Fear of eternal suffering/hell for mobsters?

Ive always wondered, although most mobsters are not religious obviously, they do know the basics of religion and heaven/hell. Whether they believe it or not is another question. I have always wondered about the people who have a lot of hits under their belt if they are scared about going to hell and paying for their sins in eternity. I always think about when they are on their death bed if they regret all of the misery that they have caused people, or maybe they just dont care or dont believe that there is a heaven or hell and there is just nothing after life. If they dont believe in god and heaven/hell they better be right because we all know they will burn in hell for eternity. If i was them, and I was say on my death bed I would definitely run it in my mind about what will happen when I die...

any thoughts?

Wiseguys dont go to hell, they go to purgatory


Chris: I forgot all about purgatory.

Paulie: Purgatory. A little detour on the way to paradise.

Chris: How long you think we gotta stay there?

Paulie: Now that's different for everybody. You add up all your mortal sins and multiply that number by 50. Then you add up all your venial sins and multiply that by 25. You add it together. Then that's your sentence. I figure i have to do about 6000 years before I get accepted into heaven. And 6000 years is nothing in eternity terms. I can do that standing on my head. It's like a couple of days here.

lmao that is hilarious i was watching that episode today hence one of the reasons i made this thread! wow what a coincidence. in all seriousness though, this thought has to cross their mind sometime in their lives.

Like everyone on Earth, they justifiy their sins one way or another. They either tell themselves their sins were out of neccessity, weren't major sins or that they are simply following the life.

Since we are talking about The Sopranos, there was one episode were Tony is talking to Melfi about Hell.

Tony: The worst people. The twisted and demented psychos who kill people for pleasure, the cannibals, the degenerate bastards that molest and torture little kids. They kill babies. The Hitlers. The Pol Pots. Those are the evil fucks that deserve to die, not my nephew.
Dr. Melfi: What about you?
Tony: What? Hell? You been listening to me? No, for the same reasons. We're soldiers. Soldiers don't go to hell. It's war. Soldiers they kill other soldiers. We're in a situation where everyone involved knows the stakes and if your gonna accept those stakes you gotta do certain things. It's business. Soldiers. We follow codes, orders.


Basically justifying any bad action he does by saying it's not as bad as the worst actions commited by some people. How convienant that he draws the line right after the sins he commits.

it doesnt phase them whatsoever, especially the button men, ive known guys that have half of dozens bodies under thier belt and they dont loose an ounce of sleep over it, they look at it as its the life they choose and in thier world they all have to live by it, fu*k the tv and soprano refernces use some real life shi* youd would think in thier nightmares the children, family and froiends would haunt them, but like you guys said they all have thier own way of justifying it.

I bet most of them are religious actually, but as has been pointed out, they don't think their actions justify the consequences of their religion.

Good thing for them religion is all a bunch of BS lol

I know many of people who drop body and they justify it by saying it me or him.They justify it and they mind is anyone thinking of the after life when taking a life?

It seems most of them are religious, at least in the sense of belief in God and the devil, heaven and hell, etc. But Sopranos scene Ted described above seems to be the way many of them think. Many of these guys have or would feel guilty if an innocent person, especially a woman or child, gets hurt or killed because of them. But not another mob guy. What's strange is they seem to assume God makes that distinction too, i.e. the guy they killed was also in the life so He will just overlook it.

ChickenMan, you kinda remind me of someone we used to know...

Joe Bonanno had a blessing from the Pope granting instant aseention into Heaven upon his death....it was framed in his house.

I read that Fat Tony Salerno did not give a rats ass about confessing to a priest when he died in the Fed Hospital. He actually ordered a biker guy to kill someone when he got out of the prison. OTOH, Dutch Schultz (Jewish - Arthur Flegenheimer) was so worried about going to hell that he converted to Catholic on his death bed so he could get absolved of his sins. I doubt it worked in his case.

Frank Calabrese Sr. said the thing that bugged him the most about anything he'd ever done, including murdering somewhere around a dozen people, was burning Saints cards in his hand when he became a made man.

He also turned to the Bible in the joint and referenced it often.

I can't even begin to explain except to say that my impression of Calabrese Sr. was that he was kind of an ogre and not very smart.

Don't confuse evil for stupid. Calabrese wasn't stupid. He at least had average intelligence, but an evil sociopath he was.

As Ted pointed out, a lot of these people compartmentalize their faith with their Mafia membership. Bonanno, as some of you pointed out, is one example, Joe Profaci, Frankie Yale, Al Capone, etc, are many more examples. Some, like John Gotti, became atheists. Sam DeStefano claimed to worship the devil. I think Sonny Black told Joe Pistone that he feared going to Hell.

I don't think so. I'll give you one example, the feds admitted that if he had treated his brother with just an ounce more respect, Nick would have never flipped. The more "evil" one is the more one must think of one's personal relationships strategically. He wildly misjudged his brother, wildly midpsjudged his kids, and never rose up much farther than loan shark. His testimony was comically bad, and in fact Mitch Halpirn and the other defense attorneys later blamed his awfully saccharine and unbelievable testimony for sinking everyone else.

As far as mobsters go, he seemed little more than a thug.

Like I said, he was of average intelligence. He was also a narcissist who looked down on others. As for his testimony, I don't think there's anything he could have said that would have changed the result. There was too much evidence and a lot of the old-time corruption was weeded out. Agree that he was a thug; most of them were.