Eternal burning in hell is not what Scripture teaches. Those who refuse to repent will be burned up in the Lake of Fire, and their souls will disappear in that fire rather than suffer conscious torment forever. This differs from the Catholic catechism, which affirms that hell is eternal, that souls of those who die in mortal sin descend at once into hell, and that they suffer the punishment of eternal fire as separation from God. That teaching rests on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which holds that every person is endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul. Pope Francis's reported remark that unrepentant souls simply disappear comes closer to the truth about the fate of the wicked, though it is not exactly what is taught here. Cardinal Nichols's claim that hellfire and brimstone belong to Catholic iconography rather than doctrine is a middle road, a way of keeping hell while setting aside its imagery. Catholic leaders sense serious holes in the doctrines of hell and the soul's immortality, but they lack God's Spirit and the courage to follow the truth through. Doing so would unravel their whole system, because the immortality of the soul is the card that holds the structure up.