The Lack of Consistency in Theological Teaching about Purgatory

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If the two are not in conflict, but only providing two aspects of the same picture, there is no difficulty.
 
No one dares claim a perfect human nature and since that’s necessary who would say they won’t need at least a few minutes of purgatory.
 
Benadam said:
No one dares claim a perfect human nature and since that’s necessary who would say they won’t need at least a few minutes of purgatory.
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Mary was sinless and had a perfect human nature, and presumably skipped Purgatory. But setting her aside, the problem with that line of thinking for ordinary humans is we don’t get to heaven on our human nature because nobody is ever perfect enough for God. Even sitting in Purgatory for eternity wouldn’t be enough to get us there without God’s mercy. We simply can’t perfect ourselves alone. God is the one who decides how and when we get to Heaven, and there’s a strong school of theological thought that trust in God’s mercy overcomes all.

In other words, if you think you’re going to Purgatory, you’ll go.
If you just love and trust enough in God while of course trying to live the best you can on earth, you probably won’t go.

In my experience, there’s two kinds of Catholics: the group of Catholics who think everybody who’s “not Hitler” is going straight to Heaven, and I don’t think any of them post on this forum, and the other group who think everybody is going to need to sit in Purgatory because we’re all imperfect. In reality there will probably be some people who don’t need to go to Purgatory at all or for whom it lasts an eye-blink as someone said.
 
The flip side of that is that if he sets his goal at seventy-five sales, because that is all he thinks he can get, and then gets behind, he may end up in the unemployment line.

If Purgatory is our goal, we aren’t moving in the right direction.

ICXC NIKA
 
I’ve found that the Eastern Orthodox (EO) position is that the souls in hell can also receive salvation by our prayers (ironically similarly sounding to the way purgatory works). So there may be supplemental knowledge about this issue not just in the RC church but in the EO teachings.
 
No, there isn’t “supplemental knowledge” in some other non-Catholic church about Catholic teaching.
The Catholic teaching is that souls in hell are in hell and they don’t receive salvation, they lost their chance and hell is where they stay.

It is more likely a confusion or semantics, between how the EO defines hell and how the Catholics define hell.
 
Well, setting aside how I feel about CS Lewis, I often hear that sort of statement. On the one hand it seems reasonable, on the other hand it raises some questions because even the greatest saints were “aware of their filthiness” (you’ll often find them referring to themselves as being a poor sinner or similar) but it’s questionable whether they actually spent any Purgatory time.

I see Robert Stackpole wrote some interesting discussion of the St. Catherine quote along with other material from St. Francis de Sales and others.

www.thedivinemercy.org

Part 4: What's So Painful About Purgatory?

Many saints testify that the deepest suffering of the souls in purgatory comes from longing for union with God.
www.thedivinemercy.org www.thedivinemercy.org
 
The concern from my standpoint is not just whether we personally have to go to Purgatory first rather than being able to skip over it, but the implications that the idea of an almost-mandatory Purgatory have regarding our relationship with God. St. Therese for example taught that our thinking of Purgatory as being practically mandatory actually is hurtful to God. Why would we want to think in a manner that is hurtful to God?
 
What difference does it make when sth is not in our control?
God is too big. We have no dimension of that. Aim at that hug . And if we have to wait and cue a bit at the door because of a long line before we get to it. So be it…We ‘ ll get that big hug…
Not in our control anyway realistically speaking…we don’t know what it will be like nor exactly what or how and that is all right…
 
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graciew said:
What difference does it make when sth is not in our control?
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See my above post regarding our attitude towards Purgatory possibly hurting God, according to a Doctor of the Church.
It’s about our attitude, not where we ultimately go.
I don’t know about you, but I am trying NOT to hurt God in my daily life.
 
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I read it, Tis. Ultimately the Church says there is Purgartory but doesn’t give statistics or percentages … that is how individuals perceive it or may perceive it and that is fine. I don’t see how God can be hurt by our accepting( or thinking, or deducing or inferring) that there may be a stop in our flight instead of non stop. It is an attitude towards that also, different maybe, maybe just assuming that I make mistakes all the time…no matter how much I may love God, my family , friends…And He knows our hearts.
I don’t know. I ll leave it at that, Tis.
 
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It’s not our acceptance of the fact that we might go that is hurtful, according to St. Therese. It’s our taking the attitude that just about everybody is going to Purgatory and assuming that we personally will almost certainly go there too.

In her time, it was the general thinking that everybody who isn’t some great canonized saint of the Church is going to have to go to Purgatory. And it is still the thinking today. People just assume that everybody’s going to Purgatory; the only time we talk about avoiding Purgatory is when some priest is pushing plenary indulgence practice, or Divine Mercy devotion. Discussions of Purgatory focus on whether Purgatory is painful or pleasant and which book by which priest or saint expresses it best, rather than on whether we really should need to go there at all.

Of course, all of the above assume you have a priest who is old school enough to even bring up Purgatory. Most non-traditional priests don’t even talk about it since Vatican II.

I’ll leave it at that. But given that the Church is permitting people to have all kinds of views on Purgatory, I will go with the Doctor of the Church, myself.
 
I don’t know and I personally don’t dwell on Purgatory, nor think about it much if at all.
Peace
 
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I take it that “NDE” means “near death experience”? Could you please clarify?
 
When we tell our dying relatives, on their deathbeds, that we forgive them despite what they’ve done, wouldn’t that help clear the way for them to avoid hell? The fact that a loved one has forgiven them, wouldn’t God take that up and add it to His forgiveness?

I know of a cousin who initially wasn’t going to go see her father who only had hours left to live, because of bitterness over how he had abandoned the family and his cruelty toward her mother. But then, she decided to go see him, anyway, and when she did, tears began streaming down his face. She got up close to him and softly told him she forgave him, and he managed a smile.

I would think that man would at the very least be in Purgatory now, and quite probably in Heaven – due to a loved one’s expression of love and charity.

Agree?
 
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Yes, by that I meant Fr. Groeschel explicitly said that when he had a bad accident and had no vital signs for almost an hour, he did not have any other sort of “out of body experience” at all.
 
JanR said:
When we tell our dying relatives, on their deathbeds, that we forgive them despite what they’ve done, wouldn’t that help clear the way for them to avoid hell? The fact that a loved one has forgiven them, wouldn’t God take that up and add it to His forgiveness?
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Us forgiving Them helps Us, not Them. The Lord looks at whether a person forgave others - not was forgiven by others, which is something the dead person has no control over.

The Lord’s Prayer says, “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
It doesn’t say, “And forgive us our trespasses, as the others we’ve trespassed against forgive us.”
God’s judgment is not going to be bound by whether some person on earth is in a forgiving mood or not.

So in the example you gave, the Lord would look at whether Father forgave the people who did wrong to him. The forgiveness shown by Cousin would be considered by the Lord when he judges Cousin at the time of her own death.
 
I too saw the video. That book by Fr Schoup also says that the souls in Purgatory are very happy.
There is also an incident where someone who was in Purgatory freely chose to return there rather than to face the incertainty of salvation in this life.
 
poche said:
There is also an incident where someone who was in Purgatory freely chose to return there rather than to face the incertainty of salvation in this life.
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Sorry but I don’t understand what this means. Can you clarify this for me.
If a person is in Purgatory it means they have died. They cannot return to life on earth and then go back to Purgatory again. The next step from Purgatory is Heaven. Once in Heaven you cannot go back to Purgatory.
 
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