According to the ideas of the Catholic Church, purgatory is a place where the soul of a deceased Christian, who did not receive permission from some minor sins during his lifetime, is cleansed of them through various posthumous tests.
Dogma of Catholicism
The dogma of purgatory in Catholicism was formed gradually, starting from the XIII century. But its consolidation in cathedral decrees took place only at the Ferraro-Florence Cathedral in 1439, and then confirmed at the Council of Trent in 1563.
Quite consistent with the Latin spirit of legalism, the doctrine of purgatory says that only a Christian who is reconciled with God gets there, but for whom some minor sin remains. One who, having died, did not have time to receive the remission of all sins and incur a temporary punishment for them on earth, according to this doctrine, cannot enter the Kingdom of God and must be cleansed.
The basis for such an opinion, Catholic theology sees in the Old Testament book of the Maccabees, which speaks of the offering of a propitious sacrifice for the dead in order to absolve them from sin. From this, Catholic theologians concluded that the souls of the dead are not in hell or in paradise, and their fate is decided through the cleansing and prayer of the living.
The Catholic Church believes that purgatory will exist until the Last Judgment and the souls of sinners will remain in it until they are completely cleansed for union with God. Those living in the power to help them with prayers, deeds of mercy and indulgences.
It is important that, according to the opinion of Catholics, those who died in unity with the Church and did not have an unresolved mortal sin in their souls fall into purgatory, and therefore they will definitely end up with God after the cleansing.
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Modern Western theology views purgatory not as a place, but as a process or condition conducive to spiritual growth.
Orthodoxy view
Orthodoxy (like Protestantism) does not recognize the dogma of purgatory. The Orthodox Church also believes that the souls of those who have died in repentance, but who have not had time to bear fruit by deeds, can become closer to God thanks to the prayers of the Church and alms for them - but it is this, and not the cleansing death throes, that can ease the lot of the soul.
According to Orthodox dogma, even during a person's life, salvation is accomplished not through redemption or a clear system of "sin-punishment", but only through faith in Christ, repentance, deeds of mercy and love. In the afterlife, all the more, a person is not able to correct his fate either by atonement or by a system of "cleansing measures".
In Orthodoxy, however, there is another, no less controversial doctrine circulating - about the posthumous ordeals of the soul. And if purgatory for Catholics is a place of torment for the soul to compensate for its missing merits before the justice of God, then ordeals for the Orthodox are a judgment and trial of the soul by passions on the way to God.
We find basic information about the ordeals in the 10th century essay "The Life of St. Basil the New", which tells in detail about the ordeals of a certain blessed Theodora, whose soul was led by angels through peculiar "checkpoints", where demons judged this soul each in their sin, trying to " sue”it from God.
This doctrine is considered part of the ascetic tradition of Orthodoxy, but, despite its massive distribution and recognition even by many holy fathers (for example, Ignatii Brianchaninov, Theophan the Recluse), the doctrine of ordeals is still not a dogma of the Orthodox Church and is often denied as controversial from the point of view of Orthodox Christian dogma, and in many respects contradicts the spirit of the Gospel.
Author: Natalia Danilina