I assume, or at least hope, that none of us is able to agree with the argument of Thomas (among others) that the knowledge of the torments of the damned will increase the felicity of the blessed in heaven (see Summa Theologiae, supplement to the third part, qu. 94)—even if, as the more irrepressibly eager of Thomas’s apologists will always helpfully observe, he means only that the saints will derive pleasure from the contrast between their beatitude and the damnation from which they were graciously spared, and not that the blessed will take sadistic delight in the spectacle as such.
