Purgatory is a lie, from my Protestant friend

[Jon_S_1]

I’m Big BC’s friend.

The problem is that either the RC Church purposefully let the error of purgatory being a place (which resulted in indulgences and the split of the church, which is hardly “irrelevant”) exist for a thousand of years, and is an action that no right Christian would do for even a year, never the less a thousand years, or…Pope Benedict’s teaching is a new teaching and not a clarification. And if it is a new teaching, than the RC belief of Papal infallibility is proven incorrect.

Please, in your responses, try and address the topic in a civil manner worthy of a Christian and stay away from “I am not, you are” responses. Many of the responses so far are actually non-responses looking for an excuse to attack Protestantism.

Regardless of if it is a state or a place, the purpose and function of Purgatory and indulgences does not change. The reason time was affixed to indulgences was to aid our temporal minds in understanding an eternal reality. It is also to help us scale different sins that stain our souls. I wrote a blog on this addressing a Protestant who attacked CS Lewis for believing in Purgatory I will copy part of it here. The original is very lengthy but you can read it at findingthecatholicchurch.blogspot.com

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There are many quotes of CS Lewis’ that affirm a belief in Purgatory, many of which are listed in the blog post. Of course this falls into reason, as CS Lewis was an Anglican, and returned to the Anglican Church through the Evangelization efforts of his Oxford friend J.R.R. Tolkien and reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Both Tolkien and Chesterton were Catholic.

Lewis’ most notorious quote regarding Purgatory probably comes from The Great Divorce in which he states;

“Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy”? Should we not reply, “With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleansed first.” “It may hurt, you know”—even so, sir.”

So what does the Catholic Church teach about Purgatory?

Well the Catechism of the Catholic Church section 1030 and 1031 state:

1030 All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.606 The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:607

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.608

We of course can also look at other Catholic sources to further understand this such as Pope Benedict XVI’s:

"The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an ‘existential time,’ in terms of the time of this world would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in its simultaneous relationship with, and differentation from, the world.
. . .
"[Purgatory] is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.
. . .
“Encounter with the Lord is this transformation.”…

–Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, p. 230-231

We can also look to Pope John Paul II for a better understanding of these truths:

Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected. Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church’s teaching on purgatory. The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. Those who, after death, exist in a state of purification, are already in the love of Christ who removes from them the remnants of imperfection (cf. Ecumenical Council of Florence, Decretum pro Graecis: DS 1304; Ecumenical Council of Trent, Decretum de iustificatione: DS 1580; Decretum de purgatorio: DS 1820).
It is necessary to explain that the state of purification is not a prolungation of the earthly condition, almost as if after death one were given another possibility to change one’s destiny. The Church’s teaching in this regard is unequivocal and was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council which teaches: "Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed (cf. Heb 9: 27), we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth’ (Mt 22: 13 and 25: 30)” (Lumen gentium, n. 48).