Just how hot is Hell anyway?

In the popular novel " To Kill a Mockingbird " Scout Finch begins her story sometime in the beginning of the Great Depression. "Summers seemed hotter then ", she says.

Today in the Bible Belt Hell at least is as hot as ever. Headline : " Pope causes a stir by suggesting hell is a state of mind. " There was room for this belief even in my old Baltimore Catechism. But if you perused the more scholarly Catholic Encyclopedia you might have come across Pope John Paul 's concept of hell : " the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy . "

But most Catholics actually lived in fear of a Gothic nightmare hell -vividly described in " Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man " by the Irish writer, James Joyce. And many people might recall the panic caused by the movie , " The Exorcist ".

But the Pope's view proves that faith can be reconciled with science -with the help of Jesuit logic.

The Old Time Religion of Elmer Gantry prefers the the old time hell of Dante's " Inferno ". It has better commercial and entertainment value. "Can you feel the pain ,wicked sinner ? Well if you could live long enough to lick Mount Sinai away, know then that fun has just begun. "

I read somewhere that the mind is its own place and it maketh a heaven or a hell .