Purgatory: a Roman Catholic Understanding

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “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” (CCC 1030). This paper focuses on the Catholic teaching of the idea of Purgatory. There are three main resources by which the Church draws its conclusions on Purgatory. Holy Scriptures affirming Purgatory speak of a cleansing fire and explicitly state that praying for the dead is holy and pious action. Writings of the Church Fathers explain the logical nature of Purgatory and further elaborate on prayer and sacrifice for others. Humans naturally desire to be clean before an all-perfect God, so it stands to reason that there might be some purification after death, before going to Heaven. There are some counterarguements for Purgatory. For example, some may state that 2 Maccabees isn’t in the Protestant Bible and therefore cannot be taken as a credible source. In reality, the Catholic Church compiled the Bible, including 2 Maccabees and other deuterocanonical books, around 382 A.D.; long before the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The Protestant Bible is missing the deuterocanonical books because Martin Luther removed books that conflicted with his reformed theology. Research includes Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, various writings from Church Fathers, and logical points made out of man’s desire and needs for Purgatory. From these three mechanisms comes that the Catholic Church is correct in teaching that Purgatory is biblically, theologically, and logically necessary to the story of salvation, as required by the justice of God.