I thought that purgatory was a place where SAVED people burned like hellfire until all their sins got burned away.
THAT is a blasphemous idea.
What I was taught tonight about it does not resemble what Protestants taught me that it was - big surprise huh? I guess not really...
I went in thinking that it was only based on a passage from Maccabees. It's not. They have a different interpretation of 1 Corinthians 3:15.
I need to ask Fr. John about it, as several interpretations of what purgatory was were offered. One of them is that is takes only a split second. That when you die, you see the truth and God and all the things in your self and your choices that were not right, and it it painful but it tears that old fleshly part away in a split second, and that split second is purgatory. The nun who teaches theology I think, is the one who put that forth.
The general idea I was taught tonight was that it is a cleansing of anything in your life or person that you did not fully give to God, that you kept back and did not allow God into. There are variations and debated questions about how exactly it works. Is it really some kind of fire, or is that a metaphor?
Does it hurt, like Protestants teach that Hell hurts?
Speaking of which, they discussed Hell tonight too, and it is not that they do not believe in it, but their beliefs are a bit different. They believe that Jesus was saying that it is definitely NOT something you want, and it pertains to being destroyed, and it is something terrible and shameful and rotten and undesirable. They are not sure that it is an endless burning, like burning to death but never passing out or dying for all eternity like I was taught. One guy said he read something about hell being in the same place as heaven,but you do not see where you are or know it or perceive it, you are separated and cut off from it in sensing something completely different. I can see how one could be horrified by that and call it hell, but I don't think I buy into that. He had no support form it other than somebody just dreaming it up and thinking it sucked really bad.
I asked my friend who was raised Catholic for part of his life and is currently becoming Orthodox what the Orthodox church says about Purgatory. They do not have that.
He said it was determined that purgatory was a papal invention to get money out of the grieving.
I told him it does not cost anything.
He said when he was a teenager, his grandma died. She was extremely saintly lady and loved God with all she was, but the priest came over to his dad's house and asked how much money they thought they could raise to get her soul out of purgatory.
I told him what I learned tonight, and he said "If that's what the doctrine is now, they've come along way. That must be a Vatican II amendment." He was pleased.
I hereby apologize to anybody who was extorted from in the manner of the old way of doing things that I heard about from my friend, and is offended about it.
I pray that God will continue to purify the Church of every evil practice and everything that is not pleasing to Him.
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