-
I was baptized an infant into the Roman Catholic Church; and was eventually enrolled in catechism where I completed First Holy Communion and Confirmation. Although catechism did a good job of instilling within me the reality of hell's eternal fires; it wasn't until I saw a painting by Gustave Doré depicting a scene from Dante Alighieri's Inferno that I realized the degree of despair gripping the minds and hearts of people in hell.

People down there know it's permanent; that's what makes hell so much worse than any other source of misery one can possibly imagine. If only they could see a light at the end of the tunnel; but that's just it: there is no end of the tunnel; it loops, like a donut within which they just go round and around and around. They say hope springs eternal in the human heart. Well; not down there. No; down there hope is futile. The fires are bad enough; but it's the permanence of hell that I would imagine hurts the most.

Through me; the way to the eternal city.
Through me; the way to eternal sadness.
Through me; the way to lost people.

Justice moved my supreme maker:
I was shaped by divine power,
By highest wisdom, and by primal love.

Before me, nothing was created
That is not eternal: and eternally I endure.
Abandon all hope, you that enter here.

The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
Inferno: canto 3, v.1-9


Dante's Divine Comedy is called a comedy because it has a happy ending as opposed to a tragedy; at least for Dante anyway. The souls he and Virgil pass along the way through the Inferno portion of Dante's odyssey will never, nor anon, have a happy ending; hence the sign above the entrance to the netherworld: "Abandon all hope, you that enter here."

Webster's defines "despair' as: to no longer have any hope or belief that a situation will improve or change. Well; down in the Inferno section of Dante's concept of the netherworld, despair is a way of life.

FYI: I renounced Rome in 1968; and later underwent baptism as a Protestant by a Conservative Baptist minister.

=========================================