ESSAY ON HELL

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30593, 9 November 1964, Page 2

ESSAY ON HELL

Controversial Catholic [By Susan Vaughan] Mrs Magdalene Goffin is one of a number of liberal Catholic intellectuals whose views are gaining attention in the present changing climate of opinion in the Roman Catholic Church. She contributed an extremely controversial essay 'to a new book called “Objections to Roman Catholicism.” which is likely to have the same impact on Catholics as “Honest to God” had on Anglicans last year. She does a particularly devastating demolition job on the Catholic idea of hell. Mrs Goffin has long been a [seeker after truth. She is a I historian. Her father, E. I. IWatkin, is a philosopher and I writer. Not long ago, they were tussling with the Roman Catholic church of St. Augustine, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The collection of saints' relics there—among them claimed to be fragments of the bodily remains of the 12 Apostles and the tomb of the Virgin Mary—were said by Mrs Goffin to be “pious frauds.” ] Mrs Goffin does not see her [comments as undermining her i faith. “For one person helped by these misleading relics, 99 are driven away.” she says. “If .people are to accept the [Church’s teachings, we must separate the truth from the obvious fictions of the past.” (All Rights Reserved)