A Catholic's UNDERSTANDING of Purgatory ... straight up ...
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ebia
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http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...nts/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html
Ideally read the whole thing as a good example of recent Catholic theology, but you can skip to paragraph 41 and following if necessary.
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That is what's said, yes.
Absolutely.
I agree. You could also claim that yet another place of purification must follow Purgatory in order to do some more torture. Or maybe a different one for every sin you ever committed. Or maybe a different one for sins of commission as opposed to sins of omission. But none of it is scriptural or even logical.
That is so...and the Catholic Church has taught, with some pride, that some of the greatest saints saw visions of people being in Purgatory for extremely long periods, many until the end of the world. And of course none of us will escape some time in Purgatory.
According to the theory, the Second Coming and the resultant judgment ends Purgatory.
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There are some pertinent sections from Spe Salvi. Because they are lengthy, I am dividing my post into sections with each addressing a particular paragraph in numerical order from 44 through 48. I have highlighted particular portions in blue.
44. To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love. God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these thingsjustice and gracemust be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. Here I would like to quote a passage from Plato which expresses a premonition of just judgement that in many respects remains true and salutary for Christians too. Albeit using mythological images, he expresses the truth with an unambiguous clarity, saying that in the end souls will stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what they once were in history, but only what they are in truth: Often, when it is the king or some other monarch or potentate that he (the judge) has to deal with, he finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever; he finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of perjury and wrong-doing ...; it is twisted and warped by lies and vanity, and nothing is straight because truth has had no part in its development. Power, luxury, pride, and debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and ugliness that when he has inspected it (he) sends it straight to prison, where on its arrival it will undergo the appropriate punishment ... Sometimes, though, the eye of the judge lights on a different soul which has lived in purity and truth ... then he is struck with admiration and sends him to the isles of the blessed. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.
Please note that the narrative about Lazarus and the rich man is described as being a parable - a distinction which neither Jesus nor the gospel writers make. The narrative is not presented in typical parabolic form and I submit that it was not a parable.
Note also, that the narrative is given a historicist spin by alleging that Jesus actually meant that this was describing an intermediate existence and not a permanent state - even though the narrative itself does not do so in any such form. One must read this into the narrative in order to reach this conclusion.
In actual fact, the narrative states explicitly that the rich man was in a torment of fire from which he could never escape nor from which he could ever hope for any relief - not even a drop of water from Lazarus.
44. To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love. God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these thingsjustice and gracemust be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. Here I would like to quote a passage from Plato which expresses a premonition of just judgement that in many respects remains true and salutary for Christians too. Albeit using mythological images, he expresses the truth with an unambiguous clarity, saying that in the end souls will stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what they once were in history, but only what they are in truth: Often, when it is the king or some other monarch or potentate that he (the judge) has to deal with, he finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever; he finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of perjury and wrong-doing ...; it is twisted and warped by lies and vanity, and nothing is straight because truth has had no part in its development. Power, luxury, pride, and debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and ugliness that when he has inspected it (he) sends it straight to prison, where on its arrival it will undergo the appropriate punishment ... Sometimes, though, the eye of the judge lights on a different soul which has lived in purity and truth ... then he is struck with admiration and sends him to the isles of the blessed. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.
Please note that the narrative about Lazarus and the rich man is described as being a parable - a distinction which neither Jesus nor the gospel writers make. The narrative is not presented in typical parabolic form and I submit that it was not a parable.
Note also, that the narrative is given a historicist spin by alleging that Jesus actually meant that this was describing an intermediate existence and not a permanent state - even though the narrative itself does not do so in any such form. One must read this into the narrative in order to reach this conclusion.
In actual fact, the narrative states explicitly that the rich man was in a torment of fire from which he could never escape nor from which he could ever hope for any relief - not even a drop of water from Lazarus.
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Paragraph 45 from Spe Salvi is as follows:
45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.
Please note that this paragraph glosses over "the complex historical paths of this development". These are not only complex, but, IMO, are quite tortured with the result being that the Catholic Church is unique in its development of this doctrine, standing quite apart from all other branches of Christianity. To accomplish this task the Catholic Church has had to read into this narrative an immense amount of doctrine neither explicitly or implicitly containted in the passage.
45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.
Please note that this paragraph glosses over "the complex historical paths of this development". These are not only complex, but, IMO, are quite tortured with the result being that the Catholic Church is unique in its development of this doctrine, standing quite apart from all other branches of Christianity. To accomplish this task the Catholic Church has had to read into this narrative an immense amount of doctrine neither explicitly or implicitly containted in the passage.
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Here is paragraph 46 from Spe Salvi -
46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God's judgement according to each person's particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.
Here is a second, favorite passage used to support the doctrine of Purgatory. In it Paul is quite explicit that "Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" There is not the slightest doubt here that our work is tested by fire and whatever survives the fire will be the basis for a reward. It is not the individual that is burned here, but his work. This is a very significant difference. Spe Salvi, however, states that it is the individual who is burned, not his work and that the Christian himself must pass through fire. This cannot be supported by the passage from I Corinthians.
46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God's judgement according to each person's particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.
Here is a second, favorite passage used to support the doctrine of Purgatory. In it Paul is quite explicit that "Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" There is not the slightest doubt here that our work is tested by fire and whatever survives the fire will be the basis for a reward. It is not the individual that is burned here, but his work. This is a very significant difference. Spe Salvi, however, states that it is the individual who is burned, not his work and that the Christian himself must pass through fire. This cannot be supported by the passage from I Corinthians.
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Ther was a beautiful article on the Spirit Daily site, containing St Catherine of Sienna's description of Purgatory, as it had been revealed to her.
It is actually a place of wonderful peace and love, as one would expect of an ante-room to heaven, in which the only sorrow, and one certainly keenly felt, is for one's own shortcomings in response to the inifinite love God bestowed on us in our life below.
It is actually a place of wonderful peace and love, as one would expect of an ante-room to heaven, in which the only sorrow, and one certainly keenly felt, is for one's own shortcomings in response to the inifinite love God bestowed on us in our life below.
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Paragraph 47 from Spe Salvi reads as follows:
47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
Here is the current Catholic spin on the doctrine of Purgatory. It is no longer a dreadful place of torment and punishment lasting for immense amounts of time, but it is now the consuming love of Jesus Christ which burns away our dross. However, it must be noted that this is not the official Catholic stance, by any means. It is merely the opinion of "Some recent theologians" which means that, although this is included within this official document, it is not by any means official doctrine. So, why include this opinion when it is one among a multitude of opinions regarding Purgatory?
47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
Here is the current Catholic spin on the doctrine of Purgatory. It is no longer a dreadful place of torment and punishment lasting for immense amounts of time, but it is now the consuming love of Jesus Christ which burns away our dross. However, it must be noted that this is not the official Catholic stance, by any means. It is merely the opinion of "Some recent theologians" which means that, although this is included within this official document, it is not by any means official doctrine. So, why include this opinion when it is one among a multitude of opinions regarding Purgatory?
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Here is paragraph 48:
48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too. As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.
In this paragraph the discussion turns to the topic of indulgences, specifically prayer. It attempts to reconcile the traditional understanding of Purgatory with the opinion of "Some recent theologians". To do so it commences with a justification for the use of indulgences. Lacking any biblical support or support from early Church history, the author falls back onto a curious interpretation of Jewish faith and practice, as if this was also standard Christian practice. Failing that effort, the author then launches into a flowery justification which contains precious little of substance. The bottom line is that either the traditional understanding of Purgatory as a place of dire suffering and torture is true or it is not and the opinion of "Some recent theologians" is true and Purgatory is a wonderful encounter with the consuming love of Jesus Christ. Both cannot be true.
48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too. As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.
In this paragraph the discussion turns to the topic of indulgences, specifically prayer. It attempts to reconcile the traditional understanding of Purgatory with the opinion of "Some recent theologians". To do so it commences with a justification for the use of indulgences. Lacking any biblical support or support from early Church history, the author falls back onto a curious interpretation of Jewish faith and practice, as if this was also standard Christian practice. Failing that effort, the author then launches into a flowery justification which contains precious little of substance. The bottom line is that either the traditional understanding of Purgatory as a place of dire suffering and torture is true or it is not and the opinion of "Some recent theologians" is true and Purgatory is a wonderful encounter with the consuming love of Jesus Christ. Both cannot be true.
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ebia
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You need to read the code a little. Spe Salvi is pretty radical and is therefore careful not to be definitive. It isn't attempting to say "... this is a position a Catholic must hold". What it does is set up an understanding that a Catholic may hold. "Some theologians" includes the writer himself, +Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI
It essentially skips over the mass of ever more grisly stuff that has been dreamed up in the past and says "this is all the word need actually mean:" and then presents something that need offend nobody.
A bit sad for those who like to perpetually reenact 16th century battles, but a positive thing for those who would prefer to move on.
It essentially skips over the mass of ever more grisly stuff that has been dreamed up in the past and says "this is all the word need actually mean:" and then presents something that need offend nobody.
A bit sad for those who like to perpetually reenact 16th century battles, but a positive thing for those who would prefer to move on.
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Yes, I do understand that Spe Salvi is hardly the Catechism nor should it be taken as such. I find it to be an interesting example of change within an allegedly unchanging church.
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Then that would be Catherine's idea of what an intermediate state in the afterlife ought to be like, having next to nothing to do with the Purgatory as defined by her church, the one and only owner of the idea.
I recall a thread like this perhaps several months ago. It was observed that the CCC mentions Purgatory in just one paragraph, as an intermediate stage--ie., of purification.
I believe the Church's teaching--or at least its emphasis--on Purgatory has evolved somewhat so as not to include the hell-like suffering that may have been previously described.
Further, I believe that "development" in certain Catholic doctrines does not constitute a lack of credibility with regard to said doctrines, but is a good thing. For the CCC says that the Church will continue to learn more about the significance of the Christian faith as the centuries pass.
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Albion
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It doesn't evolve unless the Church speaks. Not unless the Church decides to change its teachings. In the meanwhile, all the speculation and theorizing of popes and parishioners is just so much musing. And we know what the Catholics here think of those Christians who engage in any "individual judgment," don't we?
I don't know about that, but it isn't "development of doctrine" just because individuals here or there have their own ideas about church doctrine.
When and if the Church itself changes the definition of Purgatory, that'll be a totally different matter.
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The great difficulty with Catholic doctrine is that, on one hand, it is said to be fixed and unchanging truth, so that today when the Pope makes an ex cathedra pronouncement this is unchanged and unchanging truth, but on the other hand, Catholic doctrine is, in fact, very much like an amoeba - shifting here and shifting there, as exemplified by the doctrine of Purgatory. As a result, doctrine is relegated to varying degrees of unalterability. What was one pronounced as unalterable truth via Papal Bulls has been relegated to the dustbins of the Vatican, hopefully, never to be discovered and questioned.
So, the question is - what is the sincere Catholic to believe?
So, the question is - what is the sincere Catholic to believe?
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Albion
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Apparently they believe whatever they think best. I long ago concluded that Catholics are much more "straight" when it comes to believing that their church is the "one, true church" than they are to anything else that that one, true church demands of them as members. There is hardly any characteristically Catholic doctrine that is not denied by Catholics whom I personally know as friends. As for the contradiction, they just put it out of their minds.
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