a heartfelt reply and, no doubt, we will all die bearing the marks of this or that form of brokenness and begging the LORD to be merciful.
What seems to me to be so unprecedented is that particular forms of brokenness (SSA and gender dysphoria) are now being publicly celebrated and promoted, and that our children are being told that “there’s nothing wrong; it’s only a ‘difference’ that must be tolerated.” Meanwhile, psychologists and psychiatrists who could be developing therapies to help such folks are now looked upon as pariahs within their own profession. Increasingly, people suffering from SSA and gender dysphoria–at least those with SSA who struggle to live a chaste life–have nowhere to turn for support them in their conviction that “something is wrong: The objective ordering of my biological sex (the truth that, sexually, men and women are ordered to each other in a complementary way) is out of sorts with my subjective sexual desires.”
Because the number of people with SSA and gender dysphoria will always be a small minority of the general population, I place the “lion’s share” of the responsibility at the feet of heterosexual adults who, with the advent of birth control, have been all too ready to disregard the call to chastity. They know that any light shed on the sexual perversions of others is a light that shines on themselves and, hence, it is “better” to stay out of the light. And, when, children are conceived outside of marriage, the new “light” becomes “the Freedom to Choose” (although the horrific object of the choice–the intentional death of an unborn child–is usually left unmentioned).
If I wrote a similar piece about the evils of pornography and the “sex industry”, would it be logical to conclude that I think all those who struggle with use of pornography or who themselves appear in pornographic material are the dregs of society? I think not. There is a distinction to be made (and I think my editorial implicitly holds to it) between those who struggle with, say, homosexual attractions or who suffer from confusion about their sex, and those who actively and coercively promote homosexuality as a good, transgenderism as normal, and other ills (contraception, fornication, adultery, pornography, etc) as either neutral or, as is increasingly the case, normal and healthy things.
My editorial is focused on the ideological empire of the second, what John Paul II called “the culture of death”. I accept original sin as a basic fact and know quite well my own failing and sinful faults. But you won’t find me promoting my sinful inclinations as “normal” or “healthy”, or saying that sinful acts should be praised and promoted throughout society and culture.
“I also know that there are trans activists who have become shrill, bullying, who insist on getting their way without sufficient regard for the effects on others, or on society as a whole.”
That is, I’m afraid, a serious understatement. The ideologues are not about understanding or sensitivity, but about tyrannical control and political imposition.
You write:
In doing so, you illogically see a statement of truth as somehow undermining your inherent dignity and worth. But your worth and identity is not found in something contrary to creation and the natural law. It is also true that struggles with sexuality and identity are not, in themselves, sinful; but they can certainly lead to sin if we do not control our passions and seek Christ, knowing that “reveals man to himself” (GS 22).
The Catechism says:
Is that uncaring? Uncharitable? Unfair? Harsh? I don’t think so, just as I don’t think any of the Church’s moral teachings are unfair or unsuited for people today. So, while I readily acknowledge that it’s not easy to follow Christ and to carry my cross every single day, I also insist that stating the truth about the current situation is absolutely necessary, no matter how unpopular or angering it might be to some.
I’d agree with the commenters that each and every one of us suffers from some sort of brokenness. And I don’t doubt for a minute that from the beginning of Creation some men and women have suffered from psychological issues related to their gender. But that’s also true for those afflicted with schizophrenia, anorexia and a host of other illnesses.
We empathize with those who suffer and should offer compassion and assistance but we don’t affirm their delusions. Or worse, attempt to force our culture to affirm it and punish those who resist.
I don’t know what gives rise to the trans experience.
Mental illness.
“I am not your enemy”, you say, but you are YOUR own enemy by accepting something SO very temporary as very static and eternal. When you then turn and try to convince us to accept something so very temporary as permanent, then you DO become our enemy. All the toxicity of Today’s Anti-Culture of Death hinges on seducing, convincing and forcing us to believe that all permanent things like male and female genders and Christian principles are very temporary and damaging, and on the other side that very temporary things like homosexuality, gender dysphoria, etc. and pagan values are static, eternal and absolutely great.
The windows of Sodom and Gomorrah show clearly the presence of all sexual sins back then and that all Bible characters, at some time or another were confronted and/or caught the whiff of the stench of very-temporary-sexual-disorders-turned-permanent. The ONLY difference with today is that God’s Revelation helped them see these things not as static and great but as what they are, very temporary and very inhuman.
Hell is but sin frozen in time, whether in this life or in the next. True Life is FLOW into Jesus Our Life (John 14:6) not frozenness in sin, which is death. We’ll certainly be judged here and after death, whether saved by our FLOW into True-Life-Jesus or condemned by our unrepentant frozenness into ego-sin-death. Your imagination will not save you when judgment comes and you will get infinitely worse than “egg on the face”. Find God’s Mercy in repentance and the true healing of infinitely growing True Life.
The Pontiff Francis (aptly called “Pachapapa” by one commenter) has been undermined by the apostle Paul and his witness in Romans Chapter 1, declaring the link of idolatry and sexual decadence.