Two attempts at thought.
(1)The souls in purgatory ARE freed from sin. Honestly, read Dante. This whole conversation is made more difficult that need be because you guys get the ‘vibe’ wrong. Dante presents Purgatory as joyful!
(2) The other vibe, that a lot of Catholics get wrong too, is the persistent idea of a top down, legislative or executive Vatican and a set of faith and morals teachings laid out like the income tax code.
I was just checking the Catholic Encyclopedia on Semi-Pelagianism and was struck once again how it’s not like that at ALL! It’s way more fermenty and diverse! For most people most of the time,the rules and doctrines that matter are easily known. It’s when people start thinking about tricky questions and disagreeing that somebody appeals to “The Vatican”. Then, often reluctantly, a decision is made.
Even decision or acts which look like “bold, new initiatives” — like, say, the outreach to Anglicans — are responses to problems posed to the Holy See.
I think a lot of non-Catholics (We’ve GOT to come up with a term that ruffles no feathers and denotes Christians who are not Catholics or Orthodox) have the idea that everything can be derived from the Scriptures. And that leads to an approach which is somewhat like geometry, with its first principles and derived theorems. So they expect to find similar first principles and to derive Catholic faith and practice from those.
But in “real life” it’s not like that. It’s way less defined, less static and mathematical, more dynamic, fluid, even biological.
Oh well. I must pretend to work.
(1)The souls in purgatory ARE freed from sin. Honestly, read Dante.
Of more authority Aquinas taught that souls in Purgatory cannot sin. But Rm 6 is not simply about not sinning, but overcoming its draw, yet this was only one reference to this world and life being the place of testing of character and practical sanctification, which multitude texts show, versus the next.
Dante presents Purgatory as joyful!
How much authority is he (honestly)? Augustine (Enarration on Psalm 37, no. 3) speaks of the pain which purgatorial fire causes as more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life. Likewise Gregory the Great states "that the pain be more intolerable than any one can suffer in this life" CE on Purgatory.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm
(2) The other vibe, that a lot of Catholics get wrong too, is the persistent idea of a top down, legislative or executive Vatican and a set of faith and morals teachings laid out like the income tax code.
A valid observation i would say, especially when seeking to contrast Rome with us that is, and is what i was referring to.
I was just checking the Catholic Encyclopedia on Semi-Pelagianism and was struck once again how it’s not like that at ALL.
And you heard of the war about predestination. But then you have the fierce sedevacantists.
I think a lot of non-Catholics have the idea that everything can be derived from the Scriptures.
You think rightly. But insofar as faith and morals it must be, yet not simply formally but materially which provides for reason, and the magisterium, etc. The key thing in SS is that Scripture remains the supreme infallible authority, out of which doctrine comes, as explicitly declared as well as warranted by a confluence of texts, and all truth claims are tested by.