Amen, GC. as the great Hermann Sasse reminds us, The church, that is, Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia, lives from Repentence.
Only a sinner must repent, not a righteous man, but since there is no such perfectly righteous man, except for Jesus, then all need to repent. The sinner was justified and the publican not. Through humility (as did blessed Abel) he approached God, and declared himself a sinner, and I never got the impression that this was a one time declaration of sin in a mere moment of time.
And as far as the purgatory thing is concerned. We went from it being a suburb of hell, to a suburb of heaven and now a brief nanosecond in time when the dross of sin is refined away through fire (I'm presuming the mechanism remains the same, but who knows?)
Exactly. The descriptions vary according to mood, apparently.
I was looking through there a few weeks ago, and on the section on Faith, at the end of a chapter, I tried to answer the questions assigned. Did better than I thought I would do, but here's a point of interest for you guys.
The test consisted of two columns. One lists an activity and the other lists a description of the activity, so in the first column was listed participation in a Protestant service, and in the second column, the answer I chose was mortal sin, and I was right.