Divine dullness: Usual images of heaven don't impress Christians

Published: 2007-01-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A recent sermon by the papal preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, took aim at John Lennon's famous line, "Imagine there's no heaven," saying it represented an empty, secularized vision of human destiny. But an Italian biblicist, Father Carlo Buzzetti, has approached the question from a different angle: The modern church, he said, does a lousy job imagining what heaven is like and communicating it to the faithful. Most Catholics, Father Buzzetti said, understand heaven as a vague place of eternal survival, where happiness can become monotonous and where the absence of human passions creates an "anemic" atmosphere. In other words, boring. And if heaven is seen as a dull routine of perpetual bliss, how can it possibly stimulate people to live a good and moral life in this world? Father Buzzetti posed the questions in a long article in a recent issue of Italian Clergy Review. He based his analysis on extensive discussions with pastors, who told him the traditional images of heaven -- a vision of God, a banquet or eternal repose -- were making little or no impression on modern Christians.

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