I think a “catholic answer” would be that the will is permanently fixed upon death, so the wills of the souls in purgatory are “oriented” to heaven, it is just that God needs to “purify” them via punishment of a medicinal or restorative nature for a while before they can live in heaven. Without the punishment, these souls can’t live in heaven, e.g. it would be unbearable or impossible.
No. The goal of Purgatory is to purify the soul and make it holy for entrance to the Beatific Vision, not as a “second chance torture” stop.
So-- regret and repentance are sorrow over one’s errors, and resolving to change and do good in the future. In a situation where you can no longer accumulate additional merit on your own behalf through your own works and free will, that desire to change and do better doesn’t really have a place. Remember the parable of the talents— the master rewarded and punished his servants based on what they had done in his absence. The third servant had his excuses and apologies for his inaction, but he still got separated anyways.
So if i understand you correctly, in the Roman system, forgiveness is a reward for meritorious works?
Umm… hang on a second. You’re explicitly presuming that purgatory is a ‘place’ and is ‘temporal’. Are you sure about that?
Everyone in Hell has essentially chosen to hate God via mortal sin and in hating God, they have also chosen to hate everyone else. It is the opposite for those in Heaven. Those in Hell may want to repent (though it is doubtful), but only so that they no longer have to suffer. Those in Heaven cannot possibly have hate in their hearts and all traces of vice have been washed away and so, no longer being tempted in any way to commit sin, they don’t. In essence, those in Heaven are more free than ever and those in Hell have chained themselves up.I think a “catholic answer” would be that the will is permanently fixed upon death, so the wills of the souls in purgatory are “oriented” to heaven, it is just that God needs to “purify” them via punishment of a medicinal or restorative nature for a while before they can live in heaven. Without the punishment, these souls can’t live in heaven, e.g. it would be unbearable or impossible.
An additional concern would be: how is it meaningful to say those in heaven or hell have free will? If freedom of the will is integral to our humanity, but those in hell can’t repent and those in heaven can’t sin, how can we say there are any true human beings in either place? Indeed, some would have us believe God values freedom to an extreme extent, maybe more than anything else, certainly more than our happiness or eternal beatitude. But, should we believe he won’t tolerate it in his own house? Why not? Is it impossible because there is no “time” in the afterlife? I submit that many aspects of an authentic human existence aren’t possible without time either. Is it because the people in both places simply happen to continuously choose their respective fates, but they retain the intrinsic ability to either repent or sin, though it never happens (i.e. “locked from the inside”)? It seems like a few thousand years of fiery torture would change anyone’s mind!
It all depends on what you mean when you say “forgiveness.”
It is said that Satan’s idea was to remove free will from God’s creation.
Do you think the confusion might come from how purgatory is referred to as a place of “temporal punishment”, vs “eternal punishment”? The temporal punishment results in purification, in a way not accomplished by eternal separation from God. Although I know there were various medieval writers who (personally) visualized it as existing within time and space, the Church itself has never really defined the process/details/technicalities of Purgatory; just its nature and existence to accomplish X.
People in purgatory have not cut themselves off from God before death. They have not explicitly chosen to reject God and to reject Christ as their Savior. They certainly neglected their personal relationship with God, neglected their fellow humans, neglected their faith. But their sins were not mortal sins. They didn’t say, “I have no time for God and don’t want him in my life.” People who go to hell, and we don’t know with certainty that anyone is in hell because we don’t know what people do with their dying breath, have cut God out of their lives. They’ve done more than just neglect him; they’ve dismissed him from their lives, and God forces himself on no one.
Dreaming is no longer thought to be instantaneous. I was told that when I was little, too. We were told wrong, as in so many things.
That could be. Yet, calling it ‘temporal’ only contrasts it with ‘eternal’. That is, the Latin term ‘temporalis’ that is used in this paragraph of the CCC doesn’t imply ‘temporal’ (i.e., existing in a temporal framework) so much as it means ‘temporary’ (i.e., ‘not eternal’).
It’s important to be very precise with this statement, so that it doesn’t seem that we’re saying that we earn our way into heaven on our own efforts. We don’t.
So---- no matter of much merit we accumulate, we’re never in a situation where we can mosey up to God, and say, “Hey, God, this is what I deserve.” But we still have an obligation to strive to be the best people God created us to be, through our works and actions.
Well, ok, point taken.
Whenever I hear the word deserve in this context, I am reminded of my Protestant buddy from college, who, holding up a coffee pot, would yell, “People think they deserve good coffee, but all anybody DESERVES is to go to HELL!!!”Oh, absolutely, which is why I made sure to include the second sentence:
“Each individual has free will to accept or reject that gift [of salvation], which we could never earn on strength of our own merits.”
Part of it was some of old Baltimore Catechism lurking in the back of my head:
So---- no matter of much merit we accumulate, we’re never in a situation where we can mosey up to God, and say, “Hey, God, this is what I deserve.” But we still have an obligation to strive to be the best people God created us to be, through our works and actions.
And that’s all we know, right? That it has been said? By whom by the way?