Excerpts from

The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

by Dr. Ludwig Ott

  1. Book 5: God the Consumator
    1. Section 1: The Doctrine of the Last Things
      1. Chapter 1: The Eschatology of the Individual Human Being
        1. Purgatory
          1. Reality of Purgatory
            1. Dogma
              1. The souls of the just which, in the moment of death, are burdened with venial sins or temporal punishment due to sins, enter Purgatory. (De fide.)
              2. The cleansing fire (purgatorium) is a place and state of temporal penal purification.
              3. The Union Councils of Lyons and of Florence uphold the purifying fire and the expiatory character of the penal sufferings: “The souls of those who depart this life with true repentance and in the love of God, before they have rendered satisfaction for their trespasses and negligences by the worthy fruits of penance, are purified after death with the punishments of purification.”
              4. The Council of Trent laid down the reality of the cleansing fire and the value of the suffrages performed for the poor souls: purgatorium esse animasque ibi detentas fidelium suffragiis … iuvari.
            2. Scriptural proof
              1. Holy Writ teaches the existence of the cleansing fire indirectly, by admitting the possibility of a purification in the other world. According to 2 Mach. 12:42–46, the Jews prayed for their fallen on whom had been found donaries of the idols, that their sins might be forgiven them. Then they sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered in expiation. Therefore they were convinced that they could help the dead by prayer and sacrifice to be freed from their sins.
              2. The sacred writer approves this course: “Because he (Judas) considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.”
              3. The Words of the Lord in Mt. 12:32: “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come,” leaves open the possibility that sins are forgiven not only in this world but in the world to come.
              4. St. Gregory the Great comments: “In this sentence it is given to understand that many sins can be remitted in this world, but also many in the world to come”
              5. St. Paul asserts: The work of the Christian teacher of faith who continues to build on the foundation, which is Christ, but in doing so uses wood, hay and straw, that is, performs bad work, will not stand when it is tested in the fire on the last day. V. 15: “If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss: yet he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire,” that is, in the manner of a man who, in the catastrophe of a conflagration, loses everything and barely saves his life. The Apostle is speaking of a transient punishment of the Day of the General Judgment, probably consisting of severe tribulations after which the final salvation will take place. The Latin Fathers take the passage to mean a transient purification punishment in the other world. They interpret the words “as by fire” all too literally in the sense of a physical fire.
              6. The words of Mt. 5:26: “Amen, I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence (from the prison) till thou repay the last farthing,” threaten, in the form of a Parable, the person who does not fulfil the commandment of Christian brotherly love, with just punishment by the Divine Judge
            3. Proof from Tradition
              1. The Latin Fathers especially employ the scriptural passages cited frequently as proofs for a transient purification-punishment and a forgiveness of sins in the other world.
              2. St. Cyprian teaches that penitents who die before the reception of the reconciliation must perform the remainder of any atonement demanded in the other world, while martyrdom counts as full atonement: “To be tormented in long pains and to be cleansed and purified from one’s sins by continuous fire, is a different thing from expiating one’s sins all at once by the suffering (of martyrdom)”
              3. St. Augustine distinguishes between temporal punishments which must be expiated in this life, and those which must be expiated after death: “Some suffer temporal punishments only in this life, others only after death, still others both in life and after death, but always before this most strict and most final court” According to his teaching, suffrages benefit those who are born again in Christ, and have not lived such good lives that they can dispense with such help after death, but not such bad lives that such help is no longer of any avail to them, that is to say, to an intermediate group between the blessed and the damned.
              4. Speculatively, the existence of the cleansing fire can be derived from the concept of the sanctity and justice of God. The former demands that only completely pure souls be assumed into Heaven (Apoc. 21:27); the latter demands that the punishments of sins still present be effected, but, on the other hand, forbids that souls that are united in love with God should be cast into hell. Therefore, an intermediate state is to be assumed, whose purpose is final purification and which for this reason is of limited duration.
          2. The Nature of the Punishment of the Cleansing Fire
            1. On the analogy of the punishment of hell a distinction is made between poena damni and the poena sensus.
            2. Poena damni consists in the temporary exclusion from the beatific vision of God. The poor souls are conscious that they are children and friends of God and long for the most intimate unification with Him. Thus the temporary separation is all the more painful to them.
            3. To the poena damni is added, according to the general teaching of the theologians, a poena sensus. The Latin Fathers, the Schoolmen, and many theologians of modern times, in view of 1 Cor. 3:15, assume a physical fire. However, the biblical foundation for this is inadequate. Out of consideration for the separated Greeks, who reject the notion of a purifying fire, the official declarations of the Councils speak only of purifying punishments (poena purgatoriae), not of purifying fire.
          3. Object of the Purification
            1. The remission of the venial sins which are not yet remitted, occurs, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, as it does in this life, by an act of contrition deriving from charity and performed with the help of grace. This act of contrition, which is presumably awakened immediately after entry into the purifying fire, does not, however, effect the abrogation or the diminution of the punishment for sins, since in the other world there is no longer any possibility of merit.
            2. The temporal punishments for sins are atoned for in the purifying fire by the so-called suffering of atonement (satispassio), that is, by the willing bearing of the expiatory punishments imposed by God.
          4. Duration of the Purifying Fire
            1. The purifying fire will not continue after the General Judgment. (Sent. Communis.)
            2. For the individual souls the purifying fire endures until they are free from all guilt and punishment. Immediately on the conclusion of the purification they will be assumed into the bliss of Heaven.

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