It is NOT the teaching of the Catholic church for a start:
https://uscatholic.org/articles/202212/what-does-the-church-...
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun...
Nor do they believe hell to be a place of torture, but a state of separation from God. Read CS Lewis's Great Divorce if you are interested in a better metaphor than flames and torture.
> but it means that God labors tirelessly to bring all people — Christian or not — to salvation in Christ.
That is a hilarious quote. Only believers can say that with a straight face and not see the absolute madness it implies. How could "God labor[] tirelessly" to help everyone into salvation? That's on its face absolute garbage. Is God so incredibly weak that he could only show the path to salvation to 12 dudes 2000 years ago? If so, why should we worship that god, which seems like a pitiful figure compared to many nobel prize winners. I certainly would think we owe more worship to Normal Borlaug than a god that can't get his message across because he could only intervene in a credible way once in front of 12 people, and then never again.
That is the reason why Christianity is news-worthy. People wouldn't run around the world to tell you that God is that detached monarch who likes to govern humans. That's a concept a lot of cultures already had.
That doesn't mean God is "weak". It means applying human concepts to God just doesn't make sense. He will always be greater and above them.
> not see the absolute madness it implies
They absolutely agree with you there. That's why "they" flip out. That's what "they" find so important to tell you: absolute madness being true.
Except the book of Job. Where God explicitly tortures a person just to see if he can still be faithful to God. Kills his wife and kids! And when he is faithful, he gets what? His wife and kids back? No of course not, because those are property, he gets a NEW wife and NEW kids. Hahah, oops, all is forgiven right? No biggie.
> That doesn't mean God is "weak". It means applying human concepts to God just doesn't make sense. He will always be greater and above them.
God isn't even trying to show himself to exist. And for all the people of the world that are not convinced by incoherent babbling we shall all be condemned to suffer for eternity? That is neither logical, just, or even sane.
> Kills his wife and kids!
According to the book of Job, the suffering isn't done by God, but by the Devil.
> he gets a NEW wife and NEW kids.
His wife and kids are dead. Resurrecting people for the pleasure of another person, that's like puppets serving a master, it wouldn't be respectful and consequential.
> God isn't even trying to show himself to exist.
In my opinion he does. That's what the bible is; a collection of examples where God tries to show himself to exist. And he still does, every decade, every year, maybe even every day?
While its true that various pieces of Catholic "stuff" admit the possibility of salvation _without_ explicit belief in Christ, the vibes are still very much "if you know about Jesus/The Gospel then you probably need to believe in him to be saved, with some possible exceptions."
And a "state of separation" from God is expected to be a state of torture. Like maybe the idea of demons literally poking you in the eyeballs with hot pokers is out of fashion, but its clear Hell is still understood to be a deeply unpleasant place.
Different branches of Christianity are very different; you can’t assume that Catholics believe something just because most Protestants do.
Why does "statements" being stated in the past, preclude being about morality.
> But that is just a history exam!
Stating facts you don't believe won't get you anywhere. Believing is where much an active thing.
Like to be saved, most Christians say, one must believe a litany of things about the historical figure of Christ. But that is just a history exam! It seems highly implausible that the God most people think of when they think of the Christian God would assign torture and torment based purely on a failure to come to a certain historical conclusion.