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Mitt,
Thank you so much for reaching out; the matters you brought up are important.
First, you may have the wrong idea about Purgatory that makes it difficult to buy. There is much liberty when conceptualizing it and certainly medieval notions that have been widely propagated make it difficult.
Something that we would likely agree on is that we won't take any of our baggage into Heaven, for nothing unclean can enter there (Revelation 21:27). This is not merely a covering of our sins like Luther's conception of justification but true complete sanctification brought to its fullness. When God seeks to make us righteous He will accomplish His work, intrinsically as well as extrinsically.
Now most of us don't see the completion of this divine work in our lifetime (even if you consider forensic justification, there is still incomplete sanctification) so in that passage between here and there, there is a cleansing, a purification, to separate us from all our sin and the effects. This is the purgation of our souls, and Purgatory points to the domain, however you understand that domain, where God carries it out.
The difficulty usually enters when there is talk of souls like prisoners who need a Get out of jail card by some sale or acquisition of indulgences. This is the issue that helped sparked the Reformation. Let me start by saying, the charge was right; simony was illicit however not all of the idea was wrong. Let me explain.
First, we do believe that the purgation of someone can be painful, like a kind of punishment, because:
- the attachment to sin, and
- the realization of its devastating effects, as seen from the divine viewpoint,
is almost unbearable. Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 3:15. For example, consider the pain and loss a man might feel when he sees the devastating heartbreak his adultery has caused in the heart of his wife — when he can feel it from her side and the mind of God.
Granted, since we are forgiven, we will not suffer Hell and many sins have been erased, along with their effects, because of love, which covers a multitude, but here [referring to Purgatory] we are talking about the unhealed scars that still reside in the soul of the saved Christian or one God has saved despite their religious status.
- Don't you know a lot of Christians that are far from perfect at the time of their passing?
Those souls are our brothers and sisters and we feel a great empathy for their pain and wish to expedite their situation. We pray for that process to hasten — even if the sense of time is irrelevant because in God there is no time but only eternity — because we want them to come quickly and directly into the fullness of glory. This is not a second chance for the unsaved, but a hastening of the complete sanctification of the saved.
Just a brief word about indulgences: It is just another way of expressing the Church's authority to bind and loose, to call on the Holy Spirit to pour out from the treasury of Grace that Christ has merited through his body the Church, their hands and feet, which are really His, to hasten that glorious perfection which He brings to all the redeemed.
About Saints:
They are alive in Christ, they are aware of our struggle, inasmuch as God allows them to be
(cf. Hebrews 12) and they feel connected to us by the bond of Love in Christ. James says the prayers of a righteous man availeth much (James 5:16) so we ask them to pray for us.
- Don't you go to the holiest people you know when you need important prayer support?
- Does that diminish God's power or glory?
- Does it suggest He doesn't want you to go directly to Him?
It is just the opposite. What brings God the greatest glory is His family loving each other
— the whole Church — here and there.
We are one body in Christ.
Another point: In the Old Testament, the prohibition on contact with the dead and divination came directly from the danger presented by the demonic and other principalities. In Christ, there is no prohibition or danger for souls that reside in God. They are not unclean spirits. If Christ is Our Model, then consider how He made contact with Moses and Elijah on the mountain when He needed support to face His mission.
While we aren't summoning up contact with spirits (and we certainly prohibit all divination and spiritism), we are letting them [the saints] know through prayer, (that God allows them to hear), that we want their prayer and support, because we are family — more so than even the blood of our relations, but of the blood of The Lamb.
I've got to run now, so maybe a colleague can comment on Confession and the other points.
Peace,
Bob Kirby
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