A Forgotten Heresy of ‘Pope St.’ John Paul II

6/7/1982 President meeting with Pope John Paul II during visit to the Papal Library Vatican Pontifical Palace

I recently gave an old stubborn Vatican 2 Catholic a copy of an article I posted in 2009 titled One of the Great Heresies of John Paul II in His Own Words. He knows Francis is bad news, but to him John Paul II was a great pope. I want to revisit this whopper heresy by the man the Vatican 2 religion calls “Pope Saint John Paul the Great.”

EWTN (generally thought of as a conservative outlet) is not ashamed to post the 1989 General Audience of John Paul II on the meaning of Christ’s descent into hell. [1] I will post the relevant parts, but you’re welcomed to read the whole cursed thing to get the full flavor of his interpretation. Like the good modernist he was, he cleverly makes it sound like he’s orthodox by stating the key words and phrases.

John Paul II first mentions those keys:

4. As is evident from the texts quoted, the article of the Apostles’ Creed, “he descended into hell”, is based on the New Testament statements <on the descent of Christ>, after his death on the Cross, into the “region of death”, into the abode of the dead”, which in Old Testament language was called the “abyss”.

So far, so good. However, John Paul II then explains what this all means. He continued…

If the Letter to the Ephesians speaks of “the lower parts of the earth”, it is because the earth receives the human body after death, and so it received also the body of Christ who expired on Calvary, as described by the Evangelists (cf. Mt 27:59 f, and parallel passages; In 19:40-42). <Christ passed through> a real <experience of death>, including the final moment which is generally a part of the whole process: <he was placed in the tomb.>

It is a confirmation that this was a real, and not merely an apparent, death. His soul, separated from the body, was glorified in God, but his body lay in the tomb as a <corpse.>

During the three (incomplete) days between the moment when he “expired” (cf. Mk 15:37) and the resurrection, Jesus experienced the state of death”, that is, the separation of body and soul, as in the case of all people. This is the primary meaning of the words “he descended into hell”; they are linked to what Jesus himself had foretold when, in reference to the story of Jonah. he had said: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so ” (Mt 12:40).

Notice that he declared that “the primary meaning” of descent into hell means “experience of death,” “as in the case of all people,” “placed in a tomb,” and “separation of body and soul.” 

While it’s true that we’ll all experience death, none of us will ever experience the descent into hell as Christ and those who died before Him. John Paul II’s initial explanation about Christ’s descent into hell is pure nonsense. The late imposter pope reaffirmed that Christ didn’t literally go anywhere when he also said, “The Apostle adds however: ‘<In spirit (Christ) went and preached to the spirits in prison>’ (1 Pt 3:19). This seems to indicate metaphorically the extension of Christ’s salvation to the just men and women who had died before him.”

All throughout the explanation, John Paul II sounds like a modernist Jesuit theologian who hits all around the dogma and deliberately avoiding the main point. Never does John Paul II indicate that there’s a real literal place where Christ went. Everything is a metaphor and even titles one section “Metaphors of Time and Space” where he explains away the simple meaning of I Peter 4:6.7.

One Vatican 2 apologist told me that John Paul II got it right in his 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

However, his catechism is not clear at all. It uses the same language as his 1989 general audience. At the end, his catechism states:

IN BRIEF

636 By the expression “He descended into hell”, the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Heb 2:14).

637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.

The Apostles’ Creed already states that Christ died and was buried. “Descended into hell” means something different. The “realm of the dead” according to John Paul II just meant the sepulcher, separation of body and soul, and experience of death. It’s a metaphor and not an actual place. 

The dogma of Christ’s descent into hell is very simple and the Roman Catechism of Pope St. Pius V explains it clearly. In fact, his catechism actually condemns John Paul II’s apparent old-recycled explanation.

The Roman Catechism of Trent taught:

“We firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the sepulcher and to His soul in limbo. (p. 53)”

“By the word hell is not here meant the sepulcher, as some have not less impiously than ignorantly imagined; for in the preceding Article we learned that Christ the Lord was buried, and there was no reason why the Apostles, in delivering an Article of Faith, should repeat the same thing in other and more obscure terms.”

“Hell, then, here signifies those secret abodes in which are detained the souls that have not obtained the happiness of heaven. In this sense the word is frequently used in Scripture. Thus the Apostles says: At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. Of those that are in heaven, on earth, and in hell; and in the Acts of the Apostles St. Peter says that Christ the Lord is again risen, having loosed the sorrows of hell. (p. 62-63)”

“Lastly, the third kind of abode is that into which the souls of the just before the coming of Christ the Lord, were received, and where, without experiencing any sort of pain, but supported by the blessed hope of redemption, they enjoyed peaceful repose. To liberate these souls , who, in the bosom of Abraham were expecting the Saviour, Christ the Lord descended into hell. (p. 63)”

“Christ the Lord descended into hell, in order that, … he might liberate from prison those holy Fathers and the other just souls… (p. 64)”

It just so happens that Pope St. Pius X implicitly condemned John Paul II as a modernist when he declared: 62. The principal articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for the Christians of our time. CONDEMNED as an error of the Modernists, by Pope St Pius X in Lamentabili, July 3, 1907

John Paul II surely knew the Roman Catechism and that the early Christians didn’t believe as his 1989 explanation.

John Paul was simply a modernist. It should come as no surprise. He continued his modernist agenda throughout his entire fake pontificate. I contrast him with St. Patrick in My Article The New Oxford Review Wouldn’t Publish.

John Paul II was no saint. He was a man-pleaser and a dogma denying apostate. How quickly we forget how bad he truly was.

 

Footnote:

[1] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/he-descended-into-hell-8679