Purgatory
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines
purgatory as a "purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to
enter the joy of heaven," which is experienced by those "who die in God’s
grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030). It notes
that "this final purification of the elect . . . is entirely different
from the punishment of the damned" (CCC 1031).
The purification is necessary because, as Scripture
teaches, nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven (Rev.
21:27) and, while we may die with our mortal sins forgiven, there can still
be many impurities in us, specifically venial sins and the temporal punishment
due to sins already forgiven.
Two Judgments
When we die, we undergo what is called the particular,
or individual, judgment. Scripture says that "it is appointed for men to
die once, and after that comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27). We are judged instantly
and receive our reward, for good or ill. We know at once what our final
destiny will be. At the end of time, when Jesus returns, there will come
the general judgment to which the Bible refers, for example, in Matthew
25:31-32: "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with
him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered
all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd
separates the sheep from the goats." In this general judgment all our sins
will be publicly revealed (Luke 12:2–5).
Augustine said, in The City of God, that
"temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others
after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last
and strictest judgment" (21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments,
then, that the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: "I
tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper"
(Luke 12:59).
Money, Money, Money
One argument anti-Catholics often use to attack
purgatory is the idea that the Catholic Church makes money from promulgating
the doctrine. Without purgatory, the claim asserts, the Church would go
broke. Any number of anti-Catholic books claim the Church owes the majority
of its wealth to this doctrine. But the numbers just don’t add up.
When a Catholic requests a memorial Mass for the
dead—that is, a Mass said for the benefit of someone in purgatory—it is
customary to give the parish priest a stipend, on the principles that the
laborer is worth his hire (Luke 10:7) and that those who preside at the
altar share the altar’s offerings (1 Cor. 9:13–14). In the United States,
a stipend is commonly around five dollars; but the indigent do not have
to pay anything. A few people, of course, freely offer more. This money
goes to the parish priest, and priests are only allowed to receive one
such stipend per day. No one gets rich on five dollars a day, and certainly
not the Church, which does not receive the money anyway.
But look at what happens on a Sunday. There are
often hundreds of people at Mass. In a crowded parish, there may be thousands.
Many families and individuals deposit five dollars or more into the collection
basket; others deposit less. A few give much more. A parish might have
four or five or six Masses on a Sunday. The total from the Sunday collections
far surpasses the paltry amount received from the memorial Masses.
A Catholic "Invention"?
Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic
Church "invented" the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have
difficulty saying just when. Most professional anti-Catholics—the ones
who make their living attacking "Romanism"—seem to place the blame on Pope
Gregory the Great, who reigned from A.D. 590–604.
But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica,
mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember
her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul
would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell
or in the full glory of heaven.
Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain
the graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions
of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some
of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the
Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
(both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice
of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians
believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it. (See
Catholic Answers’ Fathers Know Best tract The Existence of Purgatory
for quotations from these and other early Christian sources.)
Why No Protests?
Whenever a date is set for the "invention" of purgatory,
you can point to historical evidence to show the doctrine was in existence
before that date. Besides, if at some point the doctrine was pulled out
of a clerical hat, why does ecclesiastical history record no protest against
it?
A study of the history of doctrines indicates that
Christians in the first centuries were up in arms (sometimes quite literally)
if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative
people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our
ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory
would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the
first—so where are the records of protests?
They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the
oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that
"true believers" in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory
as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of
the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed
to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it.
It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the
existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the
belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell.
Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo
of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were
waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his
resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers
and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them
(1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they
experiencing the torments of hell.
Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers
is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even
if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that
a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture. Look at it
this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was purgatory, then this one verse
directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If the limbo of the Fathers
was a different temporary state, then the Bible at least says such a state
can exist. It proves there can be more than just heaven and hell.
"Purgatory Not in Scripture"
Some Fundamentalists also charge, as though it
actually proved something, "The word purgatory is nowhere found in Scripture."
This is true, and yet it does not disprove the existence of purgatory or
the fact that belief in it has always been part of Church teaching. The
words Trinity and Incarnation aren’t in Scripture either,
yet those doctrines are clearly taught in it. Likewise, Scripture teaches
that purgatory exists, even if it doesn’t use that word and even if 1 Peter
3:19 refers to a place other than purgatory.
Christ refers to the sinner who "will not be forgiven,
either in this age or in the age to come" (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that
one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly,
Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried.
And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? "He will suffer
loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor
3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell,
since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is
no suffering ("fire") there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains
this passage.
Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval
of prayers for the dead: "In doing this he acted in a very excellent and
noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for
if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless
and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to
the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness,
it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that
they might be freed from this sin" (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not
needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. That means
some people must be in a third condition, at least temporarily. This verse
so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of
the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out
of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.
Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine
of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time
of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time
of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today,
who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven
months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified.
It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather,
any change in the original teaching has taken place in the Protestant churches,
which rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.
Why Go To Purgatory?
Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed,
for "nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]" (Rev. 21:27). Anyone who has
not been completely freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, "unclean."
Through repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of
heaven, which is to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually
alive. But that’s not sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs
to be cleansed completely.
Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s
magazine, The Evangelist, put it, that "Scripture clearly reveals
that all the demands of divine justice on the sinner have been completely
fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed,
or purchased back, that which was lost. The advocates of a purgatory (and
the necessity of prayer for the dead) say, in effect, that the redemption
of Christ was incomplete. . . . It has all been done for us by Jesus Christ,
there is nothing to be added or done by man."
It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished
all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the
question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that
it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things,
the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy.
Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final
stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter
heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying
redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.
No Contradiction
The Fundamentalist resistance to the biblical doctrine
of purgatory presumes there is a contradiction between Christ’s redeeming
us on the cross and the process by which we are sanctified. There isn’t.
And a Fundamentalist cannot say that suffering in the final stage of sanctification
conflicts with the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement without saying that
suffering in the early stages of sanctification also presents a similar
conflict. The Fundamentalist has it backward: Our suffering in sanctification
does not take away from the cross. Rather, the cross produces our sanctification,
which results in our suffering, because "[f]or the moment all discipline
seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit
of righteousness" (Heb. 12:11).
Nothing Unclean
Purgatory makes sense because there is a requirement
that a soul not just be declared to be clean, but actually be clean, before
a man may enter into eternal life. After all, if a guilty soul is merely
"covered," if its sinful state still exists but is officially ignored,
then it is still a guilty soul. It is still unclean.
Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that
"nothing unclean shall enter heaven." From this it is inferred that a less
than cleansed soul, even if "covered," remains a dirty soul and isn’t fit
for heaven. It needs to be cleansed or "purged" of its remaining imperfections.
The cleansing occurs in purgatory. Indeed, the necessity of the purging
is taught in other passages of Scripture, such as 2 Thessalonians 2:13,
which declares that God chose us "to be saved through sanctification by
the Spirit." Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or
may not happen before one gets into heaven. It is an absolute requirement,
as Hebrews 12:14 states that we must strive "for the holiness without which
no one will see the Lord."
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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