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.



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