When catholic adherents passed away before the change in "sin" are they now released from your purgatory?
No. Provided, that is, that they are in Purgatory for deliberately disobeying the injunction of not eating meat on a Friday. Vatican II allowed for the substitution of another penitential practice on Fridays in place of abstinence from meat, so while the
form of the discipline has changed, the
content has not. Ergo, if someone were in Purgatory for this particular issue, changing the form of the injunction does not alter the purgation incurred, since the issue itself deals with the deliberate disobeying of an injunction established by valid ecclesiastical authority, and not whether they ate an Oscar Meyer weiner at the ball park on Friday afternoon.
That having been said, it must be re-iterated that a person in Purgatory will be released when God sees fit to release them, not before. Clever questions and issues of semantics will not change that. You may not agree with the doctrine of Purgatory, and if so, that's fine, but coming up with cute scenarios like this one does not negate the reality of it. It's easy to mock something you don't understand or disagree with, and you might even feel justified by being able to tangle up a lay Catholic who doesn't boast a Ph.D in moral theology with this kind of a question, when he can't come up with an answer to it. Taking it upon yourself to study the doctrine, its origin, history, development, theology, application in exegetical hermaneutics, and relation to both Tradition and Scripture, so that you actually understand the subject at hand instead of what somebody else may have erroneously told you about it---well, that part isn't quite so easy.
>>>>1 Timothy 4:3 must not be taken out of its overall theological and historical context; it was written in reference to the Judaizers and the Gnostics, not to the Catholics.<<<<
That is a nice spin to avoid Scripture but to no avail for Paul says "in latter times" and makes no reference to any sect only to doctrines that would be taught as the RCC adheres to.
You may think I have "spun" the issue, Coach, but in fact, I have not. I have merely placed the passage in question within the contemporary historical and theological milieu in which it was orginally written. Once more, we're getting into the issue of authority and the whole
sola scriptura thing again. Do you interpret the verse by means of just the Bible, or do you interpret the verse within a larger framework which may have bearing upon its application?
Catholics take a passage of Scripture and look at it within the overall application of Scripture, Tradition, theology, history, exegesis, and so on; i.e., who was this passage written to? What sort of situation were those original addresses living in? What sort of people was the author talking about, and what groups were extant at that period of history which fit the description the author is putting forth? What kind of literature is this---didactic, historical, prophetic, apocalyptic? How does it compare with other passages in Scripture? With Tradition? With other contemporary writings of the period, both secular and religious? How have various scholars interpreted this verse throughout the ages? How do their interpretations compare with each other? Do these interpretations adhere to, or reject, the Apostolic Deposit of the Faith? With patristic literature? With Scripture?
Protestants, on the other hand, tend to take the same passage and read it at face value, divorced of any kind of context, and apply it to contemporary situations which they see around them. "Paul says some people will forbid the eating of certain foods, and I see that Catholics don't eat meat of Fridays. Therefore, Catholics must be the people Paul was talking about." That's a quick and easy interpretation, but also relatively shallow. It would be very similar to taking the list of offenses attributed to King George III in the American Declaration of Independance, and applying it to contemporary situations right now: "Hmmm. The Declaration says that the King has set himself up as the sole judge, has cut off our trade with parts of the world, has plundered our seas, burned our towns, and killed our people, has employed foreign mercenaries, and has endeavored to induce barbarians on our frontiers to destroy us. I see that Osama bin Laden has done all these things; therefore, that must be who this document is talking about."
Any legitimate historian, of course, would collapse with laughter at such an interpretation----but that type of reasoning is not at all inconsistant with the way some Protestants try to interpret Holy Scripture. When you set yourself up as the sole authority for translating Holy Writ (even if you think you're led by the Spirit of God Himself), divorced from all other contexts, you're creating a recipe for rather novel interpretations. It's no wonder that there are 20,000 Protestant denominations, all of them with different ideas.
You are, of course, under no compulsion to agree.
Blessings,
---Wols.