PURGATORY AND CATHOLICISM
THE DOCTRINE
The Roman Church claims that there is a place called Purgatory where you have to
go after death if you are not ready for the presence of God.
You go to Purgatory if you die carrying the guilt of venial sin. Venial sin is
serious sin that doesn’t deserve the eternal torment of Hell. An example would
be saying a prayer carelessly. Mortal sin is worse sin. It is serious sin that
does deserve Hell. An example of it would be murder or adultery or spitting out
the communion wafer.
You go to Purgatory if you die without any sin but if you owe God a debt of
temporary (temporal) punishment for your sins.
You cannot help yourself in Purgatory. You have to suffer enough before God will
let you out.
The suffering purifies.
The living can pray for you and commit sacrifices for you and have masses
offered for you. This lessens the suffering you owe God.
The living can get a plenary indulgence for you that gets you out of Purgatory
altogether.
If you are in Purgatory, you cannot and do not sin any more. You are saved and
destined for Heaven but only after Purgatory is done. The Church says that being
saved means you cannot lose salvation but this only applies to people who have
died.
Nobody is meant for going to Purgatory. We are to blame if we go there.
A saint is a person who goes to Heaven without going to Purgatory.
The doctrine is quite sinister. Not only has the Catholic Church made money out
of it but any doctrine that says these souls no longer sin and are helpless and
need the prayers and sufferings of the living is obviously more than foolish.
The doctrine is against the Bible.
WHAT A "WITNESS" LEARNED!
The Roman Catholic doctrine that the dead may have to go to Purgatory to be
prepared, through suffering, for Heaven after death is vile.
As Jesus sent a guardian angel to Sister Faustina to show her purgatory of which
she wrote, "In a moment, I was in a misty place, full of fire in which there was
a great crowd of suffering souls. They were praying fervently, but to no avail
for themselves; only we can come to their aid." This contradicts the doctrine
that God always responds to prayer.
Also, "I asked these souls what their greatest suffering was, they answered in
one voice that their greatest torment was longing for God." How could you love a
God to whom you give your heart in prayer and who won't let that prayer help
you? Not only is the biggest doctrine of Christianity that you must love God
totally but it comes with a threat. It warns that failure to love God properly
and totally or to put God first will cause you great suffering. Other spirits in
Purgatory will suffer because you suffer so you have that on your conscience as
well!
It accuses people of deserving to suffer after death.
It accuses those who suffer terribly or who have to leave their children in
death of deserving the pains of Purgatory. What would you think of a person who
said they believed that your mother should suffer two million years in Purgatory
for she once forgot to pay money to some sect? They are accusing somebody of
deserving something without proof. Purgatory believers do that as well though
they don't claim to know how long a person may go there. They are open to the
possibility that one could suffer for millions of years for each slight sin. It
is impossible to see how there could be any such thing as a minor sin or slight
sin when the consequences would be that serious. Presumably the Church doesn't
consider bringing harm on yourself to be a sin in itself and is more concerned
about the rules that forbid such harm. Purgatory is making a travesty of belief
in right and wrong and an encouragement to evil for those Catholics who realise
this.
Catholic funerals are about praying for the dead person to get out of Purgatory
and so the funerals are really just insults to the dead. No decent person would
attend a Catholic funeral.
Many Catholics following what Jesus told St Gertrude the Great believe that
praying for the souls in Purgatory is the supreme good work. This would be true
if Purgatory exists. The Church says that the worst evil is not being with God.
Jesus said the same thing but in different words when he claimed that you must
love God with all your heart and strength. The souls are excluded from God until
their sins are atoned. The teaching about Purgatory sets a dangerous example. It
pays homage to the idea that religious beliefs must be put before people. For
example, to pray for the souls in Purgatory and to offer up the good you do for
them is refusing to use religion in such a way that you give your heart and love
to those who are around you. The good you do is intended for a Purgatory that
may not exist in preference to an earth that does exist!
The revelations to St Gertrude and other saints had visions of Purgatory as a
place of horrific torment. Some modern Catholic scholars believe these saints
sometimes mixed up their imagination with their revelations (page 224, Question
950, RADIO REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1942). It is thought that these saints had such an intense
realisation that sin was terrible and how rotten it was that this misled them.
But if sin is that bad then surely Purgatory can be that bad. Besides God never
corrected their mistakes so he must have sanctioned them. Otherwise if we can't
be sure what is or isn't from him the revelations are made pointless. God in
Deuteronomy 18 said that nobody gets mistaken revelations for he is clear in
what he teaches and makes no errors.
GOING TO PURGATORY FOR HAVING VENIAL SIN
The idea that you go to Purgatory for having venial sin is silly. Every moment
you stay in sin is a fresh sin. Everything a sinner does is sin so if the holy
souls are in Purgatory they cannot be saved for God cannot work and abide with
them until they forsake all sin. All sin deserves Hell for God hates it
infinitely for he is infinitely good so there is no such thing as venial sin. So
if you go to Purgatory in venial sin you should get out by repenting it. But the
doctrine denies that. The Bible says that only bad fruit comes from bad trees.
It means that the seeming good is a trap of Satan. Satan has to inspire good to
get popularity.
GOING TO PURGATORY TO PAY THE DEBT OF PUNISHMENT
The Church teaches the doctrine of temporal punishment - it is retribution God
takes on a sin after it has been forgiven. The idea is that even if a sin is
forgiven it leaves some attachment to sin behind and God can inflict some
punishment for it. But that contradicts the doctrine that you can get a
remission of this punishment quite easily without losing any of the attachment.
The Church argues that after David sinned in the Bible he had to be punished by
God even after he was forgiven. The punishment due to sin is called Temporal
Punishment or Temporary Punishment.
If you are attached to sin that must be a sin by itself. Every moment spent in
sin is a fresh sin. It is the sin of accepting the sin in the previous moments
of its existence and the sin of prolonging the sin by not rejecting it in the
present moment. So the longer you are in sin the worse you get inwardly. There
is no hope of escaping Purgatory then in that case. Purgatory is really Hell.
Christians would say that the Roman Church is the Devil’s Church and that is one
of his scams for drawing people into eternal damnation.
If you are forgiven for breaking a window you will still have to pay the owner
for the damage. This payment is justice not punishment so the forgiveness is
real. But a God who demands compensation he doesn’t need is clearly exacting
retribution. The Roman Catholic Church then denies that God really forgives.
Christianity, on the contrary, teaches that forgiveness is full and free.
The Church says that few can be perfect when they leave this world and most need
purification by suffering. But when the will chooses only what is thought to be
good God can grant it a miraculous revelation that will draw it to prevent every
sin. The idea of souls having to suffer to make compensation for sin is
outrageous for God does not need the compensation. And they do not need the
discipline if all we need to do is to choose him. Bring weak and resisting that
weakness as far as you can is supposed to be the best road to Heaven. Strength
is a curse for it makes your progress too easy and God wants sacrifice. So the
souls are not in Purgatory to be made stronger. Strong people cannot go to
Purgatory so where do they go?
The fact that you can get out of Purgatory if somebody else does the suffering
and praying for you, proves that you are not there to be purified at all. You
are there to be hurt by a vindictive God. You might as well say somebody can
repent the sin that somebody else has committed.
Some progressive Catholics claim that Purgatory is not a place of punishment but
just a place of cleansing where souls must get rid of all the moral dirt and
weaknesses that makes them unfit to enter the presence of God. They get a
sentence of say ten or a million years to Purgatory and they cannot shorten that
sentence so people on earth have to make sacrifices for them by proxy to do
this. This means that others making small sacrifices for you does far more than
anything you do or endure in Purgatory though it is more painful for you. This
is unfair and denies that persons are equal in value for when their works aren’t
it makes no sense to say the doers are equal. And how could anybody loving God
for you do it for you? It's something you have to do for yourself. The bias
against punishment in this theology is contrary to the harsh justice commanded
and eulogised in both the Old and New Testaments on divine authority. Punishment
would actually be better than this vindictive hypocritical idea that you suffer
in Purgatory because somebody on earth won’t do the loving of God that you fail
to do!
The apostle Paul held to a doctrine where the resurrected are transformed marvelously and went as far as to say you don't need to die for this to happen. He spoke of those who will be alive when Jesus comes back and they will be swept up to meet him and instantly transformed. This implies sins and all. There is no need for a purging, God just cleans the person. 1 Corinthians 3 has Paul writing that teachers of religion, not people in general, will have their work tested as if by fire. If this meant Purgatory after death, it would say all people will be tested as if by fire. The text is to be understood in the light of how the letter of James warns that it is spiritually dangerous to be a person in ministry to build up the church. It does not even mention the afterlife.
The purgatory idea is without biblical support.