I don't know if arguss was being intentionally misleading, or he doesn't completely understand, or if I'm misunderstanding him, but that line about prayer calling God's attention to the soul in purgatory that has already been purged of his sin was incorrect.
You are not praying that they are somehow taken out of purgatory early like cookies being removed from the oven too soon, either. The soul will enter heaven when it is purged of the temporal punishment due to sin, and not before.
Our prayers for the souls in purgatory are "paying their debt", so to speak, and we join St. Paul- "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting in the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church." (Colossians 1:24).
Basically, we pray that God pours out the grace upon that soul which He earned on Calvary, but which was lacking in that individual due to his own sin, so that he may be brought to the state of perfection required to enter heaven.
Actually, it MAY or MAY NOT be incorrect. There is a long history to the line of thought that souls may languish long after they have paid there debt.
The Book of Enoch might be the first to suggest it. It is apocryphal, but ancient, and Jesus had read it and is mentioned in the Bible.
Also, the ninth of the fifteen promises to those who pray the Rosary is "I will deliver very promptly from Purgatory the souls devoted to my Rosary."
That promise would need not be made if the souls were automatically released.
According to Catholic doctrine, many souls will stay in Purgatory until the final judgement, which leads me to believe that they stay there because nobody prays for them. After all, we can't believe that the fires of Purgatory are not capable of doing the job.
Most of the actual workings of God and Purgatory are subjective, and the Church itself does not agree on what actually happens, only that there is a Purgatory.
Your explanation sounds good but it doesn't make sense to me. I don't think it would stand up to Aquinas.
I'm confused. Please help me underestand. Other posters have stated that while forgiveness for sins was obtained by Jesus on the cross, there remains the issue of suffering for those sins- the suffering that the believer has not yet "paid" on earth. The suffering produces cleansing. Correct?
How then are your prayers "paying the debt" of someone else? Are your prayers causing them to suffer more? And if you're praying to God to "pour out His Grace" on the suffering individual, what exactly are you asking God to do? Make him suffer more or less? And how does Grace fit into this? Grace is an unmerited gift. It seems that purgatory, however, is the paying of a debt- a debt that you say has to be paid in full BY THE INDIVIDUAL. This gets to the heart of the difference between RC's and Protestants. We agree the debt has to be paid in full- but we believe the God paid the debt in full- there's nothing left for the individual to do, which is a good thing, since there is nothing the individual CAN do!