QUOTATION: Conscience

It is well known that our conscience not only decides whether our actions are good or bad but also approves or disapproves of us.  When it disapproves it chastises and torments us with pangs of remorse.  And this is the fundamental temporal punishment within the purifying function willed by God.  Our pangs of conscience are a form of suffering that purifies.  They are more far-reaching in their inward effect than any temporal chastisement; for not only does a man really experience within himself the malice of sin, crime, injustice, injury, but he is also able to set himself free from it again --  an inner liberation but nonetheless a real one.

--Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, (Pope St. John Paul II), Sign of Contradiction, 1977

QUOTATION: The Rule of Bad Men

It is by divine permission that wicked men receive power to rule as a punishment for sin, as the Lord says by the Prophet Hosea (13:11): “I will give you a king in my wrath” and it is said in Job (34:30) that he “makes a man that is a hypocrite to reign for the sins of the people.” Sin must therefore be done away with in order that the scourge of tyrants may cease."

--St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

QUOTATION: Love of God is Salvation

He who does not acquire the love of God will scarcely persevere in the grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin merely through fear of chastisement.

-- St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Hell

But if the punishment due for our sins is put off till the next world, then it will be God's avenging justice, which puts everything to fire and sword, which will inflict the punishment, a dreadful, indescribable punishment: "Who understands the power of your anger?" Judgement without mercy, without relief, without merit, without limit and without end. Yes, without end. That serious sin you committed in a few brief moments, that deliberate evil thought which now escapes your memory, that word carried away by the wind, that brief action against the law of God - they shall all be punished for eternity, in the company of the devils in hell, so long as God is God. And this avenging God will have no pity on your torments, on your cries and tears, violent enough to cleave the rocks. To suffer forever, without merit, without mercy, and without end.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Punishment for Sin

Dear Friends of the Cross, we are all sinners; there is not one of us who has not deserved hell, and I more than anyone. Our offences have to be punished either in this world or in the next. If we suffer for them now, we shall not suffer for them after death. If we willingly accept punishment for them, this punishment will be an act of God's love; for it is mercy which holds sway and chastises in this world, and not strict justice. This punishment will be light and temporary, accompanied by consolation and merit, and followed by rewards both here and in eternity.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: The Wrong Attitude Towards God

The popular misunderstanding of the message of the prophets is far too anthropomorphic and childish: that God wants to be the boss, and when He sees people disobeying Him, He gets upset and takes it out on them. This is how a spoiled child perceives a parent’s loving discipline. Some of us never grow up.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Punishment for Sin

Different causes multiply the miseries of the sinner. God, who is a just Judge, sends them suffering, that crime may not remain unavenged; for though the punishment of sin is generally reserved for the next world, it sometimes begins in this. The government of Divine Providence equally embraces nations and individuals. Thus we see that sin, when it has become general, brings upon the world universal scourges, such as famines, wars, floods, pestilences and heresies.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Mercy and Punishment

God is not the Father of Judgement, but only the Father of Mercy, and punishment comes from our own selves.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Every sin has a price

Every wrongdoing–be it large or small–is fittingly punished, either by the penitent or by a vengeful God. Therefore we cannot avoid God’s punishment in any other way than by punishing ourselves.

--Pope Clement XIII, Appetente Sacro (On the Spiritual Advantages of Fasting) 1759

QUOTATION: Sin

Pride inflates man; envy consumes him; avarice makes him restless; anger rekindles his passions; gluttony makes him ill; comfort destroys him; lies imprison him; murder defiles him... the very pleasures of sin become instruments of punishment in the hands of God.

--Pope Innocent III, On the Misery of Human Condition, c. 1204

QUOTATION: Punishment

Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself. They do not see that by doing so they render all punishment unjust. What can be more immoral than to inflict suffering on me for the sake of deterring others if I do not deserve it? And if I do deserve it, you are admitting the claims of ‘retribution’. And what can be more outrageous than to catch me and submit me to a disagreeable process of moral improvement without my consent, unless (once more) I deserve it?

--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

QUOTATION: Chastisement

God has made the attainment of our happiness, his glory. Since he is by his nature infinite goodness, and since as St. Leo says goodness is diffusive of itself, God has a supreme desire to make us sharers of his goods and of his happiness. If then he sends us suffering in this life, it is for our own good: "All things work together unto good." Even chastisements come to us, not to crush us, but to make us mend our ways and save our souls: "Let us believe that these scourges of the Lord have happened for our amendment and not for our destruction."

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Uniformity with God’s Will

QUOTATION: The Punishment of Original Sin

In the punishment of that sin [Original Sin] the retribution for disobedience is simply disobedience itself. For man's wretchedness is nothing but his own disobedience to himself, so that because he would not do what he could, he now wills to do what he cannot.

--St. Augustine, City of God, 14:15