Was Christ damned on the Cross?

An interesting article on this is found here  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

from comment 18

Let me add something as a point of clarification and qualification. To be damned is to be without hope, and without charity. It is to know that one is eternally separated from God, with no hope, not even the possibility of there being hope. That is utter despair. To be damned is to hate God, and to hate His justice. To be damned is to hate oneself with never-ending hatred that knows itself to be never-ending. But Christ endured the cross for the joy set before Him; He always retained hope and charity. He did not despair (that would have been a mortal sin). Nor did He hate God. Thus He never hated Himself. Nor did He ever lose sanctifying grace; otherwise His human will would have been against His divine will. So, for these reasons, if we say that He experienced what it is like to be damned, we must include some very important qualifications. He experienced the external loss of divine protection, and the interior loss of spiritual consolation. The damned also experience that, so in those two respects Christ experienced what it is like to be damned. But Christ didn’t experience the despair, self-loathing, hatred for God and deprivation of grace that the damned experience. So in those respects Christ didn’t experience what it is like to be damned.

see also this link where Thomas Aquinus' s view of Christ descending into hell in the creed is explained: http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/05/christ-descended-into-hell-meaning.html

from comment 26 on the first link above:

 All three of the [synoptic] Gospel writers refer to the darkness that fell over the whole land from the sixth hour (i.e. noon) until the ninth hour (i.e. 3 pm). (Cf. Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, and Luke 23:44.) But so far as I know, none of the Church Fathers interpret this as an indication that God the Father ‘turned His back’ on the Son. This was a sign to those who had called “crucify him, crucify him,” just as darkness was one of the plagues of Egypt before the Passover, a sign that they were opposing God, and that they should repent. This was creation groaning over what was being done to its Creator.

As for the meaning of Christ’s cry “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” we should not understand that as meaning that the Son (in His divine nature) was cut off from the Trinity or separated from the perfect happiness of the divine life. But in His human nature He experienced what it is like to be handed over to His enemies and to suffer and die. In those respects He was forsaken. Likewise, in His human nature he experienced the absence of spiritual consolation, and in that respect too He was forsaken, even though He (in His human nature) did not cease to behold the Father. He spoke these words as man, that is, according to His human nature. But the Father never ceased to love Him, nor did the Father’s love for the Son ever diminish in the least. Everything the Son experienced on the cross, He Himself willed to experience, including these ways of being forsaken in His human nature. I recommend listening to the talk at this link.

also Newman's discourse on the death of Christ is helpful:[there is more at the link http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse16.html :

Our Lord said, when His agony was commencing, "My soul is sorrowful unto death"; now you may ask, my brethren, whether He had not certain consolations peculiar to Himself, impossible in any other, which diminished or impeded the distress of His soul, and caused Him to feel, not more, but less than an ordinary man. For instance, He had a sense of innocence which no other sufferer could have; even His persecutors, even the false apostle who betrayed Him, the judge who sentenced Him, and the soldiers who conducted the execution, testified His innocence. "I have condemned the innocent blood," said Judas; "I am clear from the blood of this just Person," said Pilate; "Truly this was a just Man," cried the centurion. And if even they, sinners, bore witness to His sinlessness, how much more did His own soul! And we know well that even in our own case, sinners as we are, on the consciousness of innocence or of guilt mainly turns our power of enduring opposition and calumny; how much more, you will say, in the case of our Lord, did the sense of inward sanctity compensate for the suffering and annihilate the shame! Again, you may say that He knew that His sufferings would be short, and that their issue would be joyful, whereas uncertainty of the future is the keenest element of human distress; but He could not have anxiety, for He was not in suspense; nor despondency or despair, for He never was deserted. {333} And in confirmation you may refer to St. Paul, who expressly tells us that, "for the joy set before Him," our Lord "despised the shame". And certainly there is a marvellous calm and self-possession in all He does: consider His warning to the Apostles, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak"; or His words to Judas, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" and, "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" or to Peter, "All that take the sword shall perish with the sword"; or to the man who struck Him, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou Me?" or to His Mother, "Woman, behold thy Son".

All this is true and much to be insisted on; but it quite agrees with, or rather illustrates, what I have been observing. My brethren, you have only said (to use a human phrase) that He was always Himself. His mind was its own centre, and was never in the slightest degree thrown off its heavenly and most perfect balance. What He suffered, He suffered because He put Himself under suffering, and that deliberately and calmly. As He said to the leper, "I will, be thou clean"; and to the paralytic, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"; and to the centurion, "I will come and heal him"; and of Lazarus, "I go to wake him out of sleep"; so He said, "Now I will begin to suffer," and He did begin. His composure is but the proof how entirely He governed His own mind. He drew back, at the proper moment, the bolts and fastenings, and opened the gates, and the floods fell right {334} upon His soul in all their fulness. That is what St. Mark tells us of Him; and he is said to have written his Gospels from the very mouth of St. Peter, who was one of three witnesses present at the time. "They came," he says, "to the place which is called Gethsemani; and He saith to His disciples, Sit you here while I pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and He began to be frightened and to be very heavy." You see how deliberately He acts; He comes to a certain spot; and then, giving the word of command, and withdrawing the support of the God-head from His soul, distress, terror, and dejection at once rush in upon it. Thus He walks forth into a mental agony with as definite an action as if it were some bodily torture, the fire or the wheel.

This being the case, you will see at once, my brethren, that it is nothing to the purpose to say that He would be supported under His trial by the consciousness of innocence and the anticipation of triumph; for His trial consisted in the withdrawal, as of other causes of consolation, so of that very consciousness and anticipation. The same act of the will which admitted the influence upon His soul of any distress at all, admitted all distresses at once. It was not the contest between antagonist impulses and views, coming from without, but the operation of an inward resolution. As men of self-command can turn from one thought to another at their will, so much more did He deliberately deny Himself the comfort, and satiate Himself with the woe. In that moment His soul thought not of the future, He thought only of the {335} present burden which was upon Him, and which He had come upon earth to sustain.

from comment 157 here  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

 what St. Thomas is speaking of when he writes of the interior suffering (suffering in soul) of Christ for the sins of the whole human race. According to St. Thomas, because Christ in His Passion retains the beatific vision, He sees each sin ever committed and to be committed, and sees perfectly the way it wrongs God by failing to give Him the love, obedience, honor and glory that is due to God. Hence St. Thomas says in Summa Theologica III Q.46 a.6, when he writes:

The cause of the interior pain was, first of all, all the sins of the human race, for which He made satisfaction by suffering; hence He ascribes them, so to speak, to Himself, saying (Psalm 21:2): “The words of my sins.”

According to St. Thomas, the interior pain was not one of His conscience tormenting Him for wrongdoing, since He had never sinned. Nor was the Father angry with Him, and pouring out an angry tirade within Christ’s soul for our sins, while Christ ‘took it like a man.’ Rather, Christ was sorrowed, grieving in His soul over our sins. In Catholic language, as our High Priest He was making an act of contrition for all our sins, in solidarity with us. His solidarity with us, in His heart grieving over our sins and their offense against God, this was the source of His internal suffering. This is the way He ‘stood in the gap,’ not by receiving a stream of wrath from the Father, but by making the perfect act of contrition to the Father on our behalf as both intercessor (High Priest), and victim (i.e. sacrifice).