Deserving Neither of Heaven nor Hell

A former colleague of mine died this week.  He used to enjoy belittling me, as well as others.  He did it for sport.  He was sycophantic towards his superiors.  He tried to manipulate his clients.   He thought he was good at it, but he made many secret enemies in the process.  He went through the motions of being a devout Catholic.

I mention him because it's so hard to see how the vetting process of Catholicism could be applied to him today.   I picture him standing at the Pearly Gates waiting his turn, perhaps behind Zsa Zsa Gabor and maybe (if he conveniently dies to complete the picture) Richard Simmons.

It will be very hard to judge him finally and to impose the right punishment on him because his flaws were so organic and also so petty.  And yet he was not Hitler; he was not Stalin; he was not even Don Rickles.  Maybe his baptism will be judged after 73 years to have been procedurally defective, and he will be consigned therefore, for eternity, to Limbo.