THE DOCTRINE THAT HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY ARE HELPLESS

The Catholic Church teaches that anybody who dies in venial sin or cleansed of personal sin but who hasn’t made up for sin by penance goes to Purgatory to be purified before she or he can enter Heaven. The idea is, that nobody can enter God’s presence unless they are perfect like God who being perfect himself cannot endure imperfection. The souls in Purgatory cannot sin and cannot help themselves. The reason is that they cannot pray (page 18, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). They have to stay there until they have suffered enough and/or until enough has been done by the living on their behalf to win their freedom. The souls must repent the moment they enter Purgatory for it is a fresh sin to spend even a moment in sin for repentance has to be done in haste.
 
An approved Catholic book says that the fervent prayers of a soul in Purgatory “are no longer meritorious” and that “it is certain that these souls in Purgatory, as their purification advances, make more and more fervent acts (non-meritorious), which attain at least to the degree of intensity of the infused virtue from which they proceed. These acts do not merit an increase of this virtue” (page 98, The Mother of God and Our Interior Life). The soul in Purgatory does not even deserve to be helped to love God more by its work and suffering in Purgatory! A forgiving God would give you such great help that you would never make it to Purgatory for Heaven would be open. God forces them not to love him more and yet if he exists he would have made them and us just to love him.
 
The living are treated as superior beings to them or singled out for better treatment even though the living are sinners and the souls in Purgatory are holy and beyond sin! The doctrine of Purgatory is truly malign. It is obvious that the doctrine was developed by the Church to make money out of selling masses and indulgences for the captives in Purgatory.
 
The souls must pray to God and do other good works. Willing what God wills is a good work. Yet God will not accept their holiness as atonement but just treats them as if they made no offering of love to him at all. If they don’t sacrifice to him them they don’t love him and if they don’t love him then Purgatory is not a place to purify them, to perfect them in love, at all but a dungeon of psychopathic brutality. It is that if they can’t love him either because that is God putting the desire to make them suffer before the desire to make them saintlier.
 
A God who despises their amendment or attempted amendment is a God of evil. He refuses to acknowledge that the past is the past and that it is the present and the future that matter and that they are doing all they can and so deserve to enjoy the fruits of their struggle. Purgatory dishonours his name and his alleged generosity with forgiveness when the notion of helpless souls filling it is included in it.
 
The rejection of the souls and their works also infers that the free will of the souls has been removed by God for free acts deserve rewards and the idea that they can’t sin accentuates this even more. It is a place where one is turned into a robot or near-robot. It is cruel to purify a being that has no free will this agonising way. Also, purification is focused principally and essentially on the will. If I remove your free will to purify you then I am not purifying you but purifying the robot I have turned you into. I cannot impose purification – you have to consent to it all the way. Why not just magically make that being choose only what is good?
 
While on earth a soul can cancel all her sins and the punishment due to them by an act of pure and total and repentant love so that sin is totally turned away from and despised and God loved in its place. This is called perfect contrition and imperfect contrition is repenting for more selfish reasons and it only gets sins pardoned in confession for it is not good enough.
 
Repentance that falls short of being based entirely on selfless love for God does not wipe away all the punishment you have to undergo to please God. The Church now says that this punishment is not vengeance from God but is the correction of the damage sin does namely in making us less attached to God (pages 331,2, Catechism of the Catholic Church). This is another one of the endless changes of doctrine that the Church won’t admit to for it used to teach it was vengeance. The attachment to sin has been reversed in repentance by the souls. It is vengeance to demand further punishment. If you love God perfectly then there is nothing left to punish. Even if you are weak the effort is what counts. God would not debit temporary punishment to your account if you love him perfectly when he cancels it for people who are less worthy and who get an indulgence.
 
Perfect love heals.

Adult baptism forgives all punishment due to sin along with all the sins (Question 257, A Catechism of Christian Doctrine; 1263, Catechism of the Catholic Church). The Church does not require that the baptised love God alone and despise their sins. It accepts them in their imperfections. Since baptism means rebirth and putting one into God's family it follows that if you repent for the love of God alone, you wish you could receive that same baptism again right now – not another one but the same one – and are re-sanctioning and re-accepting your baptism. You can’t experience your baptism again so God has to accept your desire as being as good as being baptised again with the result that he has to remove all your temporary punishment. The Baptism of Blood when an unbaptised person dies for Jesus gives the same benefits as baptism (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1258) minus the mark on the soul that it gives. If you perfectly love God you would die for him if you could. If God is fair you will receive full remission of the punishment in return for perfect love.  If God can do that if you are baptised as an adult, he should do it when you die and avoid the need for a purgatory.
 
In Purgatory, perfect love is futile and only passively enduring suffering erases the debt of punishment. If the purging were any use it would make it more likely for a soul in Purgatory to turn to the Lord in this pure and complete love. But it cannot for it is still in Purgatory and will stay there until it has suffered enough. If the souls in Purgatory cannot do this then it is the same as if they can and have for they have tried. It is effort not success that counts before a really good God and reason. So if souls are detained in Purgatory then they are not trying and are therefore sinners contradicting the Roman doctrine that there is no sinning after death except for the damned in Hell.
 
The souls in Purgatory are brought closer to loving God completely every moment they are there for falling short of loving God in any way is sinful if God has truthfully informed the Catholic Church that there is no sin in Purgatory. Then why can’t they have perfect love for God which the Church says anybody can manage? If it is easy enough for us when we have few temptations in life it should be easier for people who know God exists when they find themselves in Purgatory and who are being purified. The doctrine of Purgatory is an absurdity for it says there is no sinning there and yet there must be. Refusing to love God perfectly is sinful.
 
Purgatory is an evil doctrine for it says that God values hurting the holy souls more than making them improve in holiness. It’s vindictive.  It even denies the power of prayer.  Their prayers are no good to each other.