Even in the Christian tradition, the concept of hell was around quite a while before the Catholic Church existed.  References exist to hell in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as other books, all written before the time of Constantine, who organized the most widely used books at the time into a Roman cannon.

I believe that most people have a picture in thier mind of what hell is supposed to be. To put it simply it is the most undesireable place imaginable that you could go. Not necessarily some big lake filled with fire and demons dancing around. Besides that, the Catholic church did not invent the idea of Hell.