Common Sense About Purgatory.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 12, 20 March 1902, Page 2

Common Sense About Purgatory.

There are few Catholic doctrines that are so little understood and so violently denounced by our non-Catholic friends as the belief in Purgatory, yet there are few doctrines that after a little examination and reflection so readily commend themselves to ordinary reason and common sense. The almost absolute necessity —from the point of view of pure reason —of some sort of intermediate state, some place of purification for the soul after death is now very generally recognised even by Protestant theologians, though their teaching has not penetrated the minds of the people to any great extent. The teaching, for example, of what is known as ' The Shorter Catechism ' —the standard popular compendium of Presbyterian theology —that ' the souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory," is now entirely discarded by Presbyterian ministers and the doctrine of the Intermediate State bulks very largely in modern Presbyterian theology. As showing how natural and reasonable the idea of a future state of purification appears to plain, practical common-sense, the following bit of dialogue, quoted by the Aye Maria from a recent novel, is very apt and to the point: —

'Take an ordinary, every-day sort of a man like myself, for instance. I know lam plenty good enough for New York, but I'm not that conceited as to think I'm just fit for heaven at a moment's notice. On the other hand, I don't think that I'm bad enough to take any real enjoyment out of the bottomless pit. Besides, it will be full of mugwumps, anyway, and that's no kind of society for the like of me. Now, a Baptist preacher would have no hesitation ; he'd burn me up ior ever and ever. I don't think that would be quite fair. But the priest would say to me, " Come on, Pat, and we'll smelt out of you all those little discrepancies that are very useful in New York, but for which there is no call at all in paradise ; and when that's done, you can just take your robe and trot upstairs." It's just like a man going into a Turkish bath and coming out a clean citizen with a white sheet around him. There's a commonsense ring about the proposal which seems to appeal to a plain man like myself; but that's not to say I'm a Catholic at all, for I'm not — that is as far as the returns are in at present.'