A question about private revelation and hell

A reader writes:

What do you think about the many, many horrific dreams and visions of Catholics over the years regarding Hell?  When I first really dove into Catholic literature, I remember being really shook up over St. Teresa’s vision of the place she had merited there.  She was shoved into a tiny hole in a putrid tunnel of Hell, and felt like she would be there forever.  She liked to party before her deeper conversion, but never stopped being Catholic, or having respect for the faith.

A couple of months ago, New Advent linked to a famous story of Don Bosco, in which his angel showed him the horror of hell, and many of the boys he was caring for being eternally damned and tortured by the Devil in unspeakable ways.  Supposedly Don Bosco’s angel made him touch the outer wall of hell, and the pain was so great it woke him up with a hand that was badly burned.

Mark, what do you make of those visions?  Do you think that perhaps they could be deceptions of the Devil, so that we will think God’s nature is more like his?

I doubt that.  I reckon they were granted to the saints for their good and for ours–reminding us of the seriousness of the stakes we play for.  At the same time, I’m leery of elevating them to public revelation by declaring that they were “real” trips to Hell.  The mark of Hell is that nobody returns from there for the very good reason that the real denizens of hell (assuming there are any, which we don’t know) is that, terrifyingly enough, they want to be there and refuse to come out.  The gates of hell are barred from the inside.  Hell is the definitive *self*-exclusion of the soul from the society of God and the blessed.

I could see God allowing us to suffer acutely for every broken connection we caused.  It makes sense to me that someone like Hitler, by the mercy of God would be allowed to suffer for every ounce of pain he caused every member of humanity, but torture just for torture’s sake for all eternity seems contrary to the nature of God.  That seems so fruitless, sterile and vengeful.

That’s true.  And that’s why hell is the fruit of *our* choice.  Imagine a soul like Hitler’s confronted with a world in which nothing but total self-donating love is the rule for all creatures and he can have absolutely sphere at all to dominate, manipulate, lie, frighten, rule or overpower.  Being the sort of thing he insists on being, how would he experience such a world?  What would be his reaction to being immersed in the fire of God’s love?

The answer of the Tradition is: hell.  God would be doing nothing other than existing and being who he is.  The agony would all be entirely the choice of Hitler, perpetually hating the Love that he refuses.

As a father of children and grandchildren, how do you process this information, and how do you interpret those stories for them?

The Chronicles of Narnia help.  Lewis shows images of hell that make it clear it is not a sadistic invention, but the outworking of the logic of prideful sin itself.