Yes, I believe it does. Think of the torment of being in hell to remember your past life and the ones you love knowing they are heading for the same place you are and not being able to do one thing about it. This story is a picture of hell, and IMO this is one of the saddest, scariest parts about it. I never thought about how bad it would be to have to think about my past bad life and that of loved ones for eternity. Sounds like hell to me.
Becky
I am not implying that the dead can hear our prayers or entreatise, just that they may want to pray for us whether they are in heaven or hell.
What does this mean to you?
Purgatory
I. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
Purgatory (Lat., "purgare", to make clean, to purify) in accordance with Catholic teaching is a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.
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I think that's what I have been saying.
Temporal Punishment
That temporal punishment is due to sin, even after the sin itself has been pardoned by God, is clearly the teaching of Scripture.
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The separation between forgiveness of sins and the temporal punishment due to them is important to understand. Our sins have effects on the world and it would not be a just God who forgave us for robbing a bank while letting us keep the ill gotten money.
Purgatorial Fire
At the Council of Florence, Bessarion argued against the existence of real purgatorial fire, and the Greeks were assured that the Roman Church had never issued any dogmatic decree on tlils subject. In the West the belief in the existence of real fire is common. Augustine in Ps. 37 n. 3, speaks of the pain which purgatorial fire causes as more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life, "gravior erit ignis quam quidquid potest homo pati in hac vita" (P. L., col. 397). Gregory the Great speaks of those who after this life "will expiate their faults by purgatorial flames," and he adds "'that the pain be more intolerable than any one can suffer in this life" (Ps. 3 poenit., n. 1). Following in the footsteps of Gregory, St. Thomas teaches (IV, dist. xxi, q. i, a.1) that besides the separation of the soul from the sight of God, there is the other punishment from fire. "Una poena damni, in quantum scilicet retardantur a divina visione; alia sensus secundum quod ab igne punientur", and St. Bonaventure not only agrees with St. Thomas but adds (IV, dist. xx, p.1, a.1, q. ii) that this punishment by fire is more severe than any punishment which comes to men in this life; "Gravior est omni temporali poena. quam modo sustinet anima carni conjuncta". How this fire affects the souls of the departed the Doctors do not know, and in such matters it is well to heed the warning of the Council of Trent when it commands the bishops "to exclude from their preaching difficult and subtle questions which tend not to edification', and from the discussion of which there is no increase either in piety or devotion" (Sess. XXV, "De Purgatorio"). (Catholic Encyclopedia)
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I am particularly interested in the FIRE and in what I, in my ignorance, read as a not so subtle suggestion to "lets just keep quiet about this".
Enlightenment please.
It is not a suggestion to "keep quiet" about the entire concept of Purgatory, but rather the elements therein. The question of concern is whether the idea of "fire" in Purgatory is really a metaphor or is an actual fire.
We all know the depiction of hell as a place of fire and brimstone, etc, but many think this is a primative conception. Is it not more terrifying if the place of torment is personalized? Like Room 101, the torture of hell may be spiders if you hate them, rats if that is your terror, mothers in law naggind, etc. The question being raised here is if the cleansing "fire" of Purgatory is an actual fire or if it is a reference to to mental pain of having the unclean elements excised from the psyche, an acute awareness of our uncleanliness, etc..
SD