Universalism is the heresy that all persons will eventually be saved. It is fueled by various motives: that a “loving” God could not condemn a sinner to eternal damnation for even persistent wrongdoing in a finite lifetime; that God’s “love” can eventually “overcome” human resistance without damaging free will; or that Christ’s Redemption or eschatological fulfillment cannot be “complete” absent universal salvation. It is often abetted by notions of a “Christology” that has Jesus not sure of whom He is and that the Bible’s language about hell is but “symbolic” and admonitory, not real.

The Church condemned universalism more than a millennium and a half ago. No true Christian can hold that all men will be saved.

Catholicism, however, has been afflicted — especially in the past 50 years — by a mutant strain of universalism: If we can’t say all men will be saved, can we at least say we hope all men will be saved? The late Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has been most associated with this approach, as was the late theologian Wacław Hryniewicz in Poland. But the idea was certainly not incompatible with the trajectory of the late Karl Rahner’s thought, especially his “supernatural existential.”

Of course, we hope that all men be saved, because nobody wants anybody to be damned. Yes — with God, we hope that everybody “be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tm 2:4). But experience also suggests that what we hope for often does not come to pass. Parents hope a child will do good and avoid evil; not a few find their hopes dashed.

Mercy, hope, and truth are not opposites; too much of one means cutting back on the others. Salvation is the result of mercy that recognizes the truth about a person — including, sometimes, that somebody choses evil. Hope does not turn God into someone playing peek-a-boo, feigning blindness about what one has become.

So, while in abstract theory we may hope all people be saved, real pastoral care of people means doing as Jesus did in the very first words of His ministry: calling people to repentance. We must recognize that absent repentance, salvation is impossible. Von Balthasar’s cautions that his modified universalism is one “under judgment,” but like the U.S. bishops’ 1966 admonition that Friday abstinence can be dispensed in favor of some other form of penance, lots of Catholics heard the “pass the steak” rather than “pray a Rosary.”

The modified universalism hawked by von Balthasar, Hryniewicz, et al. is not “pastoral.” It is arguably anti-pastoral, by lulling people into a false sense of security that reaches for Resurrection while bypassing Passion and Death. It requires marginalizing or ignoring a large chunk of the Church’s received teachings — including lots of Biblical texts that speak of the “narrow way” — in order to suggest that an abstract theory might be plausible. I would argue that, instead of plausibility, it skates perilously close to the edge of the mortal sin of presumption.

I bring up this idea because it seems fashionable for the past few years, during every Holy Week, to float the idea of the salvation of Judas Iscariot. Yes, the Church has never formally “anti-canonized” anybody, i.e., declared somebody damned. But the way Our Lord consistently spoke of the traitor hardly suggests the optimism some moderns want to apply to the man from Kerioth.

This ground has been covered by authors better than me, so why am I addressing it? Because it’s not just a theoretical question about where the soul of Judas went once he strangled himself on a tree. It’s a practical question about sin, which is a subject affecting you and me because we all are sinners.

The constant hawking of Judas’s unspoken “salvation” is really not about Judas. What happened at his particular judgment I leave to him and God. But what it’s really about is a diminution of the sense of sin.

Modern popes have consistently lamented the loss of a “sense of sin.” It’s not just that people sin — they’ve always done that — or even that they sin boldly (Luther’s exhortation, given his false theology of justification). It’s that their moral compass has become so flipped as to call evil “good” and good “evil.”

God made man for Himself, which means he is oriented to and attracted by “good.” But when someone chooses evil and especially when he persists in it, he becomes spiritually schizophrenic. Yes, he has chosen an evil he wants, but he remains “hardwired” towards the good. To the degree that this dissonance bothers him, to the extent he feels guilt, that’s good. It means he remains oriented toward the good and viscerally recognizes what he’s doing doesn’t match up.

But man doesn’t want to live with a split spiritual personality, so he is more likely to rationalize that the good which accuses him — which fuels his guilt — is in fact “bad” while the evil he embraces is really “good.” Max Scheler spoke of it as “ressentiment,” an inversion of moral values. Karol Wojtyła identified how it plays out in modern life when, in Love and Responsibility, he notes that for many moderns chastity has ceased to be a virtue. It is, rather, thought of as a burden if not an outright vice. One finds this mentality in many modern “Catholics” who “follow their conscience” by rejecting consistent Church teaching, especially in matters sexual.

What is particularly invidious about modified universalism is that it abets this “making peace with sin” mindset. If thieving Judas — after selling out the Son of God for filthy lucre — can be saved, then surely a “loving God” won’t hold my peccadillos against me. I haven’t sold out God: “surely it is not I, Lord!” If Judas is in heaven, maybe pulling up Adolph by his Lederhosen and Josef by his Kalashnikov, well, then, why shouldn’t I “hope”? “I’m OK, you’re OK?”

Proponents of modified universalism would, of course, deny this, insisting their “hope” should not yield to presumption. They would no doubt insist that such a way of thinking should be a call to conversion yet pretend their way of thinking hasn’t led an average person there. In a world where many people tend to focus on moral minimums rather than superogatory charity, “pastoral care” addresses people where they are (reading the signs of the times), not where some theologians eager not to trespass the boundaries of received teaching are.

As in the case of downplaying Jesus’ explicit teaching about judgment and loss, the moral sensibility modified universalism often in practice abets is alien to Scripture. When he is called to be a prophet, Isaiah is acutely aware of his unworthiness. He laments his vision of God because looking upon such holiness can only destroy the unholy: “I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips” (Is 6:5). And the angel does not tell Isaiah to chill; he cleanses his lips with a burning coal.

Other examples of such awareness abound, including that of another Holy Week apostle, St. Peter: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). The problem with the pied pipers of modified universalism is that I hear a lot about salvation from them, far less about being “a sinful man” in need of conversion. And that’s why — whether they will admit it or not — I suggest the practical consequence of their “good news” is lulling people into a moral minimalism that downplays sin, that makes one think he’s “good enough,” and which — far from advancing the Kingdom — impedes it.