“For example, if I cheat on my wife, God will forgive me if I sincerely seek contrition. But the trust of my wife in my faithfulness will be severely damaged, and the quality of our relationship will suffer, until I regain the trust. The suffering I experience as a consequence of my sin remains...”
So in this case, if you die a few days following your sin (and if it were me, my wife would probably ensure that result!), then God would say, “I’ve forgiven you, bdeaner, but your wife still needs for you to suffer more...”?
“Just as it can occur in life, Catholics believe a similar kind of suffering continues after death, as a preparation for heaven, and whatever that may be — a state, place, etc. — the name for it is “Purgatory.”
Catholics may believe it, but there is no scriptural warrant for it. And there SHOULD be. Every exhortation to behave better - and Paul and James and Peter gave us plenty - should be capped with, “For if you do not, you will suffer in Purgatory”.
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“The Catholic doctrine of purgatory supposes the fact that some die with smaller faults for which there was no true repentance, and also the fact that the temporal penalty due to sin is it times not wholly paid in this life...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 this subject. In the West the belief in the existence of real fire is common. 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, “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.”
The best argument against Purgatory is that the Apostles seem quite ignorant of it. There is no excuse for its absence as a clearly taught doctrine other than it doesn’t exist.