“HEAVEN CAN WAIT”: Me, at Inside Catholic, in which I discuss Hell, American character, slapping your mama, and the centurion who speared the side of Christ:

There’s a terrific moment in the TV show House, in which the irascible and brilliant Dr. Greg House is explaining to a lapsed Catholic subordinate why he doesn’t believe in the afterlife. House, with all the self-lacerating irony that actor Hugh Laurie can impart to the character, says, “I would hate to think that all of this was just a test.”

House is right — and he’s offered a crucial diagnosis of one form of Catholic piety. There’s a way of thinking about the afterlife that makes this life, here, irrelevant and even inexplicable. Catholics will sometimes argue against universalism — the comforting belief that all people must be saved, because God would never be so cruel as to damn somebody’s grandma — by asking, “If everyone is saved, why even bother to do the right thing here on earth?”

more