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The implication could be drawn that a full atonement has not been made by the redemptive work of Christ.

Whatever implication you are drawing could not be much different than what St. Paul said "I Paul am made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church" (Collasians 1.23-24)

What is lacking in the atonement is our participation in it as imitators of Christ. Canonical penances are an official form to cause our participation to further our salvation.

It means that when we confess our sins and receive Christ's absolution, we aren't really forgiven and it isn't finished until the penance is made. By contrast, any discipline placed on one by a father-confessor in the Orthodox tradition are pedagogical means and therapeutic medicines which the priest as a compassionate father and experienced spiritual physician, imposes, in order to help the penitent become fruitful in works worthy of his repentance.

The showing of fruits of repentance is the outward sign that the inward confession was sincere. And while the sins are forgiven at absolution, we are not brought back towards perfection where we were before sinning until we do the penances.

In summary, the heart of at least some Orthodox objections to the idea of purgatory is portraying this as punishment that needs to be completed, that involves suffering and pain. Its being linked to uncompleted penances that need to be "paid up" and completed is outside the pale of Orthodox thought.

I have no comments to this other than to again quote St. Mark of Ephesus in his Homily Against the Purgatorial Fires:

"But if souls have departed this life in faith and love, while nevertheless carrying with themselves certain faults, whether small ones over which they have not repented at all, or great ones for which — even though have repented over them — they did not undertake to show fruits of repentance: such souls, we believe, must be cleansed from this kind of sins, but not by means of some purgatorial fire or a definitive punishment in some place (for this, as we have said, has not at all been handed down to us). But some must be cleansed in the very departure from the body (as St. Gregory the Dialogist literally shows); while others must be cleansed after the departure from the body, before they come to worship God and are honored with the lot of the blessed, or — if their sins were more serious and bind them for a longer duration — they are kept in hell, but not in order to remain forever in fire and torment, but as it were in prison and confinement under guard."

If you can accept this as an accurate statement of Orthodox belief, I can assure you I and other Catholics are 100% in agreement with the thoughts it expresses as being common to our faith. If this is not an example of Orthodoxy, I must wonder at how St. Mark is accounted one of the greastest of Fathers in the past 1200 years by your commuinion.

I am glad that St. Mark's homily is now the doctrine of the Catholic church. That will greatly reduce the number of things Orthodox and Catholics need to disagree on! I haven't read this homily in its entirety, although I will need to do so. I would also point out that while St. Mark is mostly remembered for his refusal to agree to the false union of Florence, the records of the Council itself show that he worked very hard to try to be fair, and to find common ground where it could be found. He took very seriously the fact that the Emperor wanted to try to make the union happen in an attempt to save Eastern Christendom from the sword.

I would certainly hope though, that he hasn't been an Orthodox saint for the last 1200 years, since that would mean that we are talking about two different people. :-)

Based on what you are saying, it sounds as though things have really changed in the Catholic approach to these matters, and you won't find me arguing with a Catholic who finds St. Mark's formulations to be authoritative and complete...

The differences in this matter aren't a matter of whether we pray for the dead, or whether these prayers benefit the dead. On that, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are in agreement.

What prevents me, at any rate, from agreeing with your implication that Catholic and Orthodox doctrines are identical (isn't that what you are saying about this?), is probably at least in part the underlying juridical view of salvation, repentance, and punishment that Catholicism has traditionally had, and that has inspired Catholic ways of thinking and talking about prayers for the dead. The codification and systematization of such prayers would seem to give the effect that the grace of forgiveness and repentance can be manipulated like a thing. There has just been something about the difference in approach that has caused Orthodox Christians, century after century, to hesitate to say that we believe the same thing. I don't claim to be able to formulate it well at all, and I don't think that it needs to be a major point of difference in and of itself. But it is different, and I suspect that the roots are in our view of the spiritual life and the pursuit of salvation/theosis.

I suspect that when closely examined, the views are not complementary, but rather mutually exclusive, and that for there to be agreement, the Catholic Church will have to reformulate its beliefs in a more traditionally Christian way, and not continue to attempt to convince the Orthodox that scholastic dissections and codifications are compatible with patristic ways of thought and practice.

I'm curious, BTW -- once a Catholic has prayed for the dead or done a good work in the name of the dead that receives a plenary indulgence, do Catholics continue to pray for that person (or did they in the olden days when average Catholics actually cared about these things?), and if so, why? And if prayers continue to be offered, then what was the point to the plenary indulgence?