Of Purgatory and Ghost Stories
 An old Catholic book on purgatory that is one of the few
devoted to this subject in print is Fr. F. X. Schouppe, SJ, Purgatory Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints.
It was first published in 1893 but has been reprinted several
times since, and is available in most Catholic bookstores,
published by TAN Books of Rockford, IL. I was given a copy of it
on more than one occasion by Catholics who were moved by its
graphic imagery and pleading narrative. It's a fabulous
representation of popular Catholic imaginings on this subject. A
Protestant, however, will find it to be a bizarre little
book, filled with silly little legends like the one of St. Gregory the Great hearing a "poor soul" cry out from a block of ice upon which he was resting his feet on a hot summer day.
Schouppe piously defends
the telling of such stories on the grounds that his intent is "not to prove the existence of Purgatory to sceptical [sic] minds, but to make it better known to the pious faithful" (p. xxxiv).
He acknowledges that
The revelations of the saints, called also particular revelations, do not belong to the deposit of faith confided by Jesus Christ to His Church; they are historical facts, based upon human testimony. It is permitted to believe them, and piety finds wholesome food in them. We may, however, disbelieve them without sinning against faith ...
So far, well and good. But as he goes on he equivocates:
We may, however, disbelieve them without sinning against faith; but they are authenticated, and we cannot reject them without offending against reason; because sound reason demands that all men should give assent to truth when it is sufficiently demonstrated. (p. xxxv)Let us add that the Christian must guard against too great incredulity in supernatural facts connected with dogmas of faith. St. Paul tells us that Charity believeth all things (1 Cor. 13:7), that is to say, as interpreters explain it, all that which we may prudently believe, and of which the belief will not be prejudicial (p. xl).
He admits the teaching of the Catholic Church that one does not have to believe these pious legends and alleged "revelations." But then he tries to impose a guilt trip, and says you would be
"offending against reason" by exercising this option. Against reason? How so? Because you must "assent to truth when it is sufficiently demonstrated." This seems to suggest that, even though you don't have to believe in ghost stories, if the ghosts say the same thing over and over, you "sin against reason" by not believing them, since the ghosts say it so often.
And what about these apparitions themselves? "That the spirits of the dead sometimes appear to the living is a fact that cannot be denied" (p. xxxvi).
That, of course, is an assumption that he
does not even try to prove; more importantly, it stands in flat contradiction to the Scriptural command against communication with the dead (e.g., Deuteronomy 18:10).
"Apparitions of the souls that are in Purgatory are of frequent occurrence," he claims (p. xxxvi).
We should qualify that by calling them alleged apparitions; Jesus, however, appears to rule out such apparitions in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16).
How do Schouppe's ghosts manifest themselves?
When the souls in Purgatory appear to the living, they always present themselves in an attitude which excites compassion; now with the features which they had during life or at their death, with a sad countenance and imploring looks, in garments of mourning, with an expression of extreme suffering; then like a mist, a light, a shadow, or some kind of fantastic figure, accompanied by a sign or word by which they may be recognized. At other times they betray their presence by moans, sobs, sighs, or hurried respiration and plaintive accents. They often appear enveloped in flames. When they speak, it is to manifest their sufferings, to deplore their past faults, to ask suffrages, or even to address reproaches to those who ought to succor them. Another kind of revelation, adds the same author, is made by invisible blows which the living receive, by the violent shutting of doors, the rattling of chains, and the sounds of voices (p. xxxix).
That sounds more like the spirits of Charles Dickens than anything attested in Scripture.
Let's take a look at a few more of these ghost stories, many
of which come from the
Dialogues
of Pope Gregory I, in which he seeks to warn the reader of the
punishments of purgatory, and to solicit masses to be said for
the dead. Gregory begins with a warning:
Yet we have here further to consider, that none can be there purged, no, not for the least sins that be, unless in his lifetime he deserved by virtuous works to find such favour in that place.
Gregory admits immediately that these are not stories of things that he has seen or heard. No, he's just passing on stories that were told to him, from folks he trusted. These are sixth century Urban Legends, in other words.
After telling the first tale, a typical story of a ghost begging for penitential acts to be done on his behalf, Gregory's interlocutor, Peter, asks,
What, I pray you, is the reason, that, in these latter days, so many things come to light, which in times past were not known: in such sort that by open revelations and manifest signs, the end of the world seemeth not to be far off?
In other words, "Why are we hearing of these new teachings, that come from the mouths of the dead?"And Gregory goes on to say that at the border between two eras there's going to be a little spiritual bleed-through, as it were.
The stories go on, stressing the value of offering sacrifice on behalf of the dead. But nowhere does Gregory quote the passage from 2 Maccabees that
Catholics today usually offer as the justification for this. Instead, he does it because the ghosts of the dead asked for it.
One of the stories is of a monk Justus. It seems he hid three coins from his fellow monks, and only told his brother where they were. But the monks had found them, and Gregory just couldn't fathom how this faithful monk could have committed such a sin. So he decided to teach a lesson to one and all. None of the monks were to visit Justus in his final agony to comfort him--and his brother was to tell him why, so that hopefully he'd die with some remorse.
and when he is dead, let not his body be buried amongst the rest of the monks, but make a grave for him in some one dunghill or other, and there cast it in, together with the three crowns which he left behind him, crying out all with joint voice: 'Thy money be with thee unto perdition'; and so put earth upon him."
They then waited 30 days, after which Gregory offered a daily mass for Justus for 30 days. And after 30 days, the ghost of Justus appeared to his brother and said he was now at peace.
After telling stories such as these, Schouppe tries to calculate the time of purgatory:
According to the common opinion of the doctors, the expiatory pains are of long duration. "There is no doubt, " says Bellarmine (De Gemitu, lib. 2, c. 9), "that the pains of Purgatory are not limited to ten and twenty years, and that they last in some cases entire centuries. But allowing it to be true that their duration did not exceed ten or twenty years, can we account it as nothing to have to endure for ten or twenty years the most excruciating sufferings without the least alleviation? . . . . Shall we then find any difficulty in embracing labor and penance to free ourselves from the sufferings of Purgatory? Shall we fear to practice the most painful exercises: vigils, fasts, almsgiving, long prayers, and especially contrition, accompanied with sighs and tears? ...
Let us take a moderate estimate, and suppose that you commit about ten faults a day; at the end of 365 days you will have the sum of 3,650 faults. Let us . . . facilitate the calculation [by reducing the number to] 3,000 per year. At the end of ten years this will amount to 30,000, and at the end of twenty years to 60,000.
Let us continue our hypothesis: You die after these twenty years of virtuous life, and appear before God with a debt of 30,000 faults [presumably having worked off the other half], which you must discharge in Purgatory. How much time will you need to accomplish this expiation? Suppose, on the average, each fault requires one hour of Purgatory. This measure is very moderate, if we judge by the revelations of the saints; but at any rate this will give you a Purgatory of 30,000 hours. . . . Thus, a good Christian who watches over himself, who applies himself to penance and good works, finds himself liable to three years, three months, and fifteen days of Purgatory.
How do you avoid purgatory, according to Fr. Schouppe? Primarily "by the water of tears, and by the fire of charity and good works" (p. 368).
 [W]e must cherish a great devotion towards the Blessed Virgin Mary. ... Those who wear the holy scapular have a special right to the protection of Mary. The devotion of the holy scapular, unlike that of the Rosary, does not consist in prayer, but in the pious practice of wearing a sort of habit, which is as the livery of the Queen of Heaven" (p. 369)
Besides devotion to Mary (especially wearing the scapular) and good works, "Christian mortification and religious obedience" is a third means of satisfaction (p. 384). This is "bearing in union with Him the trials he may have to encounter in this life, or the suffering which he voluntarily inflicts upon himself" (p. 384). A fourth means is receiving the Sacraments (p. 387).
Then we get to this, which he places at the end of his list:
The fifth means for obtaining favor before the tribunal of God is to have great confidence in His Mercy. In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped; let me never be confounded, says the Prophet (Ps. 30).
According to Scripture, this should have been placed first and foremost. Which is the firmer ground upon which to build--Ghost stories and human works, or faith in the mercy of God? Which will be of value in the final judgment? This is the sort of "works righteousness" that Protestants have
always accused Catholics of advocating.
Let's be clear that not all Catholics speak of purgatory in the manner of Schouppe and Gregory. For example, consider how Joseph Ratzinger
(later Pope Benedict XVI) described it:
... Purgatory is understood in a properly Christian way when it is grasped christologically, in terms of the Lord himself as the judging fire which transforms us and conforms us to his own glorified body ....
... [T]he purification involved does not happen through some thing, but through the transforming power of the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body[.]...
...A person's entry into the realm of manifest reality is an entry into his definitive destiny and thus an immersion in eschatological fire. The transforming "moment" of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of "short" or "long" duration on the basis of temporal
measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The "temporal measure" of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. ...
The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has now become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where one is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God, and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.*
Of these two authors, Schouppe's work is more in keeping with
the average Catholic's image of purgatory, while Ratzinger's is
more representative of the approach of a professional
theologian. In my years as I Catholic I never accepted
Schouppe's fantasies; in fact, purgatory was one of the topics I
found most difficult to accept however it was presented.
Nevertheless, that Christological presentation by Ratzinger did
the trick. I could accept that. But Ratzinger and Schouppe have
something in common--both clearly accept the
dogmatic definition of the
Council of Trent. This, in the end, is what we have to give
the most weight to if we want to understand the Catholic
teaching.
Since the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has, following the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the Fathers, taught in sacred councils and very recently in this ecumenical council that there is a purgatory,[1] and that the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, the holy council commands the bishops that they strive diligently to the end that the sound doctrine of purgatory, transmitted by the Fathers and sacred councils,[2] be believed and maintained by the faithful of Christ, and be everywhere taught and preached.
The more difficult and subtle questions, however, and those that do not make for edification and from which there is for the most part no increase in piety, are to be excluded from popular instructions to uneducated people.[3] Likewise, things that are uncertain or that have the appearance of falsehood they shall not permit to be made known publicly and discussed. But those things that tend to a certain kind of curiosity or superstition, or that savor of filthy lucre, they shall prohibit as scandals and stumbling-blocks to the faithful. The bishops shall see to it that the suffrages of the living, that is, the sacrifice of the mass,[4] prayers, alms and other works of piety which they have been accustomed to perform for the faithful departed, be piously and devoutly discharged in accordance with the laws of the Church, and that whatever is due on their behalf from testamentary bequests or other ways, be discharged by the priests and ministers of the Church and others who are bound to render this service not in a perfunctory manner, but diligently and accurately.
(Fr. Schouppe omitted the second paragraph, by the way,
in quoting the Council. I think it was ghost tales such as
he tells that they had in mind.)
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) likewise affirms
traditional Catholic dogma on this point:
III. The Final Purification, or Purgatory1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified,
are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo
purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of
heaven.
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the
elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.
The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the
Councils of Florence and Trent. the tradition of the Church, by reference to
certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:
As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment,
there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to
come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in
this age, but certain others in the age to come.
1032 This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already
mentioned in Sacred Scripture: "Therefore Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for
the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin."
From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered
prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus
purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.
The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance
undertaken on behalf of the dead:
Let us help and commemorate them. If Job's sons were purified by their father's
sacrifice, why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some
consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our
prayers for them.
The subject of purgatory is related to Catholic teaching on Indulgences and Satisfaction
and The Sacrifice of the Mass (see those
links for more discussion). Notice that the Catholic Church still recommends the offering
of "above all the Eucharistic sacrifice" to help the dead in
purgatory. This is the most common practical implication of the
doctrine. Each Catholic parish bulletin will list the names of
those for whom that week' masses will be offered (the "stipend"
paid is normally $5 or $10). And that custom of offering a 30 day series of "Gregorian Masses" for the dead is still available (examples: here, here, here, and here),
usually as a source of revenue for missionary orders, with
prices ranging from $150 to $500.
In recent years some Catholic apologists, no longer content
to justify teachings solely on the basis of Tradition, have
claimed now to be able to find it in Scripture (places like
1 Cor 3:15). Perhaps we can look at their use of texts like
that another time. Now I will just note that it is, in fact, not
only absent from the Bible, but it is antithetical to Biblical
teaching on anthropology (about which see
this article; I'll be
writing more another time) and salvation. Where then does the
teaching come from? Well, I think Schouppe has given us one
major source--Pope Gregory's ghost stories. But pagan philosophy
was another source, and was having an influence on Christianity
long before Gregory's time. Consider this selection from Plato
quoted by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica (ch. 38):
For [Plato] speaks as follows in the dialogue Concerning the Soul:
"...As soon as the dead have arrived at the place to which each is conveyed by his genius, first of all they undergo a trial, both those who have lived good and holy and just lives, and those who have not. And those who are found to have led tolerable lives proceed to Acheron, and embarking on such vessels as there are for them, they arrive on board these at the lake; and there they dwell, and by undergoing purification and suffering punishment for their evil deeds they are absolved from any wrongs they have committed, or receive rewards for their good deeds, each according to his deserts. But any who are found to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their sins, having either perpetrated many great acts of sacrilege, or many nefarious and lawless murders, or any other crimes of this kind----these are hurled by their appropriate doom into Tartarus, whence they never come forth.
'But those who are found to have committed sins which are great though not incurable, as for instance if in anger they have done any violence to father or mother, and passed the rest of their life in penitence, or have committed homicide in any other similar way, these must also be thrown into Tartarus, but after they have been thrown in and have continued there a year, they are cast out by the wave, the homicides by way of Cocytus, and the parricides by way of Pyriphlegethon: and when they arrive all on fire at the Acherusian lake, there with loud cries they call upon those whom they either slew or outraged; and having summoned them they intreat and beseech them to let them come out into the lake, and to receive them kindly: and if they persuade them, they come out, and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried again into Tartarus, and thence back into the rivers, and never have rest from these sufferings, until they have won over those whom they wronged; for this was the sentence appointed for them by the judges.
'But any who are found to have been pre-eminent in holiness of life----these are they who are set free and delivered from these regions here on earth, as, from prison-houses, and attain to the pure dwelling place above, and make their abode upon the upper earth. And of this same class those who have fully purified themselves by philosophy live entirely free from troubles for all time to come, and attain to habitations still fairer than these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor does the time suffice at present. But for the sake of these things which I have described we ought, Simmias,
to make every effort to gain a share of virtue and of wisdom in our
lifetime: for fair is the prize, and great the hope."
In the near future I will be writing more about the contrast
between the Biblical and the Platonic understandings of the
human person and of death. For now, we see the nature of the
Catholic teaching of purgatory--a mixture of pagan speculation,
ghost tales, a view of satisfaction that supposes we have
"temporal punishment" that remains after forgiveness, and a
belief that human works (including the
sacrifice of the mass and
indulgences) can make up the difference.
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