DUBUQUE, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) — The exiting Archbishop of Dubuque has used one of his final homilies before resigning to promote female ordination and deny that anyone is in Hell.
Archbishop Michael O. Jackels of Dubuque, Iowa, delivered a jovial homily at a recent Confirmation Mass on March 16, at St. Thomas Aquinas parish. Addressing the assembled candidates for Confirmation, he spoke on the subject of vocation and calling.
Outlining the various states of life to which the young people might be called, he listed marriage, single life, religious life, and the priesthood. The calling to the priesthood, however, he did not limit to just the young men present.
“Or you might be called to the priesthood,” he said, addressing a young girl. “You might think, ‘do I look like a guy to you?,’ but it could happen by the time you’re old enough that maybe things will change. I don’t know.”
However, Pope John Paul II has already condemned this, writing in his 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
The Polish Pope also quoted from Pope Paul VI’s 1975 letter to the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the Pope wrote that “the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.”
Jackels also used the Confirmation homily as a means to promote his personal belief on Hell, namely that it is empty. Referencing Heaven as the ultimate goal which all should aim for, the archbishop stated:
Everyone is called to Heaven: that’s our destination, right? … Everyone is called there, God wants everyone there. In fact, in my opinion – and I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else – I don’t think that there’s anybody in Hell.
He raised examples of Hitler and Osama bin Laden, pre-empting the question of how such individuals would avoid Hell. Jackels stated:
Okay, they did bad things, but what’s the one thing bigger than the baddest thing? God. God and His mercy, God and His love. God says to Hitler, ‘Oh you old fool, what were you thinking? Your mother drop you on your head when you were a kid? Come on in, although you gotta stop at purgatory and get cleaned up first, but come on in. Come home, come home.’
Despite Jackels’ personal opinion on the population of Hell, the Gospels contain clear teaching on who would merit Hell due to their actions. In presenting a number of parables to the Jews, Christ detailed the day of judgement and the separation of the righteous from the wicked. (Matt 25: 31)
READ: Pope Francis denies that Hell is ‘a place,’ says it is ‘a posture towards life’
The King, said Christ, will condemn the souls who did not practice the law of God: “And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.”
Indeed, the Scriptures contain a number of passages recounting the fate of souls who die unrepentant of sins. If Jackels’ statement about Hell being empty were to be true, such Scriptural passages would be redundant. Such statements are especially found in Apocalypse 14:11, 20:10.
Commenting on Matthew’s Gospel, St. Augustine similarly writes about the eternity of Hell and the punishment for those in Hell:
If both destinies are “eternal,” then we must either understand both as long-continued but at last terminating, or both as endless. For they are correlative — on the one hand, punishment eternal, on the other hand, life eternal. And to say in one and the same sense, life eternal shall be endless, punishment eternal shall come to an end, is the height of absurdity. Wherefore, as the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it shall have no end.
Jackels is no stranger to controversy on matters of the Catholic Faith. In October 2021, he made headlines when he urged Catholics in his archdiocese to reject “traditional burial methods” in favor of liquifying a corpse in order to be less “offensive” to the earth and environment.
Praising the Catholic Church for being “a leader in the use of green burial,” Jackels proposed “alkaline hydrolysis” as the “green” alternative.
The process, according to the archbishop, involves combining “hot water, lye, air pressure and circulation” to “liquify a corpse in a matter of hours, which can then be safely poured in the ground.”
The 69-year-old archbishop recently had his resignation for “health reasons” accepted by Pope Francis on April 4, effective immediately. He previously was treated in hospital after a heart attack in Mary 2019.
In his place, emeritus Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines will act as the Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Dubuque.