I was raised (unsuccessfully) Catholic, and this is a question that has been bugging me since I was a child and still had some kind of faith. So the folk belief is that when somebody dies, the soul is immediately transferred to Heaven (if it qualifies, of course) and can happily watch over the still living. That’s why Catholics pray to the deceased (saints and acquaintances) to put in a good word for them to the Big Guy. But that doesn’t quite gel with the concept of judgement day as I understand it, when all the souls will be judged not until the end times have come.
I remember having asked a priest or teacher back then why we pray for the souls of the dead when their life is completed and the book of their life is already written, so to say, and he explained to me that our earthly concept of time doesn’t apply to the afterlife. Is this a hint for the anwer to my question? Of course I wasn’t satisfied with this answer, but have since learned to accept that logic isn’t a good tool for understanding religious dogma, a fact that drove me away from faith in the end, but in no way want to bash here in GQ, in fact I’m really interested in the official teaching, and not in criticism of that dogma.
So where are all the souls of the righteous people who have died now?
(I understand that the numerous Christian denominations differ in their eschatologies, so I ask for the Catholic interpretation because that’s my background)
When you die, your body rots in the ground, and your soul goes immediately either to heaven (purgatory is technically a part of heaven) or hell. When the end of the world arrives, your body will be resurrected and reunited with your soul. Then comes the Last Judgment, where the righteous will continue to live in paradise (but this time in their physical bodies,) and the wicked will be continue to be tormented in hell, (but this time in their physical bodies.) So, your eternal destiny is set at the moment of death. But the Last Judgement will increase both the pleasures of the saved and the torments of the damned, since they will become physical as well as spiritual.
As far as prayer for the dead goes, it’s not for the damned. If you are in hell, you are beyond hope, as Dante said. Rather, Catholics pray for the dead to help the souls in purgatory, who are already saved but must be cleansed of defilement before they can enter the fulness of heaven.
The article you linked to is unduly sensationalistic. Limbo was never dumped, since it was never an official doctrine to begin with. If you read the original document commissioned by the church, you’ll see that it admits that “there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in Revelation” and that limbo “remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis”. The document reaffirms the necessity of baptism, and concludes that there are “reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge” (emphasis in original) for the salvation of infants who die without baptism.
It’s an article about Catholicism…frankly, I’m amazed it was as accurate as it was. Usually, it’s crap like the “Rape victim excommunicated!” BS currently in the pit.
Purgatory is heaven insofar as it’s a place where the saved go. But since it’s much less pleasant than the rest of heaven, we often speak of it as a separate place.
Similarly, limbo (if one believes it exists) is part of hell, insofar as it’s a place where the unsaved go. But since it’s much more pleasant than the rest of hell, we often speak of it as a separate place.
As far as condition vs. location goes, I think it’s safe to say that the location aspect was emphasized a lot more in the old days, and the condition aspect is emphasized a lot more now. But whichever one chooses, it would apply equally to heaven, hell, and purgatory.
The current Church’s position is that purgatory definitely exists, that Heaven is preferable to it, and that prayers of mortals can have some efficacy in helping souls transition from one to the other. And that’s it-- That’s all the Church actually teaches. What, exactly, purgatory is, or how long it lasts (if it can even be said to have a duration) is open to individual speculation. Some believe that it’s a state of indescribable torment, differing from Hell only in that there’s eventual salvation from it. Some believe that it’s a state where we finish the righteous component of our life’s work, and can experience the satisfaction of a job well done, but without what could properly be called “pleasure” (and also without real suffering). Some believe that it’s over in a very eventful instant, while others believe that it lasts for subjective millennia. It’s even possible, within Church teaching, that it’s a state of extreme joy beyond all mortal imagining, but still short of the even more extreme joy of Heaven.
I’m quite surprised that the position of the church is so vague. I understand that not much about these things are stated in the Bible and much of Catholic dogma has formed over the many years since the gospels were written, but I had thought that the teachings in these crucial (to a Catholic) questions were much more defined. It must be endless fodder for discussions between Catholic theologians, I guess.
It was explained to me by a Catholic that the transition between death and final judgement was “in a twinkling of an eye.” Although it might be a number of years for the living, it was an instant for the departed. Not sure if this is official doctrine
Well, once you’re dead you’re outside time - “does eternity feel long or short?” is a bit like asking “is that noise warm?”, but since we have no actual way of knowing, you’ll get different guesses from different people.
I’m also assuming any ailments or injuries are healed and no longer an issue. I’d be pretty annoyed if I was resurrected and still had my current knees!
But isn’t being “outside of time” when dead also just an assumption, or is it backed up by scripture and/or official catechism? As already mentioned, this was the answer my priest/teacher gave me as a child, and I find it even harder to accept now. How do the souls of the deceased experience anything/act/think without any passage of time? Ok, the position of the Church may be: “We don’t know, it’s a mystery.”, but I find that hard to swallow. OTOH, it’s quite likable that the position of the Catholic Church is “We don’t know for sure.” (That’s my position too, though I have a strong guess which is different from the Church’s), instead of claiming to have all the answers.
The official answer is “we don’t exactly know what it feels like to be dead”. The definitions of eternity m-w gives me match what I would have called sempiterno: half-eternal, as it is time with a beginning but without an end; we may be having a language issue here. Different theologians (which doesn’t just mean people with degrees in Theology) have their own opinions on what it feels like to be dead, the Church doesn’t have one (it has opinions on the divisions of the afterlife, but gets very vague on the details).
Mysteries aren’t “things we don’t know”, they’re “things we know but don’t understand”, theological black boxes.
I don’t have so much trouble about the concept of eternity, I was more interested in the way the souls in purgatory experience the time until the final judgement (whenever that’ll be). I assumed that “being outside of time” meant that for the afterlife, our earthly physical and perceptional standards of time wouldn’t apply. Maybe this could be similar to the way human perception of time situationally depends (e. g. a minute spent watching paint dry subjectively lasts longer than, say, playing pinball). I know, this is just speculation, but apparently the Church speculates, too, but that’s ok. IOW, if John Doe dies today and goes to purgatory, and the final judgement will be on March 20, 2018 (don’t take my word for that ;)) when I’m hopefully still alive, will John Doe have spent three years in purgatory while I have spent them on earth, or was he in an incomparable realm?
Yeah, but where do you draw the line between things you just don’t know and those who are merely a mystery?
Sorry if my questions sound like a kid’s in Sunday school, but I’m really interested how the Church sees these things.
The RCC has declared certain things knowledgeable but not necessarily understandable (the default example in Spanish is the Trinity; when something is incomprehensible we say “it’s a mistery, like the Trinity”), others it has declared we don’t have enough data on. The exact process has been going on for several milennia (more or less milennia depending on whether you count pre-Christian Jewish theology or not).
For a short list of things we know but aren’t necessarily expected to understand, see the Creed. For further documentation, see the Catechism.