Since part of our job is to teach people about our faith, it is imperative that we constantly study the Church’s teachings. You can’t be a good teacher unless you’re a good student.

Father Oscar Lukefahr runs a free Catholic Home Study Service (he does of course accept donations). He’s written several excellent books about our faith, and he offers them to anyone at no cost. These are high-quality books, so I’m impressed that he can afford to keep this amazing ministry available. Each book also comes with a test booklet, and you can submit your answers online where it will tell you how you did on the test and keep track of your scores. When you finish a book, they send you a nice certificate. We used one of his books, “We Believe: A Survey of the Catholic Faith” for an adult study group a couple of years ago.

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 1426). We still have selfish desires: greed, lust, arrogance. If we were perfect . . . when we are perfect in heaven, we won’t have those sinful desires anymore.”

“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.)

The USCCB published a catechism that is super easy to read. The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, basically takes the CCC and re-works the sentences using simpler sentence structures so they are easier to understand. Here is an example:

CCC 404 on original sin:

It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

Here is the information presented in the USCCB’s US Catholic Catechism for Adults:

Do we commit Original Sin? “Original sin is a sin contracted and not committed–a state and not an act” (CCC, no. 398 [sic]). Each of us inherits Original Sin, but it is not a personal fault of ours.

What I also like about this book is that they begin each chapter with a story or lesson of faith which is often about an American Catholic, such as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and César Chavez. These stories highlight the history of the Catholic Church in United States and helped illustrate why this theology is relevant to our daily lives.

The chapters end with two or three discussion questions, and I know of at least one small group in our church who is using these questions to study the text.