It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an omnipotent god that is simultaneously good and permits people to be tortured for eternity.
Perhaps he chose the “god is good” over the “god, despite being able, will not prevent billions of reasonable and decent people from suffering eternally” fork in the road. You can’t logically choose both, and if you’re the pope, you probably had better have a belief in the goodness of god.
I've mentioned this before on HN but I find it interesting and valuable.
There is an older stream of christian thought on heaven and hell, still somewhat present in eastern christianity, that they are not separate places people are sent to.
In this view they are the same thing, simply the direct experience of the unattenuated light of god. A repentant person will experience this as mercy and all encompassing love, an unrepentant one will experience it as excruciating shame and terror. But they are both getting the same "treatment" so to speak.
Unless you live(d) in a time and place where Christian teachings were unavailable to you. Which accounts for a large majority of the humans who have ever lived.
Which is a problem for some Protestants who insist that only Christians can be saved... but not necessarily for Catholics. The belief that only Christians can be saved has actually been condemned by the Catholic Church as a heresy (Feeneyism, after the 20th century American priest, Leonard Feeney, who most famously espoused it)
According to Catholic teaching, non-Christians can be saved if (1) they are "invincibly ignorant" (i.e. their ignorance of the truth of Christianity is not their own fault), and (2) they have an "implicit desire" for the Christian God
I am not sure which label I should use for myself besides Christian as in 'follower of Christ', who tries to follow the Bible as accurately as possible, believing it to be the direct and absolute message from God.
Which indeed makes me incompatible with Catholicism.
Perhaps he chose the “god is good” over the “god, despite being able, will not prevent billions of reasonable and decent people from suffering eternally” fork in the road. You can’t logically choose both, and if you’re the pope, you probably had better have a belief in the goodness of god.