The Purgometer: In Theory and Practice

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just a little background…

About five years ago, a friend and I were reflecting on the nature of Heaven and Hell. Basically, we felt that while we’ve done and thought some things that might keep us from getting into heaven right away, we haven’t done anything so horrible that we should spend an eternity in Hell. To quote, “It’s not like I’m Saddam.”

So…we have a healthy respect for Purgatory, both as a concept and as a buffer zone between Eternal Peace and The Other Place.

To conceptualize this, we developed the Purgometer. Basically, a car odometer, but it racks up years in Purgatory, rather than miles on the road.

We kind of envision it as little set of numbers on wheels, hovering invisibly over everybody’s head. Whenever you laugh at the misfortunes of others, or tell an off-color joke…tick, tick, tick, tick (usually said aloud with fingers rotating in air to symbolize the time you are racking up).

I just wanted to share the joy and usefulness of the Purgometer with my fellow Dopers. But I also have a few questions…

How similar is the Purgometer to an actual car odometer? Can it be rolled back? Getting a lift from someone keeps your car odometer from advancing…does laughing at someone else’s sick humor keep your Purgometer from racking up the points? And is the very idea of a Purgometer sacreligious?

Curt

2

When I was a kid, some Catholic kids told me there was a concrete number of sins one could rack up, and still go to heaven. I was a Presbyterian, but I have to think now, that was not actual Church policy. Maybe their Purgometers clicked off the necessary Our Fathers and Hail Marys they’d have to say. :rolleyes:

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I got pulled over once for doing 75sph (sins per hour) in a 60 zone. The PurgoCop said that if I didn’t stop touching it I was gonna go blind. She didn’t write a ticket and I got off with a warning.

4

This probably isn’t the current teaching, but according do Dante’s structure of the afterlife, only those who had turned their back on Jesus at the time of death were condemned to hell. Someone who died hoping for salvation would go to purgatory, no matter how what or how much they had on their record. While the purpose of hell was simply to punish for all eternity, the purpose of purgatory was to cleanse believers of their sinfulness so that they could enter heaven, and so prayers said by the living could speed things along for the purgatorians, while the damned were beyond help. Presumably, everyone had to spend at least a little time in purgatory.