Distinctive Teachings
208. Catholics are committed to the doctrine of purgatory, i.e., to a process of purgation that occurs in or after death, and to the possibility that the living by their prayers can aid the departed undergoing this process. This aid will be discussed in the next section of this report, but here it should be noted that, for Catholic teaching, purgatory must be so understood as not to exclude this possibility.
239 As the survey of Catholic teaching on purgatory above shows, there is no binding Catholic doctrine on the spatial or temporal character of purgatory, on how many
Christians go through purgatory, or on the intensity or extent of their sufferings. While all the justified are transformed by eternal glory, Catholics admit the possibility that some people incur no further punishment after death.
209. Lutherans teach that all the justified remain sinners unto death (JDDJ, 29). Sin and the effects of sin in those who die in Christ will be removed prior to entrance into eternal glory. In effect, they teach the reality of purgation, even if not as a distinct intermediate state. The rejection by the Lutheran Reformers of the doctrine of purgatory as they knew it focused on practices and abuses perceived as bound up with this teaching. They judged that the doctrine of purgatory obscured the gospel of free grace. The Confessions explicitly express a willingness to discuss purgatory if the doctrine were separated from these practices and abuses, although at the same time expressing doubt about the biblical foundation of any such teaching (SA II, 2.14).
210. The differences between Catholic and Lutheran teaching on purgatory thus focus on 1) how the living relate to those undergoing this purgation, and 2) the extent and explicit character of the binding teaching on purgation and purgatory. The more explicit the binding teaching, the greater the difficulty Lutherans have in seeing this teaching as biblical and thus binding. We have seen in this dialogue that explicit Catholic doctrine on purgatory is more limited than often recognized. As the Catholic attitude toward differences with the Orthodox indicates, these two differences are not entirely separable. Common practices toward the dead can provide an assurance that permits a diversity in formulation. The following discussion of prayer for the dead must thus be considered in assessing the ecumenical significance of Catholic-Lutheran understandings of purgatory.
Convergences
211. Today, Lutheran and Catholic teaching integrates purgation with death, judgment, and
the encounter with Christ. Recent Catholic and Lutheran understandings of purgation sound remarkably similar. While the word “purgatory” remains an ecumenically charged term, and for many Catholics and Lutherans signals a sharp division, our work in this round has shown that our churches’ understandings of how the justified enter eternal glory are closer than expected.
212. In light of the analysis given above, this dialogue believes that the topic of purgation,
in and of itself, need not divide our communions.240
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