I am working through reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. I just finished Purgatorio, and was thinking about how someone (a couple of Catholic someones, in fact) recently told me that the Catholic Church no longer believes in or teaches the doctrine of Purgatory. I was really confused by this, because we still pray for the dead during every Mass, and we still have a Mass dedicated to our departed souls every November. I wasn’t sure why this would be the case if the Church was now teaching that all those who die as believers go straight to Heaven. If that was the case, they certainly wouldn’t need our prayers, right?

Honestly, I only had a vague understanding of the idea of Purgatory before reading Purgatorio and thinking about the comments I recently heard about it. So, I decided I needed to learn more, and to write this post. Thanks goes out to Super Friend for talking to me about some of my confusion around the issue, too.

So, what is Purgatory, and what does the Catholic Church say about it?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this:

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 to enter the joy of heaven. (CCC 1030).

The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect (CCC 1031).

When I was still an atheist and working in prison, I always thought it was absurd that so many inmates would come to prison, decide to accept Jesus and their personal Lord and Savior, and then feel certain that they would go straight to Heaven when they die, although they continued to obviously live their lives in a criminal way (yes, there is tons of criminal activity in prison). I think plenty of Christians would even agree with this without concern. What I was always taught as a child was that, as long as you believed in Jesus, you got to go to Heaven, no matter what you did while living on Earth. I couldn’t stomach the hypocrisy of that while I was an atheist, and even now, that just doesn’t seem right to me.

The Catholic Church has a solution to this problem I had with Christianity – Purgatory. It makes sense to me that people will need to undergo a process of purification before being allowed to be in the presence of God in Heaven. The Bible even says, “nothing unclean will enter it [Heaven]” (Revelation 22:27).

But where does the idea of Purgatory come from?

The Church formulated the doctrine on Purgatory mostly during the Councils of Florence and Trent. However, this doesn’t mean that the Church invented the idea of Purgatory at that time. There is a reference to the tradition of praying for the dead in the Bible, “Thus [Judas] made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin” (2Maccabees 12:46). There is also evidence of Christians praying for the dead from the very earliest time of our Faith. In the catacombs where Christians gathered during the persecutions of the first three centuries A.D., prayers for the dead are graffitied on the walls. There are references to prayer for the dead in the earliest Christian writings as well. If the first Christians did not believe in Purgatory (even if they didn’t use that name for it), then why would they pray for the dead? Souls in Heaven don’t need prayers, and those in Hell are beyond the help of prayer.

What about Limbo?

“Limbo” is a theological speculation that has been taught in the history of Catholic tradition to refer to a place where the the souls of some who have died were held. This was thought to be a temporary place for those who died before Christ’s ascension into Heaven, and a permanent place for those who could not go to Heaven because of original sin but were not deserving of Hell because of no personal sin. This would include those who lived virtuous lives but were never exposed to Christian teachings and could therefore not be believers, and also babies who died before they could be baptized.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not include any reference to Limbo. The concept of Limbo is not an official doctrine of the Catholic Church and in fact, never has been, even if members of the Church may have mentioned it in ordinary teaching in the past. From what I can tell it certainly isn’t actively taught by anyone (or at least hardly anyone) in the Church now.

It seems that, in reference to the question of babies and children who die without being baptized, the official stance of the Church is sort of, “We don’t know for sure, but we have hope.” At least that how it sounds to me from what the Catechism says:

As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God. . . . Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children. . . allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism (CCC 1261).

I have read statements from many priests, including Saint John Paul II, that express the belief that babies who die before birth or are unable to be baptized before they die do go to Heaven. I certainly believe that to be the case.

So, contrary to what I have heard, Purgatory is still a part of the  doctrine of the Catholic Church, while Limbo is not, and never has been.

I think it’s a fairly common belief of people who are not Catholic (and also some who are) that the sacrament of Reconciliation, or confession, is totally unnecessary. I know that I used to think, “Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest? I can just confess directly to God and ask forgiveness.” I also kind of thought it was creepy and weird that priests would encourage people to tell all of their deepest, darkest, secrets (says the woman who used to be a clinical psychologist) and then give them a penance to complete afterwards.

Of course there is Biblical support for the practice of confessing one’s sins to God.

Blessed is the one whose fault is removed, whose sin is forgiven. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no deceit. Because I kept silent, my bones wasted away; I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength withered as in dry summer heat. Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide. I said, “I confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you took away the guilt of my sin. – Psalm 32:1-7

The Catholic Church does not dismiss the value of making a regular confession of one’s sins directly to God. I do this every day during my daily prayers, and I know a lot of Catholics go through the examination of conscience each day for this same purpose. The examination of conscience is something Catholics (ideally) go over before going to reconciliation, to assist in making a good confession, but many also use it for confessing directly to God in prayer. You can see an example here.

So sure, confessing directly to God is important, and valid, and necessary. But the sacrament of Reconciliation is a whole different ballgame.

Let’s start with the Biblical basis for the practice. In the book of John, when Jesus appears to the apostles in the locked room after His resurrection:

[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” – John 20:21-23

So, in the Bible, Jesus gave the apostles, the first priests of His Church, the authority to forgive sins. They do this by acting in persona Christi, or in the person of Christ. I mentioned in my post about the priesthood that there are two types of situations in which priests are given the special authority to act in the person of Christ: 1. during the act of transubstantiation in the Mass, or when the priest turns the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and 2. during the sacrament of Reconciliation. So really, priests don’t personally have the authority to forgive sins, but they have the authority to act as Christ during the sacrament of Reconciliation, and as such, forgive sins.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Only God forgives sins. Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of himself, ‘The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ and exercises this divine power: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name.” (1441)

The sacrament of Reconciliation has been practiced in various forms throughout the centuries, with the very early Church instituting penances that were public and sometimes severe and lengthy in nature. It was during the seventh century that Irish missionaries took the practice of private confession and penance to continental Europe, and the sacrament has been performed in private ever since.

As the Church practices it currently, it goes pretty much like this: Parishioner goes into the confessional (which in our parish is just a little room with comfy chairs to sit on), sits down and says, “Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been (however long) since my last confession.” Ideally, parishioner will have gone through an examination of conscience beforehand and will then be able to proceed to provide a pretty comprehensive list of sins for the priest. After this is done, the parishioner says the Act of Contrition:

Image credit Prayer Button

Then the priest, acting in persona Christi, gives a penance to the parishioner (perhaps a number of prayers to say or an act of restitution to perform), may say a blessing, and ends with something like, “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

So, now that I’ve given you a little bit of the history of confession and how it works, I’ll tell you about my very limited but powerful experience with the sacrament.

I have only been to confession once, the Wednesday before Holy Saturday. All of my praying life, pre- and post-atheism, I have included confession of my sins to God in my daily prayers (okay, pre-atheism they were rarely daily. . .). So I thought it would be pretty straightforward to do an examination of conscience and go in and confess my sins to our priest. Yes, I was nervous, because I was confessing a whole lifetime of sins, face to face with the man who stands in front of our church pretty much every Sunday. I had a lot of stuff to confess from my whole life. But again, I had confessed most of it directly to God in prayer after my conversion, so it wouldn’t be too hard, right?

Well, first of all, the examination of conscience had me questioning myself about many behaviors, thoughts, and omissions that I never would have thought to confess or even think of as true sins before preparing for confession. So I had to face up to lots of things I had done or failed to do that I hadn’t even realized I needed to confess.

Then I went into the confession room with our priest. I was very nervous, and as I began my confession, I was kind of shocked by how much harder it was to speak my sins out loud to another person than to say them in my head during my prayers. I do truly try to focus on being repentant when I pray about my sins, but somehow saying them out loud to anther person made me so much more so.

I got through all of my fairly distant sins of the past and the more recent ones during my atheist years, and that was hard. But the hardest part by far was confessing my current day to day transgressions. The “smaller” sins that I grapple with in my everyday life, like using an unkind voice with my husband, feeling anger toward my children, being impatient, snapping at my kids, acting selfishly, and so on. I was struggling not to cry when I began telling my priest about some of my ugly behaviors and thoughts, things that I do now, not in the distant past.

When I got to the Act of Contrition, I could barely get the words out. “But most of all because they offend thee my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love” was nearly impossible to say through the lump in my throat and over the sobs threatening to escape from my mouth. I suddenly felt the full impact of my sins, and how offensive they are to God, and I was appalled.

After I got through the whole prayer and the priest said, “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” it was a really amazing moment. I truly felt a sense of relief and joy after my time in the confessional, and even more so after completing my penance.

So many people seem to associate the idea of confession with negative emotions, beliefs, and experiences. But here’s what I believe about it: Confession isn’t something the Church created for the purpose of controlling and manipulating people. It is a gift that Jesus gave to us to help us experience His forgiveness more fully. 

And it works.

I haven’t decided on the next topic yet. If you have a question, let me know. 

First of all, I want to say that, in writing this post (or any of the other posts in this series) I am not trying to disparage the beliefs of Protestants or anyone else. I just want to try to explain Catholicism a bit, because it seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding about it (most of which I had myself at one time or another). And I want to share why I chose to become Catholic myself.

That said, I’m kind of excited to write this post about the pope.

I want to write about why there is a pope and why he has authority. But I realized that I couldn’t quite explain all that without getting into the Magisterium (had to look the word up to write this) and Sacred Tradition vs. sola Scriptura a bit too. Bear with me, please.

The reason I’m excited to write about all this is that learning about these things myself helped me gain a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the Catholic Church. It just made so much sense once I understood it. It’s fascinating to me to think about how old the Church is. And frankly, I’m interested to see if I can write about all this in a coherent fashion. It was harder than I thought it would be, to be honest. You be the judge 🙂

One of the things that prompted my separation from religion was my observation that no one seems to agree on what the Bible really means. I found it so annoying that people could come up with a justification for almost anything, supposedly through interpreting Scripture. It seemed like the meaning of the Bible depended simply on whom you asked. I though it was a bunch of nonsense and considered it evidence that the Bible just didn’t mean anything.

When I began learning about Catholicism, I came across the phrase sola Scriptura, and learned that this was one of the main theological beliefs of the Reformation, a key point on which Protestants differ from Catholics. Sola Scriptura means, “by Scripture alone,” and is the idea that the Bible provides all the information necessary for salvation, that it is the only true source of Christian doctrine, and that it needs no interpretation, because it interprets itself. But this just didn’t make sense to me, largely for the reason mentioned above that everyone interprets the Bible differently.

The principle of sola Scriptura was introduced by Reformists as a way to reject the authority of the Catholic Church, and thus the pope, at the time of the Protestant Reformation. However, sola Scriptura isn’t actually taught anywhere in the Bible (according to many sources I have checked, both Catholic and Protestant. I certainly haven’t read the whole Bible yet to confirm this for myself).

Then I learned that the Catholic Church holds that Christian authority lies in both the Bible and Sacred Tradition. Sacred Tradition is the oral teachings of Jesus that He handed down to his apostles, and that they in turn handed down to their disciples, and so on.

I like to think of it like this: Imagine that the founding fathers of our country had written the Constitution and then simply said, “There you go! This is all you need. Go forth and govern thyselves!” That would have been dumb. Of course they didn’t do that. They were smart enough to know that if they did not provide us with a system of government to help us interpret and apply the Constitution, all heck would break loose and people would be using it for their own purposes all willy-nilly with no one agreeing on what the laws and ideals of our country actually are or how we should follow them.

Likewise, Jesus did not leave us with nothing but a Bible, for people to interpret for themselves all willy-nilly. That doesn’t make sense. Jesus left us the apostles and His Church and the Holy Spirit. And if you believe that the successors of the apostles were led by the Spirit to infallibly create the Bible, then it only makes sense that these same successors (the pope and bishops) would be capable of passing down Sacred Tradition through the authority given to them by Jesus and with the help of his Holy Spirit. If you don’t believe that the Church, and thus its leaders the pope and bishops, has this authority and ability to make infallible decisions, then you can’t really be certain that the Bible is infallible.

Jesus gave His apostles authority and instructed them to teach, and He gave them the Holy Spirit to help them do so. The Magisterium is the authority of the Church, primarily as it is exercised by the successors of Jesus’s apostles, namely the pope and the bishops.

“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

In fact, when Jesus was still alive, He made Peter the head of His Church.

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

St. Peter was the first pope.

I was so excited when I learned this and then came to understand the idea of “apostolic succession,” that the popes throughout the history of the Church have succeeded, one after another, in a direct line from St. Peter!

Now, to be clear, the doctrine of papal infallibility does not mean that the pope is free from sin or error. It also doesn’t apply only to the pope, but also to the body of bishops as a whole, but only when they, in unity with the pope, are solemnly teaching a doctrine to be true. The pope and bishops are not infallible in all things. But they are the successors of Jesus’s apostles, to whom He said, “He who hears you hears me” (Luke 10:16) and “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matthew 18:18).

So, in a nutshell, Catholics believe in the authority of the Church, and in particular the pope and the bishops, because Jesus established the Church this way. He left His apostles with Sacred Tradition and the Holy Spirit, with the authority to build His Church and guide people in their faith. He appointed Peter to be the head of the Church, and the popes of history have succeed in a line from Peter. To say that we don’t need a pope or Sacred Tradition because the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is all we need, is to forget that the Bible was compiled by men of the Catholic Church, using Sacred Tradition and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to do so.

I know this is a clumsy explanation. As I said, this was harder to write about than I thought it would be. I hope it makes sense, but I’m happy to try to clear things up if I’ve left anything out or been unclear about something. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

*******

I have had a few questions come my way, so the next one I’ll take on  is this one from my friend Liz, “Do Catholics have a ‘priesthood?’ And if so, how is it used and who is given it?”

There are three reasons I decided to start this blog series by addressing the common misconception that Catholics worship Mary. One is that a friend of mine actually did express some interest in having this cleared up in a previous blog post comment. Another is that I think that this might be one of the biggest objections that non-Catholics have to Catholicism, so I thought it would be good to address upfront. The third is that, to me, it’s one of the easiest misunderstandings to set straight.

As a child, I didn’t think about Catholicism much (my only point of reference for the phrase “Hail Mary” was a last-second desperation throw to try to win a football game), but when I did, I vaguely thought that Catholics worshipped Mary. The fact is that I didn’t know the first thing about Catholicism in reality. My belief about Mary was simply a parroting of something I heard an adult say.

However, when I started attending Catholic Mass last year and reading about the Catholic Faith, I had absolutely no problem getting past my previous misunderstanding about Our Lady. In fact, one of my first reactions to reading about how some other people are so reluctant to show love for her was, “Why?”

Here’s an illustration of my thoughts about the matter:

Imagine being in a deep, loving relationship with someone. You love this person dearly, and you’re about to meet His parents. He can’t wait for you to meet them, because He loves them so much, and they are very important to Him. You meet His Dad and realize that you really love Him too, but every time your Dearest tries to introduce you to His mother, you refuse, saying, “No thanks. I just don’t think she’s important here. I’ll meet her and maybe visit with her a bit when your birthday rolls around, since she did give birth to you. But other than that I want nothing to do with her.”

That would be weird.

Perhaps that analogy is overly simplistic, but I guess that is why it was never difficult for me to understand Marian devotion, once I thought about it a bit. Mary is Jesus’s mother. She was chosen by God to carry Him, to give Birth to Him, and to raise Him, along with Joseph. She suffered intensely by having to watch her Child be subjected to the tortures of His Passion. Surely, no other person could possibly have had nearly as much of an impact on Jesus during His time on Earth as she did. Just imagine her love for Him, and His for her.

So. Why would we not honor her? Why not sing songs about her and mention her in the Mass? God is Jesus’s Father. Mary is Jesus’s mother. God is our Father. Mary is our Mother. Of course we love her.

Many Protestants and others might try to clarify their objections and say, “But you pray to her!!! That’s not right.”

But that belief is not correct. We don’t actually pray to Mary.

Devotion is not the same as worship. Honoring someone is not the same as worshipping her. Asking someone to pray for you is not the same as praying to her.

We believe that Mary is in Heaven, right there with her Beloved Son. She is our Mother and she watches over us. We ask her to pray for us. We ask her to intercede on our behalf and to help us grow in our faith.

The biggest role that Mary plays is that she brings us closer to her Son.

That brings me to the question I got from my friend Liz, which frankly shocked and flummoxed me at first. She had commented to me before that she wondered about Catholics’ beliefs about Mary. When she heard I was going to post more about this, she wrote:

To be clear, my confusion does come from Catholics themselves (in hindsight I realize they probably weren’t active Catholics). As an LDS missionary in SE Asia I’d occasionally ask contacts “so, are you Christian?” and every now and then I’d get the response, “no, I’m Catholic.” Puzzled, I’d continue “I thought Catholics believed in the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ?” Most would agree, but two young girls once said “No, we pray to Mary. Christians pray to Christ.” I didn’t want to argue their religion (or mine, since Mormons don’t pray to Christ, but to God) with them, but I had a feeling that wasn’t quite right. I’ve never been able to figure out why they thought that. 

My only response to that is to say that those young girls must have been very misinformed. I’m not sure why a Catholic would ever say, “We’re not Christian,” or “We pray to Mary, not Christ.” That is just simply not true. Catholics are Christians. We believe in a triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we pray to each of these persons of the Holy Trinity.

Yes, there are some prayers that are specifically directed to Mary, but these prayers are simply intended to show love and honor to her and to ask her to pray for us. And actually, the words of the Hail Mary almost all come directly from scripture:

Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Consider Luke 1:28 regarding the angel Gabriel’s first words to Mary at the Annunciation, “And coming to her he said, ‘Hail favored one! The Lord is with you,'”

and Luke 1:42 about Elizabeth’s first words to her when Mary arrived for the Visitation, (Elizabeth) “cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.'”

These are words to acknowledge the importance of Mary as Jesus’s mother. As the one God chose to raise his Son on Earth.

The Catholic Church does not teach in any way that Mary is equal to Jesus or God. The Church does not try to include her as part of the Holy Trinity. But the Church does accord her the honor and love that she deserves as the mother of God.

And that’s what I know about it. I know there is a lot more to say about the matter. I’d be happy to do my best to answer any more questions you may have about Mary. Also, Scott Hahn’s book, Hail Holy Queen, is full of wonderful information about our Blessed Mother. It’s a little dense though, so this is my beginner’s version.

So, what do you think?

***

I haven’t gotten any questions from you yet, so I’m just going to roll right along with my own agenda until I do. Next week I’ll write about the authority of the pope.

Feel free to comment with any future topics you’d like me to cover or send me an email.