If we go to Confession and receive absolution, I know our sins are forgiven. However, does this mean that we will not spend time in purgatory, assuming we never sinned again or does it place us in purgatory rather than hell.
Thanks in advance
The greater the penance a priest gives you in the Confessional the better for your purgatory – the penance given there by the priest has special value. However often what is given is not so much a penance but a learning experience or something else. One should do it with one’s whole heart.
So, however, generally, in these times any penance given in the Confessional is only a minute amount of the actual penance required for the sin. It is always required that you do more, though too this has always been so to some amount.
There used to be given standard penances for each sin. These gave a closer idea of the actual punishment due. Every sin deserves it’s punishment, like every crime before a criminal court and judge, doling out so many strokes of a cane for each crime.
‘Formerly there was imposed for certain sins a public penance of several years’ duration : and in all that time the sinner had to pray much and often, “pass the days in mourning, and the nights in watching and in tears,” to lie on a hard couch, to fast, give alms, and practice other good works. Though the ancient discipline is now laid aside, yet the justice of God is still the same, and sin is still as deserving of punishment as it was in the primitive ages.’
St. John Baptiste de la Salle
Note that in St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle’s time, the penances were still quite significantly greater than today.
Pope Clement XII, explains more preparing the bishops and priests to teach the faithful to do penance:
'You will begin most appropriately, and with hope of the greatest profit, to recall men to the observance of the holy law of fasting, if you teach the people this: penance for the Christian man is not satisfied by withdrawing from sin, by detesting a past life badly lived, or by the sacramental confession of these same sins.
Rather, penance also demands that we satisfy divine justice with fasting, almsgiving, prayer, and other works of the spiritual life. Every wrongdoing–be it large or small–is fittingly punished, either by the penitent or by a vengeful God.
Therefore we cannot avoid God’s punishment in any other way than by punishing ourselves.
If this teaching is constantly implanted in the minds of the faithful, and if they drink deeply of it, there will be very little cause to fear that those who have discarded their degraded habits and washed their sins clean through sacramental confession would not want to expiate the same sins through fasting, to eliminate the concupiscence of the flesh.
Besides, consider the man who is convinced that he repents of his sins more firmly when he does not allow himself to go unpunished. That man, already consumed with the love of penance, will rejoice during the season of Lent and on certain other days, when the Church declares that the faithful should fast and gives them the opportunity to bring forth worthy fruits of penance. After all, it is always necessary to subdue concupiscence, for it is written, “Do not follow behind your desires, and do not turn away from your will.”
Let the faithful easily turn their attention during this most holy time of year to lessening the intemperance of the body by fasting. In this way the soul might understand how it should prepare itself to recall the holy mysteries of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, those who are spurred on by penance do not seek the delicacies of the table, which seem indistinguishable from forbidden foods, even with abstinence. However, one can rightfully say that whoever sets them on his table does not so much put aside his customary delicacies as give his appetites over to unusual enticements. Finally, those spurred on by penance do not seek escapes by which they might withdraw from fasting, nor do they seek various subtleties to break ecclesiastical law.
It is your duty, Venerable Brothers, to inspire enthusiasm and love of penance in the faithful by word and example.’
Pope Clement XIII, Encyclical, Appetente Sacro, 12-20-1759 A.D.
of them, which I know is unusual, so perhaps you didn’t expect that from me. And I agree that someone concerned about temporal punishments would be well served to utilize them, especially for the souls in Purgatory (to get indulgences for them). But I still don’t know why you say that no temporal punishments are ever remitted in the full sacrament of confession (containing all the parts, including satisfaction). To my knowledge that would be wrong to claim.