Icons of Hope: The "Last Things" in Catholic Imagination

Chapter 3: Time, Judgment, and Competitive Spirituality

C H A P T E R 3 Time, Judgment, and Competitive Spirituality A Reading of the Development of the Doctrine of Purgatory Speculation about the life of the blessed dead brought us to the tentative conclusion that all of the saints, extraordinary and ordinary, are busy in the afterlife at the ongoing work of forgiveness, and that this eschatological activity is a realized norm for Christian virtue in all the dimensions of the communion of the saints. As the previous chapter closed, I observed that imagining the blessed dead in this way might seem odd to a tradition inclined to think of the Beatific Vision as a state of ecstasy that is utterly, and so ironically, static. Busyness in the afterlife cuts against the grain of a traditional metaphysics of eternity and pious expectations of heavenly life as a sheer state of repose . Even more, my proposal for a thicker description of a heavenly life in which the blessed dead are preoccupied with the business of reconciliation seems nearer to traditional images of life in purgatory. Conflating heaven and purgatory risks the unseemly positions that heaven is stained by sin or that purgatory shares too much in the glories of heaven. Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of a purgatorial 57 dimension to heaven is that the association itself takes purgatory too seriously for a time that has regarded it with theological indifference. For many Catholics in the postconciliar Church, purgatory has fallen off the eschatological map. One reasonable explanation for why this has occurred might run along the following lines. The theological and pastoral reception of the Second Vatican Council highlighted the power of God’s grace in bringing believers to salvation, and that emphasis undermined the detailed accounting of personal virtue and sin in the Tridentine merit system. This accent on the graciousness of divine love brought about a seismic shift in Catholic belief and practice. Conservatives in the Church would continue the explanation by concluding that the postconciliar theology of God’s infinite mercy and compassion tragically eclipsed the preconciliar sense of the power of personal sin. This diminishment of the sense of sin has had repercussions for a host of other mutually related beliefs and practices that explains the contemporary indifference toward purgatory . The diminishment of a sense of personal sin has been attended by a transformed understanding of the saintly life as an epiphany of virtue, though not virtue achieved through difficult struggle with sin. The diminishment of the sense of personal sin has led to the virtual disappearance of the sacrament of penance in popular Catholic practice , a change in religious behavior that reflects the loss of a belief in the rigor of divine judgment. And since purgatory is about judgment, it is hardly surprising that the doctrine of purgatory has largely disappeared from Catholic belief and practice. This chapter, though, offers a somewhat different explanation for the disappearance of purgatory in contemporary Catholic belief and practice, and one that does not reduce its disappearance to the tragic. That explanation will depend on an argument that I offer in the body of the chapter for the development of the doctrine of purgatory. My purpose is to reflect on the development of the doctrine of purgatory in order to appreciate the workings of judgment in the Catholic tradition . I will not attempt a theological retrieval of the doctrine of purgatory , nor am I interested in trying to describe the life of the dead in purgatory in the manner of my account of the blessed dead in heaven. I am entirely open to the possibility that there is value in such a re58 Icons of Hope trieval, but that is not my project here. Nor does my analysis intend to suggest that the doctrine of purgatory is an inauthentic development in the teachings of the Church. Instead, the doctrine of purgatory will serve as a resource for elucidating the anxieties and hopes that attend the Catholic belief in divine judgment. I readily concede at the outset that my argument will not please professional historians. It is sweeping in its historical scope, speculative in its judgments, and leads, in the end, to constructive conclusions. The story I tell will have historical contours and its main characters will be Catholic Christians who have lived their lives in the tradition’s two, broad vocations: ascetics and laypersons. I begin the story...