Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

20 September, 2006   comments: (0) Church History   The Pope Who Made Purgatory Popular I recently made a book exchange deal with a Roman Catholic, in which we agreed to read a book of each other's choosing. I was willing to do so, because I thought it would be an opportunity to have a captive audience for the Gospel. The book that I got stuck with left me a little hot under the collar however, with it's seemingly endless discussion of purgatory; just enduring through the reading of it felt a little like being there myself! Here are my final thoughts on the book exchange deal, as well as some interesting history of how purgatory became popular in the west. Most Old Truth readers will probably remember my original posting on this, not because of the book exchange deal, but because of the lively visitor that showed up in the comments. The blogger named Pope Saint Felix dropped in to remind us of the great protestant heresy. I allowed him to post dozens of times on that thread and in another lengthy thread in which we debated "ownership" of Augustine. In the end, Pope Felix concluded on his own blog: "You see - when protestants are backed into a corner - they just IGNORE YOU!". Definitely one of the more memorable debates that we've had here on Old Truth (if Jason is reading - he is nodding his head 'YES!'). Back to the book exchange deal, which was mutually arranged between my elderly Catholic mother and I. The book that I had her read was From Religion To Christ by Peter Jeffery. It's an excellent book that centers around what it means to be born again. I was expecting great things from her reading of this book; at least some evidence of deep thought on her part. Unfortunately, when I stopped back at her house a couple days later she was already finished reading it, and her reaction was one of "ho hum". This is the way it has gone for years. If anyone could be saved by the overwhelming weight of evangelism effort being applied to them; it would be my mother. The three Christians in my family have been witnessing to her for decades, using all sorts of approaches, books, videos, and tools! Not even a near-death experience made her "open" to the Gospel. But doesn't that speak of the need for God to make the first move of regeneration? Without God's first work, we would all be stuck in our ways and completely uninterested in true Christianity. Anyway, the book that I had to read was a dialog with a Catholic priest who admits to getting fired from numerous positions for putting counseling and psychology ahead of Catholic theology. Here's a short excerpt: I said to the brothers on my 15th anniversary [of being a priest] that I am looking forward enthusiastically to purgatory and would happily go now. ... St. Catherine of Genoa says that the joy of the souls in purgatory is exceeded only by the joy of the saints in heaven. Purgatory has been given a bad name. St. Catherine of Genoa is the great mystic of purgatory and one of the guiding lights of my life. She was the Mother Teresa of her time, but St. Catherine was a lay woman. She had the answer. She was running the largest hospital in the world for poor people during the pontificate of Alexander VI, who probably didn't make it to purgatory. If he did, he will probably be on the clean up crew! Catherine started the Catholic Reformation almost thirty years before the Protestant Reformation. American Protestants of the "Holiness Movement", a spiritual renewal of the 19th century, read the works of Catherine of Genoa and published her. They called her "Madame Adorno". She wrote "And God stands at the open gates of heaven summoning the souls with looks of great love. But they will not come in unless they are completely purified". As my friend Frank Sheed said about purgatory, "The very thought of appearing before the Divine Majesty in my present unseemly state fills me with horror". Well at the end of that mixture of superstition and dubious musings of church history comes the mistrust in Christ's perfect work on the Cross to impute to us His perfection, so that we don't have to show up before God in our "present unseemly state". The mistrust or misunderstanding of Christ's imputation has made purgatory a popular concept, but when did purgatory really start to catch on? I'll close out this post with an excerpt from Bruce Shelley. He explains in his book Church History in Plain Language how it happened during the late 6th century through Pope Gregory: One of the better examples of Gregory's belief in the power of the sacred mass is found in his Dialogues. While the incident is a bit long, it serves as a revealing picture of medieval piety. After telling of the death of one of his monks who had been found guilty of hoarding money and had been severely punished, Gregory writes: Thirty days later, I began to feel strong compassion for the deceased Justus. As I considered with deep anguish the penalty he was enduring, I thought of a way to relieve him of his suffering. With this in mind, I called Pretiosus, the prior, and said to him sadly, "Justus has now been suffering the torments of fire for a long time and we must show him our charity by helping as much as we can to gain his release. Beginning today, offer the holy Sacrifice for his soul for thirty consecutive days. Not one of these days is to pass without a Mass being celebrated for his release." The prior obediently accepted the instructions and left. Days passed, and being busy with other affairs, I lost count of them. Then, one night, Justus appeared to his brother Copiosus, who asked him at once why he came and how he was. "Up to this moment I was in misery," he said, "but now I am well, because this morning I was admitted to communion." Copiosus hurried to tell the monks the good news. Taking exact count of the days, they discovered that this was the thirtieth consecutive day on which Mass had been offered for him. Previous to this Copiosus did not know that the brethren were offering Masses for Justus, nor did the brethren know that Copiosus had seen him in a vision. At the very moment, therefore, when they became mutually aware of what had taken place, they realized that the vision and the completion of the thirty Masses occurred at one and the same time. They were now convinced that the brother who had died was freed from punishment through the Sacrifice of the Mass. The doctrine [of purgatory] was widely accepted in the Western Church from Pope Gregory's time on and helped to give its peculiar tone to the Christianity of the Middle Ages. As for my mother, I will never stop reaching out to her with the Gospel truth, so long as she is still alive. It certainly looks at this point, as though she is not one of God's elect, but that's something that can not be known, so long as they still have breath. You never know if they are going to end up being an "eleventh hour conversion" by God's grace. And so I continue to pray that God would do for her, what He did for Lydia in Acts 16:14 when He opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.459   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism