Judas killed himself after betraying Jesus. A Vatican official is now defending the betrayer of Christ and promoting assisted suicide, arguing that priests should be supportive of the practice and even accompany people to help them through the life-ending process.
As reported by Lifesite News, “Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has claimed on behalf of the Catholic Church that anyone who says Judas Iscariot is in hell is a heretic.”
That Judas is in hell is eluded to by Luke the Evangelist in his Gospel when he writes in Acts of Matthias that he was “to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”
As Cambridge Bible Commentary points out…
That “his own place” when thus used was, to the Jewish mind, an equivalent for Gehenna = the place of torment, may be seen from the Baal Haturim on Numbers 24:25, where it is said “Balaam went to his own place, i.e. to Gehenna.” A like expression is found concerning Job’s friends, Midrash Rabbah on Ecclesiastes 7:1.
More importantly, Jesus himself alludes to Judas being in hell.
The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born (Matthew 26:24)
Surely the only way it would be better a man never had been born is if he went to hell. Any man in Heaven would be better off being born.
The Vatican official’s statement came at a presentation of a multi-faith International Symposium on Religion and Medical Ethics: Palliative Care and Elderly Mental Health in Rome yesterday.
The statements came after a journalist asked about a document from Swiss priests suggesting that all Romanist clergy members leave the room before lethal injection is administered to those being put to death.
The Vatican official pushed back on this, saying, “To accompany and hold the hand of those who are dying is the great task of every believer.”
Paglia, the Vatican official, then said, “I always celebrate funerals for those who commit suicide, because suicide is always a question of unfulfilled love. We must also remember that, for the Catholic Church, if someone says that Judas is in hell, he is a heretic.”
Ostensibly, this is because the Romanist church teaches that no definitive statements can be made about those who’ve died and their eternal destination because purgatory always gives people a chance in the afterlife.
However, the Bible says, “It’s appointed a man once to die and then the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
