Who goes to Heaven

Sometime in the last millennium (an expression guaranteed to make many of us feel our age), I hit upon what I think is a handy tool for understanding how God assesses the state of each person's soul. It comes from the legal concept of holding members of a board of directors responsible for the malfeasance of corporate officers and other employees. To determine whether the directors are culpable, the legal process must, as the expression goes, "pierce the corporate veil"—the veil which normally creates a buffer between the daily actions of those who work for a corporation and those who are legally responsible for the corporation as a whole. The questions that need to be answered to "pierce the corporate veil" and get at the guilt (or innocence) of the directors are essentially these three: (1) What did you know? (2) When did you know it? and (3) What did you do about it?

There is a sense in which we can apply a similar form of analysis to our own "true selves". Indeed, it seems to me that these questions are very close to what Our Lord's questions will be when the time comes for Him to judge each and every person who has ever lived, to assess each one's personal culpability for his or her failure to follow the Natural Law and to accept and live in accordance with Divine Revelation. What did you know? When did you know it? And once you knew, what did you do about it?

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