Never mind Heaven & Hell, Joe. You speak with the utmost confidence about them, which is, in the true sense, an entire begging of the question about their very existence, which sounds like a pretty good fairy tale to some of us. I am sure that the person driven from her employment, and her Communion, by the Church for following her conscience, despite their own assertion, from Aquinas et al, that the conscience must be paramount, must feel very much consoled by the consideration that, tho the Church has driven her from the occupation she loves and the Communion & comforts of her Faith, because it must, despite its own teaching [or, rather, as the result of that confusion & inconsistency whereby two of its own teachings -- regarding the primacy of conscience v. the mortal sin of abortion -- are in conflict with one another], if she truly acted conscientiously she won't have to go to Hell after all! That must cheer her occupationless and Communionless declining years immeasurably, I am sure! Tho the consideration that there are probably many in authority in the Church who continue in the conviction that, yes, she will suffer damnation because she has committed a mortal sin for which she has lost the right to absolution by Confession, might give her occasional pause, at that...

One of the things that has always puzzled me about people's need for religion [I remember making exactly this point to a very Orthodox Jewish colleague once], is that life, by its very nature, is bound to be full of acute problems and difficulties from the off: so why-oh-why, I cannot help asking, do so many people embrace systems & lifestyles which seem to me to function entirely on the compulsion to add to them to the degree of ∞? Beats me!

~M~