The Raft on the Tiber

When I went through RCIA, one guy had a really tough time with Papal Infallibility. It took several months for him to articulate what the problem was, but as he went through the program he understood enough to put his concerns into words. I’m going to over-simplify this, but here’s the gist of it: He thought that Catholics would be obligated to believe as a matter of faith if the pope said the sky was green.

Um, no…

There has been a lot of confusion and misinterpretation of the Catholic view of Justification. In fact, there has been a Battle Royale at a Protestant blog about this recently. [I’m not going to link this blog just now for a variety of reasons. I may do that later.] I am VERY reluctant to bring that battle here. This is, in essence, a blog of Catholic apologetics, but it is not a battleground.

However, given that I just called this a blog of Catholic apologetics, even if it has a very narrow aim, I think this subject will be of interest to both prospective converts and practicing Catholics.

[One editorial note: From here on I will be defining the words “Protestant" and “Protestantism" in very broad terms. I know many Protestant denominations do not agree with the more Fundamentalist definitions used here, but the word “Fundamentalist" doesn’t seem adequate either.]

This is going to be a tremendous oversimplification, but here’s the gist of it: The Protestant idea of justification revolves around Sola Fide – Latin for “by faith alone". They believe that by their faith - and their faith alone - they are granted access to heaven. We Catholics are condemned (as often as not, it comes in language such as this...or far stronger) because we believe that good works add to your chances of getting into heaven. It is one of the most divisive issues that stand between Catholics and Protestants, one in which misunderstandings exist on both sides.

So the question arises, how do we get into heaven?

Let’s do a little thought experiment to get things started. Let’s say that my 13 year old daughter (“Dad, I’m almost 14!" “Not for three months yet, what’s your hurry? And no, you can’t have a cell phone.") gets roped into volunteering at a soup kitchen with some members of a parish youth group. They tell her they are going to do good works to help them get into heaven. She had other plans that day, but reluctantly agrees. She goes, she feeds the hungry, she talks to people to make them feel better about things, life, whatever. She then comes home, listens to some music, says her prayers, and goes to bed. We will assume that she is fine in all other areas: she believes that Christ is the savior and that he died for our sins, she’s been baptized, she participates in the sacraments, etc.

Based on the Catholic Doctrine of Justification and the idea of good works, do these actions at the soup kitchen help her get into heaven?

I received an e-mail over the weekend decrying how complex Catholicism is when compared to evangelical Protestantism. In essence, it questions how the simplicity of the Gospel message can be turned into such doctrinally complex issues as the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility, much less the Sacramental life of the average Catholic. It’s actually a very interesting question, and one that I had not really thought about until it came up on Saturday.

There are two points to make on this. First, given the complexity of other systems in God’s creation, theological complexity shouldn’t be seen as an impediment to the simple Gospel message. In fact, if you think about it, it makes a certain amount of sense. Second, I do not consider Catholicism to be complex. Most Catholics don’t either. It is a complete system and of great philosophical depth. I suspect it’s this depth that gives the impression of complexity.

One of the interesting things about running a blog are the statistics you get about the blogs performance. For instance, I can see which post is the most read, which websites refer readers here and how often, and how many visits I get each day (even each hour of each day).

One of the more useful things on the stats page – well, sometimes it’s actually more amusing than anything else – are the search strings that people use to find this place. Search strings are the things you type into Google or Yahoo when you’re looking for something. When you run your search and click on the link, the stats counter records your arrival and I can see it the next day. The amusing things are the folks that come here looking for information on white water rafting, or advice on dealing with a condescending priest.

Every now and then a real gem appears in the search strings. Here’s one that I found recently:

“Is an indulgence earning your own salvation?”

That’s an excellent question, and the person that asked it must have gone away empty handed. After all, I haven’t written a word about indulgences, so how could they have found anything. Well, I can remedy that now.

So, what is an indulgence, and will it earn you a place in heaven?

I distinctly remember the first time I tried to explain Purgatory to a pair of evangelicals that challenged me on the subject. We’d been discussing theology for more than two hours. They hit me with everything he had and I fielded most of their objections fairly well, though in a rudimentary way and rather unconvincing way. (This was shortly after I converted, at a point when I thought I knew what I was talking about, but really had only a hint of the depth of the faith.) I was tired and had to get on with other things – it was a slow work day, but getting busier. When they got to Purgatory, I thought for a few seconds before answering. I wanted to come up with a single sentence to sum it all up and be done. What I said was fast and simple, but it was also doctrinally in error. I screwed up.

It was one of those defining moments in my life as a hobby-apologist. I knew from their faces that it was over. They shut down entirely, closing me off as the heretic that I had just inadvertently proclaimed myself to be. I knew that I could never explain away what slipped past my lips. I could never recapture the truth. It was lost on them now, and would be forever – their minds were made up. All was done in the blink of a weary eye.

Purgatory is often one of the most divisive of issues between Catholics and Protestants – especially evangelical Protestants. In reality, it doesn’t have to be divisive at all. It just needs to be properly understood, both doctrinally and scripturally.

This comment was left in the Purgatory post below:
Every sin, even fully repented and forgiven sins where perfect contrition was present along with a rock solid purpose of amendment (in other words, one was "fully engaged in...forgiveness"), carry a temporal debt, and we still have to pay that debt either in this life, or in the next.

I looked all last weekend to see if I could find something that supports this idea – that all sin, even sins confessed with perfect contrition, bear some debt that must be paid. I could find nothing. I did find two quotes from St. Augustine that seemed to contradict it, but nothing that approached the issue directly.

On the way home this evening, I listened to EWTN radio. EWTN radio is new here in Dallas, so I haven't listened often. The Catholic Answers segment featured Bishop Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin. I thought I might give him a shot to get at the nature of Purgatory and the penal aspect of sins forgiven with perfect contrition.

I asked something like: “Hypothetically speaking, would a soul who confessed a sin with perfect contrition suffer for that sin in Purgatory after death?”

Bishop Morlino said that perfect contrition would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. It would involve a person being able turn away from all desire for sin. If a soul were able to confess sin to that extent, with complete contrition and a complete loss of desire for sin, then that soul would go directly to heaven without stopping in Purgatory.

Practically speaking, only the great saints could probably manage such a degree of contrition. But the reality is that the soul would then avoid Purgatory entirely. Purgatory is for cleansing unconfessed sins and sins imperfectly confessed during life. It seems to me that if you put forward the case that all sin bears purgatorial suffering, even if perfectly confessed, you are close to saying that Christ's redemption was not quite complete.