Does the Church still believe in Purgatory?
Question: My whole life I believed that the Catholic Church teaches the existence of purgatory. But I have heard from several people that the Church has dropped that teaching. Is that true?
Answer: The Catholic Church does teach the existence of purgatory. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it clear:
“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect” (1030-31).
This belief is reflected even in the Old Testament. In the Second Book of Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus “made atonement for the dead” that they might be freed from sin (12:46), which suggests a Jewish practice of offering prayers and sacrifice to cleanse the souls of the departed.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that certain sins “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (12:32), an indication that some purging of the soul may occur after death.
The good news is that purgatory is not a final destination; everyone there will wind up in heaven eventually. We can’t know how our concept of time relates to eternity — the process of purification in purgatory could even be instantaneous.
Perhaps there has been some confusion between the teaching of purgatory and the idea of limbo, concepts that sometimes are conflated as being the same thing. And it is true that the Church has dropped the belief in limbo — but it never was a teaching in the first place.
In the past, it was the common belief of Catholics — although never defined dogmatically — that children who died without being baptised did not go to be with God in heaven, but remained in a state of natural happiness called limbo.
But that was theological speculation, not doctrine; and in 2007, the Church’s International Theological Commission, with the authorisation of Pope Benedict XVI, published a document that concluded that “there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved…even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation”.
Published in the May 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine
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