In an interview with Playboy Magazine very shortly before his death from a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 63, which interview is part of a declassified FBI file, the man Maritain asked to pray for him declared that he would unhesitatingly choose hell over heaven:
PLAYBOY: Having accepted your own mortality, do ·you believe in any kind of afterlife?
ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not “is there life after death?” but “Is there life after birth?” I don't know whether there’s anything after this or not. I haven’t seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man’s obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let’s say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.
PLAYBOY: Why them?
ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people.
I enjoyed the delicious incoherence of Alinsky's first response.