The New Creation by Herbert McCabe

Author:Herbert McCabe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Christianity, Catholicism, Theology
ISBN: 1441145737
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2010-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

It is very tentatively that I finally put forward a view of purgatory. It seems to me that we should see purgatory somewhat on the analogy of mortification rather than on the analogy of punishment (though the theory of punishment is itself so debatable that it is in any case unclear what would count as a punitive theory of purgatory). I suggest that purgatory consists in the personal appropriation of death. This immediately explains three of the main things we know about purgatory. First, that the soul in purgatory is assured of heaven; for grace has done its work, rather as in the case of the baptized infant. Second, that the more a man has sinned the more difficult purgatory is. Third, that the more a man has done penance the easier it is. There is of course the important difference between mortification or appropriation of death in this life and after death; that mortification is a voluntary anticipation of death performed for the love of God and thereby nourishing the love of God in our hearts, whereas purgatory is a matter of having to accept what is happening, and is therefore not itself meritorious.

I put forward this view of purgatory merely for discussion. It has, no doubt, serious weaknesses and at least one obvious gap. I have said nothing about what is after all the actual basis for the doctrine of purgatory: that the Church does in fact pray for the dead. The fact that we can bear one another's burdens in this way is surely an important clue to the nature of the Church. But these matters cannot be gone into here and now.

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