Is Hell for real?

Read the Catechism in a Year

Catechism in a Year: Day 149

Part One: What We Believe
- Section Two: The Christian Profession of Faith- - Chapter Three: "I Believe ... in Life Everlasting"
Question 161: What is hell?

Hell is the condition of everlasting separation from God, the absolute absence of love.

Someone who consciously and with full consent dies in serious sin, without repenting, and refuses God’s merciful, forgiving love forever, excludes himself from communion with God and the saints. We do not know whether anyone at the moment of death can look absolute Love in the face and still say No. But our freedom makes that decision possible. Jesus warns us again and again not to separate ourselves definitively from him by shutting our hearts against the need of his brothers and sisters: “Depart from me, you cursed … As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me” (Mt 25:41, 45).

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Question 162: But if God is love, how can there be hell?

God does not damn men. Man himself is the one who refuses God’s merciful love and voluntarily deprives himself of (eternal) life by excluding himself from communion with God.
God yearns for communion even with the worst sinner; he wants everyone to convert and be saved. Yet God created man to be free and respects his decisions. Even God cannot compel love. As a lover he is “powerless” when someone chooses hell instead of heaven.

Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (1033-1037) and other references here.

Recommended Reading: A Map of Life by Frank Sheed