Blogging is hard work but is not purgatory


Dante's Purgatory, by Dore
Image from Wikipedia Commons

Last week my friend MY challenged me to write a blog post on the abolishment of purgatory by the Catholic Church. The group where we were in was all but convinced that the new catholic doctrine does not include purgatory anymore.
I never believed in purgatory anyway, not even when I still was a practicing catholic but I did think that it was a good opportunity for some fun research and a nice write up on how old square Pope Ratzinger had, incredibly, shown some good sense abolishing a doctrine that is antiquated, to say the least.
Alas, blogging is hard work. For me it usually involves research as I do not believe in just writing from what I heard. And, frack! Purgatory is still on!
There seems to have been a misinterpretation of the news by (no surprises here!) overzealous reporters looking for a catchy headline. In April 2007, the Catholic Church International Theological Comission revealed its findings on "limbo" and Pope Ratzinger gave his blessing on them. As per prevailing catholic doctrine, unbaptized babies who die cannot go to heaven but instead stay in "limbo", which is a "place" where they can enjoy happiness and contentment but without the direct presence of God.
Later Pope Ratzinger indicated that this limbo thing was a "theological hypothesis" (???) and not catholic dogma. Reporters then capitalized on a perceived relationship between "limbo" and "purgatory" and this is where confusion seems to have arisen.
Pope Ratzinger later indicated in many words that I really do not want to reproduce here, that Purgatory is actually the experience of meeting Jesuschrist and being absolved of all sins by this experience. He agrees, then, with Pope John Paul II in that Purgatory is not a metaphysical place but "a condition of existence".
In short MY, no warranty and no money back! Sorry about that!


1 comment:

Guatemalan Genes said...

I was starting to worry about all the Nativity scene vendors in Napoli. Have you been there? It is like a permanent "Mercado de Navidad en los Campos del Roosevelt" but the interesting part is that they sell "anime del purgatorio" you can see a picture here http://www.ferrarapastori.it/index_file/Page5202.htm

And I know that the fact that it is on the web doesn't make it true, but I can testify seeing them.

Anyway if purgatory were to disappear the 'artigiani dil presepe napoletano' would need a bail out from the Italian goverment!