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Purgatory
Author(s) -
Charlton William
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/nbfr.12611
Subject(s) - purgatory , punitive damages , relation (database) , punishment (psychology) , enlightenment , philosophy , process (computing) , epistemology , space (punctuation) , law , sociology , theology , political science , psychology , computer science , social psychology , database , operating system , linguistics
I say briefly what the Catholic Church now teaches about Purgatory. I offer an account of time which allows the purgatorial process to be genuinely temporal, but not precisely quantifiable or temporally relatable to processes and events in our space‐time. I examine ancient, Enlightenment and modern notions of punishment, connect them with a theory of the relation of right and wrong to law and with the conception of a faculty of will, and argue that purgatorial process need not be considered punitive. I suggest it might consist in coming to share God's divine knowledge, and consider how prayers for the dead might help them.