One question teenagers ask me regularly is: “Why do Catholics believe we have to go to Purgatory even if our sins are forgiven?”
Here is the simple answer I give them:
(I begin with a question.)
“When your sins are forgiven, are you, at that moment, perfect?”
(Take a dramatic pause and let the teenager think about the question.)
“Before you answer, let me read a verse from the Bible.
(I have two reasons for cutting the teenager off before they answer the question: 1. If I’m having this discussion in a group, I don’t want anyone to feel embarrassed for giving the wrong answer—yes, there is a wrong answer. 2. I’ve found that when some people give the wrong answer they will argue their point-of-view endlessly and won’t listen to the simple logic behind the Catholic Church’s theology of Purgatory.)
“Matthew 5:48 says: ‘So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’”
(Sometimes I add another short dramatic pause here.)
“When your sins are forgive, are you, at that moment, perfect? . . . no, we really aren’t. What keep us from being imperfect? Well, one example is, after we’re forgiven we still have an ‘inclination to sin’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church
“So, after we’re forgiven, we still aren’t perfect.”
“Now what does that have to do with Purgatory? The second thing you need to understand comes from Revelation 21:27 which says: ‘nothing unclean will enter it.’ ‘It’ is heaven. Nothing unclean will enter heaven.”
“The Church takes this Bible verse very seriously. In heaven, there won’t be any more selfishness, greed, or jerks.”
(Here’s the Catechism’s quote, but I usually don’t read it because this point is pretty much universally accepted: “She [the heavenly city of Jerusalem] will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community” CCC 1045.)
“That’s not because jerks don’t go to heaven. God forgives jerks to. . .if he didn’t, I’d be in big trouble. But before he lets them into heaven, he will strip away their jerkyness.”
“We can’t make ourselves perfect, only God can do that. You die, you face your particular judgment, and you’re forgiven for the last time. Before you enter into God’s full presence, he has to purify you; he rips all of you selfish desires out of you so that you will never sin again. That experience of God purifying you is purgatory.
(One last dramatic pause.)
“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” (CCC 1030).
(There are several other characteristics of Purgatory that cause questions, but you can’t have those discussions until people understand the basic necessity and logic of Purgatory.)
