It has come to my attention that there is no hell. Other than the one on Earth. We all know that one.

This is a fantastic relief to me. As it would be to anyone. These past several years I have spent many bad nights in my inner confessional. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Forgive me Mother. Forgive me Brother, Forgive me Son. Forgive me Wife.

That last one’s a killer. The same medium authority — I am not in communication with a Higher Authority — who informed me there is no hell also reminded me how rotten I was to my wife sometimes. ‘Sometimes,’ of course, is the saving grace. If it were more than sometimes, like many times, or, god help me, always, I would be too dead to write these 690 words at this 11th hour.

Many famous and presumably bright minds have and do fear hell.

Senator Edward Kennedy is a classic example. After being diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, he wrote a personal letter to Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 and asked for his blessing. Ted was terribly worried about going to hell because of the Chappaquiddick incident.

Most everyone knows about that. Just after 11 o’clock on the night of July 18, 1969, Teddy, 37, left a drunken bash at a cottage on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts with 28-year-old campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne. Driving a black Oldsmobile, he took a wrong turn and drove the car off a bridge. It ended upside down in a murky pond. Kennedy said he tried to save the young woman, but she drowned, while Teddy scrambled to safety and scurried — not to the police — but back to the cottage to figure out what the hell to do about this mess.

The police weren’t contacted until eight o’clock the next morning, and not by Kennedy but by local residents after two fishermen spotted the submerged car.

According to the testimony of a deputy sheriff, who said he saw the car after Kennedy claims it plunged into the pond, there is an hour of Kennedy’s time with Mary Jo Kopechne before the crash that is unaccounted for.

Also, during the hours between the accident and discovery of the body, Kennedy was huddling with his lawyers at various locations and making calls on a payphone to come up with a plausible story — untrue but possibly believable.

TEDDY LIED LIKE HELL

In the end, Kennedy was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-year suspended jail sentence. Mary Jo’s parents were paid a huge sum to let the incident slide into the slime of unsolved cases of the super entitled elite.

It was obvious from all the testimony that Kennedy lied like hell about what really happened. In his biography, ‘True Compass,’ written years later he admits to his “inexcusable behavior” and “bad decisions.”

[Actual sequence of events HERE]

Kennedy, being a practicing Catholic, was at first niggled by guilt, and then, as he got older, nagged by guilt, and finally, when he knew he was dying, tormented by guilt.

So he wrote a long letter to the Pope, which President Obama personally delivered during a visit to the Vatican in July 2009.

ASKED POPE TO PRAY FOR HIM

“I’ve always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness,” the letter says in part. “And though I have fallen short through human failings I’ve never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith. I continue to pray for God’s blessings on you and on our church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.”

The Pope didn’t reply personally or anything as hell-avoiding as that. He had his secretary write a letter noting that the Pontiff appreciated the senator’s blessings, blah blah blah, and ended with an all-the-best sort of brush-off, have a good death.

Kennedy died the next month, on August 25, 2009, at 77.

Now, based on my information from this medium authority, Ted Kennedy need not have anguished over going to hell. Because there is no hell.

Phew, eh!

Well, that’s the scoop on hell. In the coming days we will deal with heaven. As they say in Hollywood, Heaven can wait.

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