Purgatory: History and Development within the Catholic Church

The general concept of purgatory is of a spiritual state, intermediate between heaven and hell, or salvation and damnation, in which the souls of the faithful undergo purification in order to be utterly holy and thus fit to enter directly into the presence of God. Although this concept has been part of Christian doctrine from very early on, it has undergone great evolution and development over the centuries, beginning as a literal and simplistic concept of a place where the otherwise holy have their minor imperfections removed, and lately having become a far more sophisticated and abstract concept, having to do with such issues as the nature of sin itself and the nature of the afterlife.

The scriptural basis for the concept of Purgatory lies collectively in various passages that speak about or refer to a purification of the dead or of purificatory sacrifices offered on behalf of the dead. However, these passages are probably not the origin of the concept, as will be seen; rather, they were probably interpreted in terms of the concept of purgatory once it had come into existence for liturgical reasons.

The change in the practical beliefs and practices of ordinary Roman Catholics s

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nal confession, or perhaps, these days, a genuine penitent coming to make a reconciliation with the Church. There is a general principle in modern religious studies, derived in part from anthropological methodology, which says that if one begins from the abstract doctrines and official scriptures of any religion, tries to deduce from them what people would do to practice that religion, and then looks at what the members actually do, one will almost invariably become totally confused, since the gap between the beliefs and the practices will seem almost unbridgeable. But if one instead begins by assuming that people do know how to practice their own religion, observes what they actually do, and then deduces from their liturgy, moral behavior, social ethics, etc., what it is that they actually consider to be important in their own lives, then one can see how and why the official statements of doctrine have been written, in order to rationalize or ôput the right spin onö the peopleÆs real practices. In a very real sense, the doctrine of purgatory arises out of the liturgical practice, which goes back probably to Jewish practice, of praying for the worthy departed. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (article 1032)
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