Transcript

Hey everyone, this is Brayden from The Catechumen and welcome back to another video.

Today we're back again with Dr. Karlo Broussard.

Thank you for coming back on with me to discuss another one of your books, Purgatory is for Real.

I am so interested in what you have to say about purgatory, about how it's a source of joy for us Christians and not of despair.

I think a lot of times Protestants will think of this doctrine of purgatory and think, oh, it's basically a second hell.

It's basically like a second heaven.

Second chance after death to try and get right with God before you go to your eternal destiny.

And I think what you have to say in this book to us and what we have to talk about today is going to be really important.

So how are you doing, Carl?

Brayden, I'm doing great, man.

Thank you so much for having me back on.

It's an honor and a blessing to be with you, brother.

I'm looking forward to geeking out with you again.

I had such a blast last time when we were talking about the intercession of the saints in my new book, The Saints Pray For You, and I'm really looking forward to diving in and getting into some theological nerdy stuff with you on this topic.

It's going to be great.

I love talking about purgatory, justification, indulgences, that sort of stuff, and it seems like that is one of the main things talked about in this book.

But for those of us who don't know, Protestants who might be looking into purgatory, watching this video, or maybe Catholics who don't really know or work catechized very well about what purgatory is, would you maybe give a short summary of the doctrine of purgatory?

Yeah, so I think we can synthesize the content from paragraphs 1030 to 1031 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church with the following formulation.

Purgatory is a post-mortem, after death, final purification for those who have died in friendship with Jesus, but yet have not attained the perfect holiness necessary for entrance into the beatific vision.

And so that's a nice formulation there.

And then that requires unpacking, of course.

But within that formulation, we're able to meet certain challenges right off the bat, or at least I should say clarify certain misconceptions right off the bat.

So first of all, it's postmortem.

That means it's after death.

And of course, our Protestant friends are going to immediately object to that.

because they're thinking in their mind that there are only two modes of existence or conditions of the soul after death, heaven or hell.

And they have their reasons for that, and I deal with that in my book, Purgatory is for Real, looking at a few biblical objections to this idea of an interim state, neither heaven nor hell, for the elect.

And so I deal with that in the book, but it's post-mortem after death.

Final purification.

So purification is going to be a theme or an idea that we're going to have to talk about, answer certain questions that arise.

Is the purification painful?

Is there intense suffering there?

What degree of suffering?

All of those questions I do address in my book.

And then we're going to have to defend the motif of purification in this postmortem state of existence, biblically speaking, for those who die in friendship with Jesus.

That's key, Braden.

because in that formulation we believe that the souls in purgatory are only those souls who are absolutely guaranteed heaven because they have already received their particular judgment at death so their destiny is sealed and these souls are the souls of those who died in friendship with Jesus with sanctifying grace and therefore are not subject to condemnation they're fixed in their union with Christ and so Purgatory is not a second chance.

There is no possibility, given the metaphysics of the reality of a separated soul and its choice, but also by way of God's plan and order of providence revealed to us, those souls in purgatory cannot end up in hell.

And so purgatory is not a second chance at salvation.

That is simply a straw man that many of our Protestant friends have misconceived the doctrine for.

And then those who die in friendship with Jesus who have not yet attained the holiness necessary for entrance into the beatific vision.

What do we mean by that?

What we mean by that is that the individual, although having died in charity and in friendship with God and thus guaranteed heaven, still may very well have some remnants of sin that need to be purified or purged in order to bring to completion the process of sanctification for that soul to enter into the beatific vision, given the biblical data of Revelation 21-27 that no defilement can enter into the kingdom of God.

And just common sense, given revealed data of heaven, you can't be having sin or any remnants of sin to get into heaven.

And so those remnants of sin are going to have to be purified before entrance into heaven.

But, of course, that raises the question, well, what are such remnants of sin?

And so we would have to talk about that, and I'm sure we will, and get into that.

And I articulate all of those different remnants of sin in the book, which are basically the objects of purification.

Like, what's getting purified in this final purification of the elect who are guaranteed heaven but yet not holy enough to enter into the beatific vision, right?

And so we'd have to talk about those remnants of sin.

But you can see how that formulation of purgatory involves a variety of different assumptions and principles that we would have to talk about and defend, and then also that formulation clarifies certain misconceptions right off the bat that many of our Protestant friends, and even Catholics unfortunately, have.

For sure, yeah.

And when we're talking about purgatory, there's just so many different moving parts that kind of fit together, and it's very difficult to just kind of focus on one thing without it being connected to a whole host of other things.

And so, yeah, we're probably going to be jumping around a lot this video, but that's fine.

You know, we're geeking out.

We're talking theology.

That's what you do.

And so I guess, you know, there's a lot of questions going through my head right now.

And I'm trying to stay as...

orderly as possible, as possible as we can be when we're talking about this.

But it has often been said that everyone believes in a type of purgatory.

Since we all confess there's a process of moral growth.

You talked about sanctification.

We all undergo sanctification, this process of becoming purgatory.

more conformed to Christ, more holy.

But that process is incomplete at the end of a person's life.

And it has to be complete before we get into heaven because nothing, you know, we have a holiness that we, or there's a holiness that we need to achieve before we get into heaven as Scripture says.

And so, you know, notable Protestant theologians, C.S. Lewis and others believe this and confess this, say purgatory is a beautiful thing.

It's something that we would expect of God before we enter into his presence.

I guess I want to call this the minimalist view.

It's just kind of like an end to your sanctification, completion of your sanctification, and nothing else.

In your estimation, do you think this is like an adequate explanation, or does the church require us to believe something more specific than just this?

the completion of your sanctification?

Yeah, great question.

So a couple of questions embedded in one there.

Let's untangle the questions and ask.

One question would be, is this a good articulation of purgatory?

Of course, it's going to be related to the second question of what the church is going to teach concerning the reality of purgatory.

So with regard to the question, I do think it is a good articulation of purgatory, and it puts us on the track of purgatory.

Although, as I argue in my book, I do not think it gets us to the end goal of getting a complete picture of what the church teaches about the doctrine of purgatory.

So the logic is definitely valid, right?

The reasoning is solid and valid such that it is likely that we will die with some remnants of sin.

some lack of perfect holiness or sanctification.

And given the revealed data that nothing imperfect can enter into heaven, there's going to, between death and glory, there's going to have to be some completion of that process of sanctification before entrance into heaven.

That, insofar as you reason as such, that's valid, that's solid, and that maps on to how a Catholic's going to argue in a minimal way for the doctrine of purgatory, which most Christians, even Protestants, can adopt and accept and, Braden, just to nerd out a little bit here, even within the forensic view of justification model.

Because in that forensic view of justification, the idea is that one is in a right relationship by God solely on account of God's forensic declaration that I am in a right relationship with him, and of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

But even in that model, those who adopt that model believe that our interior holiness is a process that we must grow in and bring to completion by the end of this life before entrance into heaven.

So even someone who believes in the forensic view of justification model can still adopt this understanding or this aspect of purgatory where there's got to be some...

completion of the process of sanctification before entrance into heaven.

But here's one possible Protestant pushback to that line of reasoning as it stands.

Namely, they could deny that there's going to be a postmortem completion of that sanctification before entrance into heaven.

Because they could very well just say, well, the sanctification is brought to completion before death, at the moment of death, such that once death metaphysically occurs, in reality, the soul goes immediately into heaven.

So this line of reasoning doesn't require a postmortem state.

it could be still used, but stop and bring the sanctification to completion at the moment of death, such that there would be no post-mortem completion of the process of sanctification.

So that would be one hang-up with simply appealing to that line of reasoning.

And of course, that would bring up a legitimate question of why, in response to the Protestant who might push back with that line of reasoning, and I address this in my book, Why is it that there is a completion of the sanctification at the moment of death?

Why not before?

There seems to be a bit of an arbitrary standard to say that, oh, well, it's all going to be brought to completion at the moment of death.

No postmortem stuff.

And that seems to be a bit arbitrary.

Why then not before?

Why not earlier?

Whereas from the Catholic viewpoint or any Christian who adopts this understanding of purgatory, they can simply take the more natural position and say, well, if the process of sanctification of being brought to perfect holiness is not completed at the moment of death well then it's going to be completed in the afterlife and that's sort of a more reasonable approach as opposed to the arbitrary standard of just asserting well all sanctification will be brought to completion at the moment of death well how do you justify that what's the biblical principles that could justify that and so the discussion would have to go there and they would have to shoulder that burden of proof in order to defend that thesis that all sanctification is brought to completion at death as opposed to us are saying, hey, yeah, we recognize it's going to need to be brought to completion.

And if it's not at death, well, then in this postmortem state that we call purgatory.

Now, that, of course, brings us to the question of, well, what do we mean by the completion of sanctification?

What do we mean by being made perfect?

For many of our Protestant friends, like C.S. Lewis and others, and like Jerry Walls.

Am I getting his name right?

Yeah, Jerry Walls, and the logic of transformation and purgatory.

He's kind of slipping me.

It's been a while since I wrote the book.

It's been 2020, four years from now.

But Jerry Walls argues for this understanding of purgatory, where it's merely a completion of the sanctifying process, right?

But He denies, as well as C.S. Lewis, if my memory serves me correctly, they deny this aspect of that sanctifying process, namely the debt of temporary punishment, the debt of temporal punishment, which is part and parcel of Catholic teaching about the doctrine of purgatory.

So this bringing to completion sanctification, that's the genus, right?

That's sort of the general idea of But then the disagreements will come as to how we parse that out and what constitutes that being made perfect, that completion of sanctification.

For us as Catholics, we're going to say, well, if there's any remaining guilt of venial sin, got to be purified.

And I think most of our Protestant friends would agree with that, at least those who would accept this understanding of the doctrine, at least some aspects of the doctrine of purgatory.

Secondly, unhealthy attachments to creaturely goods that are incurred and created within the soul whenever we pursue creaturely goods in a disordered way in sin.

It creates unhealthy attachments.

That stuff's got to get rectified before we get into heaven.

And I think most Protestants who adopt some version of the doctrine of purgatory will assent to that and agree with us on that.

So yeah, that's going to have to be purified if it's not entirely purged or reordered at the moment of death.

But where the disagreement comes is the Catholic understanding of a debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sins.

And that's where the disagreements come in.

Because our Protestant friends view this idea of a debt of temporary punishment as undermining, taking away, robbing the glory of the sufficiency of Jesus' death on the cross.

And so that's a big issue of debate.

and a conversation that we need to have.

And I would argue, as I do in my book, that I think we can help our Protestant friends overcome that hurdle and overcome that obstacle to see that debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sins, number one, in no way takes away from the glory of Jesus' death on the cross.

It does not imply the insufficiency of Jesus's death on the cross and we actually have biblical principles that can justify the idea of a debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sin and if that debt is not entirely discharged by the end of this life it's got to be discharged in the next before entrance into heaven because not only can you not have sin in heaven but you can't have the debt of punishment due for sin in heaven either and so that would be the Catholic position as opposed to those Protestants who might adopt some version of purgatory but deny this aspect of the doctrine of purgatory.

For sure, yes.

I think a lot of Protestants, especially historically, I have a few quotations from the Institutes and Martin Luther, you included some in this book as well, that are very spicy if you read them.

I'll bring this up in a second, but I do think they'll latch on to this concept of temporal debts the forgiveness of venial sins, such stuff like that.

And they'll say, yes, this definitely, this nullifies the cross and this blasphemes, you know, Christ's passion and his satisfactory merit applied to us.

And this is why they make the distinction between justification and sanctification in a way that Catholics wouldn't. And I think it might be good to touch on this before we go on to some of these other things.

You know, Protestants will say, look, our justification consists in Christ's righteousness legally infused into our account.

It's extrinsic to us.

It's not something that we can grow or diminish.

It's not something that we can affect.

It's extrinsic.

It's alien in the words of Luther.

It's an alien righteousness.

And so that's what God judges us based off of.

He looks at Christ.

And he's like, look, you are righteous on the basis of Christ's righteousness, whereas the holiness that we have or the sanctification that we go through is that internal conformity.

Interior righteousness.

Yeah, interior righteousness, right?

Yeah, the...

Coram Deo, Coram Muda, there's a lot of different ways that it has been expressed.

And so would you, how much of this would we concede to Protestants, I suppose?

Is there really a difference between holiness, righteousness?

Can we say we don't have the righteousness necessary to go into heaven, or would we only say we don't have holiness necessary to go to heaven?

Is there a distinction there that you think would be helpful to explain to Protestants?

So if a Protestant...

challenges our understanding of purgatory along those lines, I would push back and say we're just missing the mark, because that sort of line of reasoning is irrelevant to the completion of the sanctification of the soul in this final purification, precisely because that final purification of the elect has no bearing on whether they are elect, because they're already a part of the elect.

They're already saved.

So regardless of which model of salvation you have, whether the forensic view of justification or the interior view of justification, where our interior righteousness that God brings about through sanctifying grace is the ground for me being at peace with God and thereby justified, regardless of which view you have, you still can adopt the completion of sanctification in this post-mortem state of existence prior to entering into heaven.

it fits with either of the two models, so I would argue, because this final purification has no bearing on whether or not I'm justified.

So the question is, how are we justified?

But that is a separate question to this final purification of those who are already justified.

You see?

So I guess I can say it like this.

The final purification of the elect presupposes already that one is justified.

How one is justified is a further preamble, is a further preliminary question that Catholics and some Protestants can debate.

But we're all assuming that they are justified, regardless of how they're justified.

And this interior righteousness is brought to completion.

Now, if we're going to shift gears, and address the soteriological question of how we as Catholics view justification.

Well, that's a question that we could entertain and think through, but just note that it's not necessarily relevant in a direct way to the question of whether there is a post-mortem state of final purification for those who die in friendship with Jesus, and nor is it directly related to whether or not this post-mortem final purification undermines the sufficiency of Jesus' death on the cross.

Now, you had asked the question, just to answer it very briefly, for us as Catholics, we view our justification, which is the rightly ordered relationship to God as our supernatural end, where the intellect and the will is ordered to him as our beatitude, as our supernatural end, our peace with God, is on account of, rooted in, has the ground for the interior righteousness, sanctification, that God brings about within us by sanctifying grace.

It's alien insofar as it's God who's bringing it about.

We do not achieve that state of interior righteousness initially on our own.

No work that we can do, the Council of Trent infallibly defined, can bring about that interior state of justification.

Only God does that by a free gift.

And we manifest that, our belief in baptizing infants, where we believe that infants who cannot perform any sort of good work, we believe God justifies that infant by interiorly transforming them to make them rightly ordered to God at their supernatural end.

So that's what we view as justification.

So justification and sanctification are synonymous in the Catholic view.

Because the ground of the being at peace with God or justification is the interior sanctification that God brings about.

Now, of course, that raises the question, which is in a way related to purgatory.

Well, if you're saying purgatory, you're not perfectly righteous yet, but yet they're still justified, that seems to be a tension or a direct conflict with this forensic view of justification.

And I agree, there is.

But on the Catholic view, we have a presupposed theological understanding of the different degrees of sin, such that one can be righteous and justified, even interiorly speaking, where interiorly the soul with its powers of intellect and will are rightly ordered to God as the supernatural end, but yet still have some defilement of the light of the soul, as St. Thomas Aquinas would put it, the light of holiness, that causes us to lack in that glory, to lack in that light of glory to some degree due to what we call venial sin.

But yet, the order to God as our supernatural end is preserved insofar as the intellect and the will is still rightly ordered.

So, for example, if I maybe watch three Netflix shows episodes of a show or something, or Amazon Prime, when I probably should have only watched two.

That third indulgence of that third episode, it's not an action that would turn me away from God such that God is no longer my supernatural end.

We would call that mortal sin.

But rather, even though God is still my supernatural end, I still have fallen from that light of glory and perfection to some degree.

And so it is true that this understanding of justification being equated with interior sanctification, the idea of venial sin and mortal sin does come into play to have a bearing to see how we can still be justified on account of the interior righteousness that God brings about within us, but yet not perfectly righteous.

And so it does require...

repentance, and God forgiving us of the guilt of the venial sin, even though it is venial, in order for us to be perfectly righteous.

Right.

Yeah, and I think that's a good segue into talking about sort of the biblical justification for the doctrine of purgatory.

Actually, maybe before that, we could...

Let me read these quotations from John Calvin and then a short one from Martin Luther because I think that will kind of frame the rest of this discussion.

They have these accusations in the Institutes, and I forget where.

I have this book of what Luther says.

I'm sure you've heard of it.

It's a compilation and it's systematizing of all of what Luther says on specific topics.

Okay.

Anyways, they have these accusations about purgatory, and they say it is – if people justify it or I suppose defend it with recourse to the Bible, which we're obviously going to do here pretty soon, But they say it was invented or constructed as a way of kind of understanding these visions that people have had.

And people latch on.

I know you address the visions at the end from a few people at the end of this book.

They say, oh, there's these satanic visions that were given to these people.

And that's where the Doctrine of Purgatory came up.

And they latched onto that.

And then they came up with this doctrine of indulgences, whereby they could fill their coffers and their pockets with people's money and abuse people by taking everything from them.

And so I guess I better read these quotations before we go off on these accusations, but this is what John Calvin said.

I can't remember if you pulled from this quotation or from a different one, but he says...

Purgatory is constructed out of many blasphemies, and daily is propped up with new ones, and since it incites to many grave offenses that it's certainly not to be winked at, one could for a time, perhaps in a way, conceal the fact that it was devised apart from God's word, in curious and bold rashness, that men believed in it by some sort of revelations forged by Satan's craft, that some passages of scripture were ignorantly distorted to confirm it.

Purgatory is a deadly eviction of Satan, which nullifies the cross of Christ, inflicts unbearable contempt upon God's mercy, and overturns and destroys our faith, and so on and so forth.

And Martin Luther says basically the same thing, saying, Holy Writ, Scripture, doesn't mention purgatory.

It is rather a fabrication of the devil.

That the Papists may have certain marketplaces and money snares, right?

And so you kind of get the gist of these quotations.

They have this idea, which, you know, granted, there were certain abuses of indulgences in this time period.

So, you know, you get the idea that they think indulgences and purgatory, that was kind of made up.

prompted by the devil, giving these sort of revelations.

What do you have to say to those accusations when someone might read that in the Institute and say, oh, wow, Catholics have been deceived about this for centuries.

Satan, you know, kind of infiltrated.

Right, yeah, so there's a lot here.

So in that quotation from Calvin that you read, there's about, I think if my memory serves me correctly, I can identify basically five accusations there, maybe four, because two of the five kind of go together.

So number one, he said this is something that is devised outside of and apart from, separated from God's word.

And then a related charge there was based on bad exegesis.

Well, that's a claim.

The claim is, is that the doctrine of purgatory is not biblical.

And whenever a Catholic appeals to a passage to prove that it's biblical, Their exegesis is wrong.

Okay, well, that's the subject of debate.

That's the question.

Is purgatory biblical?

Catholics have their passages.

So the next question is, is their exegesis correct?

So for a Protestant to charge purgatory is not biblical, they're just begging the question against the Catholic who has appeals to biblical text in order to justify the doctrine of purgatory from sacred scriptures.

So that would at least chart the path of inquiry to meet that particular challenge that purgatory is not biblical.

It's devised apart from God's word.

Now, another charge that Calvin made was that purgatory is based upon these revelations given these revelations from mystics, which is the working of Satan himself.

OK, that's a charge that all of these mystical revelations where saints have encounters.

with separated souls who tell them that they are in purgatory, describe their suffering, and then other saints who have visions or dreams of loved ones in purgatory, and they offer prayers, and then they have another dream that that loved one is no longer in purgatory.

So the charge here by Calvin is that this is the effect of Satan.

And so that is a claim that we would have to address, that at least charged the inquiry.

Are these the workings of Satan?

Now, certain questions that we would have to ask in inquiring that is, first of all, is it possible for this to be the working of Satan?

Well, sure it is possible.

So then we have to ask the question, well, is it probable, given the religious historical context of these mystics and saints and their love for Jesus Christ and their deep love for Jesus Christ that would blow away any of us modern day Christians, right?

Is it reasonable to conclude that these are deceptions in the working of the devil for those mystics who've had encounters with the devil before?

So given those questions, we would argue and conclude that given the religious historical context of these mystics and their lives, we would have good reason to conclude that those revelations are indeed legit and not from Satan.

This is similar to the Protestant counter that, well, Eucharistic miracles are just deceptions of Satan, right?

So the same sort of inquiry, the line of inquiry would be employed to address that sort of challenge as well.

So that's challenge number two, revelations of souls in purgatory or the working of the devil.

And so we've charted out a path of inquiry there.

A third challenge there or claim was that the doctrine of purgatory nullifies the cross of Christ.

Now, very briefly here in response, Brayden, the doctrine of purgatory would nullify the cross of Christ.

If and only if we asserted the doctrine, the reality of purgatory, because we thought Jesus' death on the cross was insufficient in power to take care of all remnants of sin.

But we do not believe that Jesus' death on the cross is insufficient in power to take away all the remnants of sin.

And so therefore, we can conclude that the reality, our belief in purgatory, would not entail or nullify the sufficiency of Jesus' death on the cross.

And the reason for premise two there, well, actually for premise one, the reason why we would deny premise one, or actually the reason why we're denying the consequent of that first premise there is because we believe, given the biblical data that God has revealed in order of providence in which Jesus wills to apply the merits of his death on the cross in different ways and different degrees based upon the journey in the Christian life.

So, for example, we believe that Christ's merits of his death on the cross is applied fully to a person initially in justification, the initial stage of justification, when somebody is transformed from a son of Adam to a son of God interiorly and is initially saved or justified.

and we would say ordinarily through baptism, all remnants of sin completely gone, both the guilt and due punishment, whether eternal or temporal, entirely done.

And so then the question becomes, in this order of providence, what has God willed with regard to the application of the merits of Jesus' death on the cross for that saved individual Christian whenever he sins after initial justification?

Is he just automatically free from the incurment of any remnants of sin on account of the application of Christ's death on the cross initially?

Or did God will that that Christian, that justified Christian, would it still incur at the moment of the sin, after initial justification, some remnant of sin, whether guilt or due punishment?

And according to the biblical revelation, so I argue in my book, it's the latter.

God has willed an order of providence in which one who is initially justified, subsequent to that initial justification, if that person sins, they actually incur at that moment remnants of sin, whether guilt or due punishment.

And one example of this I appeal to in my book, Braden, is Hebrews 12, 5-6, where the author tells us that God chastises every son of his And as I point out in my book, the Greek there for chastisement has the connotation of punishment, which implies that there is a debt of punishment due to the Son of God.

And so notice, we're talking about a Son of God, someone who is legitimately justified, not subject to condemnation, in Christ, at peace with God, and yet that Son of God can still incur some due punishment on account of sin.

the NRSV actually renders that word as punishment, which I thought was really interesting.

Yeah, and that would fit with the Greek connotation there.

And then it's in both verses 5 and 6, you have the Greek words there connoting the imposition of suffering on account of wrongdoing.

And so there we see revealed, in this order of providence, God wills to allow the incurment of the remnant of sin for someone who's already initially justified, And at that moment when they repent, the merits of Jesus' death on the cross are applied to forgive the person and remit the guilt of sin, and also that God wills that the individual endure some sort of displeasure to discharge that debt of temporary punishment.

And this is why the Bible says God chastises.

He's imposing some displeasure upon the child of God that is due to him on account of the wrongdoing.

And so the Catholic argument is that we see here that the imposition by God of suffering on somebody who is initially justified, namely a born-again Christian, a child of God, does not nullify the cross of Christ.

I mean, if the author of Hebrews inspired by God doesn't think the imposition of suffering for a child of God who's already justified nullifies the cross of Christ, well then surely we're safe as Catholics in saying that is what happens and is completed in the state of purgatory and it not nullify the cross of Christ.

And then finally, the last charge that Calvin made, and I'll finish with this and let you jump in, the last charge he made was that it undermines God's mercy.

Au contraire.

So I argue in my book, Braden, check this out.

Let me ask you, did God have to purify, did God have to set up a way by which a child of his who dies, not subject to condemnation, but yet not perfectly holy to enter into the beatific vision, did God have to set up a way by which his child is purified?

Is he bound in justice to do that?

The answer is no, he's not.

God could have perfectly been good and just to himself and to us to leave us a child of his who dies not subject to condemnation but yet not perfect enough to enter into the beatific vision.

Just leave them in that post-mortem state of existence of some sort of natural blissfulness.

God didn't have to purify, does not have to purify his children.

for them to enter into the beatific vision, at least in this order of providence.

God could have willed an order of providence where his children just die, not subject to condemnation, but yet can't enter into heaven, and he leads them as such.

That disorder of providence, that God has willed an order of providence in which his children who die and are not subject to condemnation due to their friendship with Christ, but yet not perfectly holy enough to enter into heaven, God has willed to purify them, to purge them, so that they can be united to him.

That That is a manifestation of mercy.

If that ain't mercy, nothing is mercy.

Because God did not owe that purification to us.

He gives it completely freely by creating this order of providence in which this purification is involved.

Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Yeah, and so it sounds like the charges of Calvin and Luther that this, you know, Doctrine and Purgatory was just kind of made up, you know, because there was some sea cannon revelations and then, you know, they look to scripture and they're like, oh, what can we rip out of context to support this?

That charge is really inaccurate.

And I'd love to go through the, I guess, I suppose, the foundations of purgatory, like the different steps by which we come to believe in the doctrine of purgatory very soon.

But before we do, I think it would be important to note that not only does this have biblical precedent, like the implied, what do you call them, the inspired principles by which we come to the doctrine of purgatory, those are in Scripture.

It takes a little bit of explication, but they're there.

But not only that, There are Old Testament Jewish precedents, and there's even precedents in other religions.

I found that fascinating.

I'd never heard before.

I knew, you know, Second Maccabees.

We can talk about that.

But I never knew in other religious systems that there was this concept of a post-mortem sort of purification.

So can you talk about that for a little bit?

Because I'm sure a lot of people who might not have read your book don't even know that that's a thing.

Sure.

So as I point out in the first section of chapter one, or maybe it's chapter one, where I look at non-Christian religious traditions, like for example Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and then of course in the Greco-Roman belief of the Gorgias and the Aeneid.

And so what we have there is of course not the full-blown doctrine of purgatory.

And also what you're going to find is a mixture of errors.

But with regard to the general idea of some sort of post-mortem purification where bad behavior, wrongdoing in this life is rectified and taken care of, that's permeating these non-Christian religious traditions.

And I think Robert Bellarmine argues, you know, whenever we have such a universal general idea, permeating and running through these various religious traditions throughout the globe, throughout the planet, that's a good strong indication that this idea, at least in its most general form, is true.

It's kind of like the general idea of the acknowledgement and the belief in a transcendent reality beyond human beings.

That is something we find cross-cultural, we find it in all religious traditions of all human civilizations, giving us a strong indication that that general idea of a transcendent reality over and above human beings is probably true.

So too with this general idea of a post-mortem purification of wrongdoing in this life.

And so I point out, you know, it's just a brief survey.

You know, I'm not an expert in all of these non-Christian traditions and exactly what they believe about the afterlife, but there's enough out there to survey what they believe about this post-mortem purification to at least show, that this idea of the postmortem purification is not a particular Catholic thing.

It's not just a Catholic thing.

It's beyond the boundaries of Catholicism.

And then, of course, in the chapter one, I look at non-Catholic Christian traditions that have some elements, right, some degrees of an understanding of purgatory.

So as I argue Within Orthodox Christianity, there is some understanding of purgatory.

They believe that the prayers of the faithful here on earth can assist those in the afterlife, although some Orthodox Christians will deny any sort of purification or suffering in that postmortem state.

And then, of course, that's going to raise a bunch of questions.

Well, if our prayers assist them, what are they assisting them in if they are not suffering or being purified?

And of course we can debate that and talk about that, but there are some Orthodox Christians who affirm a post-mortem purification that our prayers here on earth can assist them with and bring to completion.

And then of course we were talking about this earlier with regard to Protestantism.

There are some Protestants, including Luther himself, who initially affirmed the doctrine of purgatory and only rejected it later in 1537. And so we have some understandings of the doctrine of purgatory within Protestantism, again, to lead us to the conclusion that purgatory is not just a Catholic thing.

So think about this, Brayden.

Those who deny the doctrine of purgatory, they are actually in the minority of all human beings and also within the minority within Christendom.

among all Christians.

And that, of course, gives rise for the individual who's rejecting purgatory to pause and ask themselves, why is it that the majority of humanity believes in this idea, but my community doesn't? Why is it that the majority of Christianity believes in this idea, but my community, my Christian denomination doesn't? And so that's a good question to ask, and at least gives one pause for reflection, that if you're the only group not believing in this, man, then you need to do you're just smarter than everyone that it's probably the case that you're wrong and everybody else is right i'm not going to say that's a rock-solid argument because there is a room there that you are right but at least you're on the trajectory to give probabilistic reason to think that you may very well be wrong and everybody else is right yeah for sure So, yeah, I found that section of your book, it's the very beginning, but I found it very fascinating for sure.

And I think now it would be very beneficial, I suppose, to kind of go through each step of the reasoning that you use in the book.

Because, you know, the very first thing you say is, you know, our eternal destiny is sealed by the time that we die.

What's that passage that says that?

That after death comes the judgment.

Hebrews 9.97. It's the particular judgment.

We're not going, you know, it's not some like second chance like we talked about earlier.

Right.

Yeah.

So the soul's destiny is secure at the particular judgment.

And we could also appeal to the rich man and Lazarus in Luke chapter 16. First, assuming that we can appeal to Christ's parables to teach us reality about the afterlife.

That's an issue of debate with some.

But assuming that we can appeal to Christ's parables to teach us about the afterlife, well then the parable of the rich man and Lazarus would give us indication that whenever we die, we receive an immediate judgment.

The rich man, of course, goes to a place of torment, which I argue is hell.

Lazarus goes to Abraham's bosom.

And there's no indication that they're ever going to reverse roles, right?

As Abraham tells the rich man himself, the chasm is fixed.

So the destiny of the soul is sealed there.

And so that would be one example to justify the first principle, the soul's destiny is fixed, okay?

And that's sort of an assumption that pretty much everybody, like all Christians, will acknowledge.

But, you know, you're writing a book, so you want to flesh things out in a very thorough way, so...

that sort of principle wouldn't be necessary in an elevator pitch kind of thing, right?

But I think it's very important to note because, again, it's like a lot of people, you know, believe that purgatory is just like the second, you know, you have time to repent still.

You know, you're on your way to hell.

Purgatory is like the fires of hell.

You can get out of there.

It's a second chance.

I think it's very important, you know, to note in your book, like, no, your destiny is sealed.

Yep.

So not only do we claim that as Catholics...

But we have biblical teaching concerning that issue.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and Hebrews 9 is like a dead giveaway, but a lot of people think it's – or some people think, oh, well, this – I think it's in Luke.

It's this collection of parables.

It's like, oh, Lazarus and the rich man.

That's obviously – that's not something – Literal, we can't really draw out any eschatological, soteriological things from this passage.

But I think it's interesting to note, and I don't remember if you talk about this in your book, but that's one of the only times in one of Jesus' parables, supposedly, that a specific person is mentioned by name.

I can't even think of another parable or another teaching moment of Christ where someone is mentioned by name as an example to draw this.

So that gives some support as to using this as a passage to describe the particular judgment.

Because, you know, there's some people who are like, yeah, no, you're not particularly judged.

Soul sleep, you know, we talked about that last time when we talked about the intercession of the saints.

And so, yeah, I thought that was very interesting.

And so...

I was just going to say, yeah, I've come across that in commentaries concerning the naming of Lazarus in this parable.

But I think you can still achieve the same end, even if you grant for argument's sake that this is not a real guy.

You can still argue that, hey, listen, you know, if we can extract real truths about this life from the images that Christ uses in his parable, Like rich men, poor men, beggars, right?

And wealthy people eating food.

I mean, that's all part and parcel of this life that Jesus is drawing from to teach us certain lessons.

But then surely...

we can assume and reasonably conclude that the images that he's employing concerning the afterlife are to be taken in certain senses real as well to teach us certain lessons about the afterlife for if we say it is not we can't take the images about the afterlife to draw out real conclusions about the afterlife but yet we can look at the images when this life and draw real conclusions about this life in reality then that's just special pleading it's an arbitrary standard that I can do that for this, the images of this life, but not the images of the next life.

That's just bad reasoning.

But I think the nail in the coffin is Hebrews 12, 22 through 23, where the author says that whenever we approach God, we approach the spirits of just men made perfect.

In Revelation 6, 9, it's the souls of those who are slain for the testimony of Jesus under the altar.

They're in heaven.

They're perfected.

They have received their destiny perfected.

And so we can utilize those passages to, again, prove this point of the soul's destiny being sealed upon death.

Yeah.

For sure.

So soul's destiny is sealed.

You're either going to heaven or hell.

Right.

I think that the next thing that is very important for this discussion, because in order to have these temporal punishments that you haven't undergone, that you need to undergo in purgatory and or venial sin that needs forgiven, we should establish that you can actually have this temporal guilt due to you in the first place, right?

Because we can discharge this temporal guilt.

And we talked about this a little bit in Hebrews 12. And I also want to bring up, because in the standard Greek lexicon for the New Testament, for early Christian literature and stuff like this, this is the thing that at my Baptist college when we were going through Greek, they said, you need to buy this.

It's like $150 or something.

It's like defense.

The primary usage of the word for chastisement that's used in Hebrews 12 is to beat with a whip or a latch or a flaw.

That's the same word that's used whenever Jesus is being scourged at the pillar, whenever he's being beaten in the synagogue.

And it actually uses that down here, I think.

I can't remember where it is, or it might be the other word, where it's the Old Testament precedent of that is actually the punishments undergone in the synagogue judgment in the Old Testament.

I just thought that was interesting to me because a lot of people are just like, oh, yeah, well, discipline, that doesn't necessarily have to do with, you know, meriting some sort of punishment or meriting some sort of sin.

So what would you say to someone who's like, yeah, well, maybe it's just like this discipline, you know, but it's not like one-to-one correspondence with some sort of temporal guilt that you merit because Christ satisfied everything for me.

Christ on the cross, he satisfied every single sort of debt that I'm owed.

Yeah, so in response to that, that claim itself would just beg the question against the Catholic because that claim assumes that God has willed in order of providence that Jesus' death on the cross takes care of all debt of sin, debt of punishment for sin, not only initially, but throughout the rest of the Christian's life.

So notice that assumption there.

But that's an assumption that we're going to challenge and say, oh, no, that assumption is false.

Given this biblical data of Hebrews 12, 5 through 6, and we can look at other passages as well, other texts throughout Sacred Scripture, We argue that God has willed an order of providence where it is not the case that the merits of Jesus' death on the cross are automatically applied to take care of the debt of temporal punishment for Christians after initial justification.

We teach that we believe that there is an application of the merits of Jesus' death on the cross, but not automatically from the beginning and for the rest of the Christians' existence on earth.

but rather there is an application of the merits of Jesus' death on the cross upon, consequent to, the incurment of the remnants of sin, namely the debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sin.

And so Hebrews 12, 5 through 6, and as you pointed out, the Greek word suggesting not only an imposition of suffering, but an imposition of suffering on account of wrongdoing, which is just the essence of punishment.

That's what we mean by punishment.

And if the author of Hebrews is revealing to us, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that God, quote unquote, punishes, inflicts suffering on account of wrongdoing for those who are already justified, well then that necessarily, the Westminster Confession, by good and necessary consequence, that necessarily entails punishment.

that there is a debt of punishment due for that child of God on account of their own doing, right?

And so that's the discipline that God the Father imposes or engages in with regard to perfecting his children.

Now, it is true that that chastisement, discipline, or punishment is ordered to their growth in holiness, absolutely.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that there is a punishment imposed, which necessarily entails a debt of that punishment on account of wrongdoing.

And so that sort of objection from our Protestant friend, again, the bottom line is that it would just beg the question against the Catholic, assuming something to be true that is the issue of debate in the first place.

Yeah.

Such that if you were to die immediately subsequent to baptism, you would go straight into heaven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah right good question yeah so again i would first point out this is not due to a belief that jesus's death on the cross is insufficient in power to remit even the debt of temporary punishment due for that mortal sin that's been forgiven in the sacrament.

We profess that there is a debt of temporal punishment still remaining subsequent to having the guilt of mortal sin remitted in the sacrament only because this is the order of providence that God has willed in the way in which he's going to apply the merits of Jesus' death on the cross.

Okay, so once we get that out the way, then the question arises, okay, well, what's the theological rationale behind the debt of temporal punishment still remaining even though the guilt of mortal sin has been remitted?

And St. Thomas Aquinas gives us some help here.

And I appeal to Aquinas in my book whenever I'm dealing with these sorts of theological issues.

And I think the answer, and I think Aquinas is right here, is that every time we engage in sin, And especially in mortal sin, but even venial sin.

But let's just use mortal sin here.

We are pursuing some creaturely good in such a way that that good takes the place of God as my ultimate life's goal.

And thereby the order to God is broken.

All right.

So that's what we call a mortal sin.

Now, Aquinas is going to say, because we have turned away from God completely in this mortal sinful activity.

it follows that a just punishment would be eternal.

So the debt of eternal punishment is on account of me turning away from God as my ultimate life sin.

However, still in that mortal sin, I also pursued a creaturely good, a finite good, a temporal good.

And so it's fitting and just that I would also incur a debt of temporary punishment.

A finite duration of punishment or displeasure on account of me pursuing some finite temporal good in an unhealthy way.

So I turn away from God, debt of eternal punishment, because he's the infinite good that I've rejected.

Debt of temporal punishment on account of pursuing some temporal good in a disordered way.

And so that's sort of the theological rationale that Aquinas provides, which makes sense to me, and I think that's right, such that when we have the debt of eternal punishment remitted by the application of the merits of Jesus' death on the cross, ordinarily in the sacrament of reconciliation, the debt of temporal punishment would still remain.

And that is a debt that we, as finite agents, can contribute to discharging by undergoing displeasures in our life whether accepting those that are involuntarily part of my life as a fallen human being or voluntarily imposing that displeasure upon myself to discharge that debt not of eternal punishment only christ can do that but that debt of temporal punishment which i can contribute to now granite keep this in mind for our protestant listeners Whatever I am doing to discharge that debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sin is itself a grace that Christ gives me and Christ working in and through me, with me, to bring about that desired result.

Such that the behavior, right, and the action in which I either accept or impose displeasure upon myself to get rid of that debt of temporal punishment is an effect of both me and Christ as divine, as the Son of the Father, because God So in the Thomist tradition, at least, I'm speaking from a Thomist tradition, God and human beings are simultaneously agents of one effect, namely my own action, such that the action is 100% mine and 100% God's, because it's God causing me without violating my freedom to bring about that action, which has the effect of getting rid of that debt of temporal punishment.

So that's sort of the theological rationale behind that.

This might be a tangent, but and I have other things to ask after this, but do you have to be in a state of sanctifying grace to, I guess, undergo those satisfactory punishments in a way that would satisfy you?

Okay.

I just want to make sure, because I actually, I just thought of that.

I hadn't thought about it before, so you do have to do that.

Okay.

Yeah, so that ties in with the souls in purgatory, because remember, those souls in purgatory who are having the debt of temporal punishment remitted or the remnants of sin taken care of in a passive way, are in sanctifying grace, like they are already saved, they're in Christ.

And so too for us, because remember, the debt of temporal punishment presupposes that one is already in Christ.

Now, you can have a debt of temporal punishment due for someone who's outside of Christ with the debt of eternal punishment as well.

But whenever we're talking about discharging the debt of temporal punishment, that's going to come about only once the person is in Christ.

Right.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And so a few things.

So would you say there's a distinction between, let's say, like, just undergoing the punishment needed to satisfy this debt, this temporal guilt?

And the remission of temporal guilt, can this temporal guilt be remitted or forgiven in some way, like by the power of the keys or something like that?

Or do we have to undergo this suffering?

Yeah.

Okay.

Great question.

Good to see you up there, Braden.

And so it belongs to the order of justice that my debt of temporal punishment be discharged by the imposition of some displeasure, right?

But it is not absolutely necessary that it be done that way.

If it is done that way, justice is manifest.

But remember, what is mercy?

Mercy is not violation of justice.

Mercy is something over and above justice.

So God can remit.

It wouldn't be a discharging.

It would be a remitting of that debt of temporal punishment without imposing the displeasure upon me.

He is free to do that.

And so we believe as Catholics, insofar as Christ has instituted the church to act on his behalf with the keys of the kingdom, the church can, for us here on earth, exercise that mercy to remit debt of temporal punishment due for us in such a way that we do not have to undergo the displeasure that is due to us.

This is what we call an indulgence.

It's the church simply saying, children, we're going to exercise our divinely given gift and prerogative of authority on behalf of Christ to remit temporal debt of debt of temporal punishment for you in a way that you don't have to undergo the punishment.

That's why it's called an indulgence.

So you perform this charitable act.

You do this.

You do that.

You know, you walk through these holy doors in the Jubilee year.

you sit in the presence of the Eucharist for 30 minutes reading scripture or something, and on down the line, you do those things, then we're going to exercise our motherly authority over you given to us by Christ to remit that debt of temporal punishment without you having to undergo the displeasure.

That's mercy.

You see?

Now, in the case of the souls in purgatory, when we gain an indulgence for a soul in purgatory, that's the church imploring God, impetration, right, and interceding for the souls in purgatory, because the church doesn't have direct jurisdiction over the souls in purgatory.

So the church implores God and saying, God, look with favor upon this act of charity that Carlo has performed and apply it to a soul in purgatory to bring them to either partial or full remission or completion of their final purification.

So notice here, Brayton, in this articulation of an indulgence, an indulgence only applies to the debt of temporal punishment due for past forgiven sins.

It has nothing to do with our salvation in the sense of whether we're going to get to heaven or not, because an indulgence can only be applied to someone who's already saved, either in the ongoing state of salvation, like initially saved and in the current state of salvation, like for us here on earth, or for those who are guaranteed their salvation, absolutely speaking, namely the souls of purgatory.

Right.

Yeah, and so on that note with indulgences, it has been a, I guess, point of contention, a large contention.

People who look into our doctrine of indulgences, look into catechism, might read something like the Treasury of Satisfactory Merits.

And they'll look and they'll say, okay, well, I thought Jesus' suffering was sufficient to forgive us of sins.

Why is it that?

the Treasury satisfaction, which is what the indulgence applies to our temporal guilt, thereby remitting it through this exercise of mercy.

this treasury of satisfaction not only includes the satisfaction, the infinite satisfactions of Jesus Christ, but also the satisfactory merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Martyrs and the Saints.

Why is it that the Martyrs and the Saints, their suffering can cleanse us of sin when the Scriptures say that Jesus' suffering is what cleanses us from sin?

What would you say to someone who, you know, We mount that accusation.

Only Jesus' sufferings can satisfy or cleanse us from sins, not the sufferings of Mary, not the sufferings of these saints.

Okay, so there's a couple of things there.

So first of all, you brought up like the treasury of the satisfaction of the saints.

All right, so when we're talking about satisfying for our past forgiven sins and discharging debt of temporal punishment, The assumption of that objection is that only Jesus' death can take care of that debt of temporal punishment.

But we would counter and say, well, it's temporal, and so therefore it doesn't require infinite power to take care of that debt.

Now, it is true that we can only take care of it in virtue of grace that's dwelling within our soul.

We have to be in Christ in order to discharge that debt where Christ is working through us.

But nevertheless, it's still within the order of finite being, right?

It's within the created order.

And so that's something that our actions, as inspired by Christ and motivated by Christ, by grace, is proportionate to remitting the debt of temporal punishment.

The debt of eternal punishment is something that's disproportionate.

Only Christ can take care of that.

You need infinite power to take care of that.

And so it would seem that this objection is just presupposing an assumption that that we would challenge, namely that only Jesus' death on the cross can take care of the debt of any punishment for sin.

And so we would just challenge that and say, no, if it's temporal debt, that's something that our actions are proportionate to with regard to discharging that debt as inspired by the grace of Christ or moved by the grace of Christ.

So that's what I would say with regard to that.

Now, with regard to the treasury of the saints, And how the value of the loving actions of the saints here on earth being carried with them into heaven.

And how the value of their good works can be utilized by the church to be applied to us.

We do not believe this because we think the merits of Jesus' death on the cross is insufficient.

We affirm 100% that Christ's death on the cross satisfied for us infinitely.

And Jesus does not need the satisfaction, the merits of the saints in heaven to be applied to us.

He could just use his own.

But the question is, how did Jesus set it up?

Did Jesus will an order of providence where it will be he and he alone utilizing the merits of his good work and sacrifice to apply to us?

Or... Did Christ set it up in such a way that he wills to use, as secondary causes, the merits of his holy ones to be applied to others to help them grow in holiness and stuff?

And so we would argue the latter.

Our Protestantism friends, of course, are going to argue the former.

But I think...

Here we can just appeal to all the different examples in the Bible where God wills to use secondary causes to bring about spiritual blessings in our lives.

So consider, for example, in 1 Corinthians 12 in Paul's theology of the mystical body of Christ.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.

If one part suffers, they all suffer.

If one part rejoices, they all rejoice.

Notice the interconnectivity of the members of the mystical body of Christ.

God doesn't need those members of Christ's body to bring about healing in another member of the body.

He can just do it on his own.

And yet he wills to use the activity of one member of the body to bring about blessing in the other member of the body.

And of course, this is all within the mystical realm.

So we're talking about spiritual blessings being communicated via membership, members of the mystical body of Christ.

I would also appeal to Colossians 1.24, Brayden, where St. Paul says, I fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ in my body for the church.

Notice, Paul views his own sufferings as contributing to bringing about the salvation of others within the church.

He says filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, and what he means by that is the lack of the application of the merits to individuals.

Paul envisions himself as participating in that communication of those merits, in the application of those merits in and through his own suffering as a secondary cause being united with Christ.

And so that would give us revelation and biblical principles to lead us to the conclusion that there is a way in which there's an exchange of spiritual goods in virtue of membership of the mystical body of Christ with Christ as the head, as opposed to an exchange of spiritual goods only from Jesus to us.

But Christ wills to exchange spiritual goods from him as the source, but in and through the secondary causality of other members of the mystical body of Christ.

And then finally, you know, that presupposes that the value of their good works here on earth, their works of love, go with them into heaven.

And the book of Revelation says, The citation is actually slipping my mind right now.

I can't, for some reason, I can't remember it.

I want to say it's Revelation chapter 14, where the book of Revelation speaks of the holy ones of God and their works following them into heaven.

Their deeds follow them.

And so that would provide for us a principle to lead us to, that would allow for us to arrive at a conclusion that Yeah.

Revelation 14, 13. Yeah.

13. You know, the other day, I was trying to recall that passage, and I knew it was Revelation 14, and I thought 3 or 33, and it was number 1. So it's 13. All right.

So I got it locked in now.

Thank you, Brian.

Yeah, there we go.

Revelation 14, 13 provides for us evidence that the value of their charitable deeds here on earth follow them into heaven.

That supports.

That's the treasury of the saints in a nutshell, in its essence right there.

Right.

Right.

Okay, so that's actually a good segue, because I can imagine a Protestant saying, okay, well, you know, bypassing this theology of merit, let's just talk about rewards, right?

The Lord is going to reward us believers for the things that we do.

There's going to be a varying of rewards in heaven.

Why is it that the saints have this sort of merit that goes unrewarded by the Lord such that they can be applied to us in remission of the satisfactory death?

Yeah, good question.

I've actually never considered that before, but here's the thought that immediately comes to me, shooting from the hip.

That would, I would simply challenge the claim that there is no reward for the blessed in heaven with this value of their deeds for exceeding what was needed to be applied for them in this life.

Because I would claim that there is reward for these blessed in heaven, a reward that goes beyond eternal life itself, right?

There is reward for the blessed in heaven who have this value of their good deeds following them, and the reward is the higher degree of beatitude that they experience in the beatific vision.

Because we believe that the degree of happiness we experience in heaven is proportionate to the degree of charity that subsists within the soul.

And so for these individuals who perform such high degrees of loving action and a value of love that far supersedes what is needed to take care of the remnants of sin in this life, and that carrying over with them, that's contributing for the rest of their existence to their degree of beatitude or happiness in heaven, which Those who didn't have that much value of charity on account of their good deeds would have a lesser degree of beatitude.

And this, you know, is hinted at in our Lord's image of, I go to prepare a mansion for you, and in my Father's house there are many rooms, implying that there are many different degrees of the experience of the heavenly existence on account of the charity in our souls.

So that's how I would answer that objection.

That was actually a good question.

I never considered it before.

I appreciate that.

That curveball wasn't from my brain.

So I read it in a business collection of St. Thomas Cajetan's works.

I think it's just...

Where is it?

Yeah.

Cajetan's response.

So St. Thomas Cajetan obviously debated Luther over these issues.

And he was actually...

He was commissioned by the Pope and others to kind of respond to the initial Lutheran movement And I think if I recall correctly, because I live a long time ago, but it just kind of popped in my brain as we were talking about indulgences, is he makes a distinction between satisfactory merits and merits that actually merit these goods that are rewarded by God.

And so the satisfactory merits, I think, are not rewarded in the same sense that these other...

I don't know.

I'll...

I'll do a show on it sometime.

We've established our eternal destination sealed at the moment of death.

We've established that there is this temporal guilt that we are able to...

I guess we didn't even really go over this because I was just kind of blabbering about it or so.

But just clarify for me before we get on to the next question.

The temporal guilt of mortal sin, is that the only thing that might merit temporal punishment in purgatory?

Or are there other things that we might have committed, like, is it venial sins?

Can venial sins merit temporal punishment?

Is it disorder attachments?

Or is it just the mortal sins that are forgiven?

Okay, so if I'm tracking your question, if I commit a mortal sin, I incur not only debt of eternal punishment, but also debt of temporal punishment.

Yes.

The merits of Jesus' death on the cross are applied to me to get rid of the debt of eternal punishment, and only Christ's death can do that.

Considering the debt of temporal punishment, the merits of Jesus' death of Christ are applied to me as well, along with and in cooperation with what I do to discharge that debt of temporal punishment as inspired by grace, or moved by grace, I should say.

Okay?

Yes.

Now, if I commit a venial sin, that venial sin, again, involves a disordered approach to a creaturely good without turning away from God as my supernatural end.

And so thereby, I still incur a debt of temporal punishment that has to get rectified or taken care of and discharged, if not completely in this life, then in the next.

Now, other incurments or other remnants of sin are would involve the guilt of venial sin itself, that would be an object of purification and purgatory.

Now, of course, if I commit a mortal sin, I have the guilt of mortal sin, right?

Only Christ's infinite mercy can be applied to get rid of that.

But if I commit a venial sin, then I have the guilt of venial sin that has to get remitted through repentance.

An act of contrition suffices for that.

But, of course, it's also going to incur a debt of temporal punishment that has to get discharged, right?

Now, with every sin, whether venial are mortal.

There is also unhealthy attachments to the creaturely goods that I pursued in a disordered way, whether entirely disordered, like turning away from God and mortal sin, or partially disordered, like in the case of venial sin.

And those unhealthy attachments have to get reordered or have to get rectified and reordered in order for me to enter into the beatific vision.

That's yet another object of the purification in what we call purgatory.

Okay, yeah, so all those things are, is what is, I guess, purged in this purgatory.

Correct.

What would you say, actually, we have so many questions.

We can do a part two, man.

Yeah, we can do a part two.

We can do a part two.

Okay, so that, yeah, that frees me up a little bit.

So I guess I can leave this other question later because it has to do with the distinct, no, I ask it now, whatever.

What do you say to someone who's a Protestant who's like, yeah, okay, I get the purgatory, purging of unhealthy attachments to creatures.

I get that part.

But when we die, aren't we rid, like, doesn't our death rid us of concupiscence, this disordered, I guess, desire for sin?

Or is there, like, a distinction between concupiscence and, like, unhealthy attachments?

Hmm.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I mean, concupiscence is the inclination towards sin, and it's more of a general inclination towards sin, whereas the unhealthy attachments are incurred on account of a specific good that I pursued in a disordered way.

So there is a distinction between the two.

So with regard to whether the general inclination to sin, such as concupiscence, is completely taken care of, and done away with at death?

That's a question that I'm going to have to punt on.

And so this is a good segue to doing another part two, right?

We have to.

I didn't have so many questions.

Yeah, no, that's an excellent question.

I had not considered the general inclination of concupiscence before of whether that would be taken care of completely from the moment of death and then therefore only these other remnants of sin being purged.

Either way, I can just take a shot here generally speaking, without doing further research, we could say either A, the general inclination to sin is going to be completely taken care of at the moment of death, which would make sense because this concupiscence that we have and this general inclination to sin involves the bodily disorders as well, the disordered appetites and stuff, right?

So it would seem reasonable that with the separation of the soul from the body, that the soul would no longer be hampered by those disorderly appetites.

And so it would seem reasonable to conclude that the general inclination to sin would be done with at the moment of death.

But then the question arises, well, what about any sort of spiritual disorder inclinations to sin, right, in the intellect and the will.

And either that's going to be taken care of instantly at the moment of death or it's going to be taken care of in a sort of a process way as the soul is undergoing its purification.

So I think, you know, it can be either A or B, and I'm just not sure yet whether I can say A or B. But I think we can establish some general parameters there.

Right.

I know we're out of time, so next time, we didn't even get into the second Maccabees.

We didn't even talk about Scripture, bro.

Oh, I know.

We didn't even give the Scriptural evidence for this stuff.

Yeah, I know.

We'll do a part two very soon, hopefully.

And, yes.

Oh, my goodness.

Sorry.

I just had so many speculative questions.

But it is important to get the theological obstacles and hang-ups out of the way first.

I think, to pave a way for the biblical evidence.

Now, in conversation, normally, the question is just going to be, well, where is that in the Bible?

But I would assume that your audience here on the Catechumen are viewers who are probably theologically astute and having or wanting answers to the theological questions first is going to pave the way.

So I think it's appropriate and divinely ordered here, Braden, that we focused on the theology side first, and then we can come back and do some biblical exegesis.

Yes, yes.

So that'll be the theme of next show.

But if you haven't already, please pick up Her Joy is for Real.

I love the title.

I love the title because it's kind of like a parody of the Heaven is for Real book.

I love it.

It's good.

It's good news.

It's good news about people who are hurting it.

And next time we need to talk about that stuff too.

Why is it good news?

Yes, for sure.

Oh, my goodness.

There's Get this book.

Get this book.

It's one of my favorite books right now.

I've been digging through it.

I'm like, oh, I'm in my master's courses.

They just started again.

I can't read what I want to read as much as I want to read it.

And so, yeah, there's a lot of things.

So go pick up this book, shop.catholic.com

or Amazon.

Check out, is it carlobroussard.com

or carlobroussard.com?

Yeah, carlobroussard.com

is my website.

All of the work that I do for Catholic Answers is hosted there in one spot.

All of my audio, my podcast for Catholic Answers, Sunday Catholic Word, the articles that I write, the videos from Catholic Answers Live, But I also have hosted there some stuff that I do outside of Catholic Answers, like my local radio show here in the Diocese of Tulsa called The Catholic Reason.

It's just a monologue show of me going through apologetical topics, but that's hosted at my website in both audio and video format.

I also have a short course that I'm currently teaching live online, and we're recording it.

And after we record the online short course, it will be available for purchase on demand subsequent to the live sessions.

And there will be more forthcoming short courses.

And then also, too, a sneak peek, I'm currently in the process of creating subscription plans of three different tiers or levels where somebody can subscribe and get some extra apologetical content from me.

And so I'm really looking forward to that and hoping that people will, whenever it goes live here in the next few days or so, that people will subscribe to these different levels because I'm looking forward to establishing some community here.

Yes, yes.

I will link all that stuff down in the description below.

Check out Carl's channel.

Subscribe.

Go support him on his website.

And do you have any last words before we sign off until part two, I suppose?

Yeah, so also, too, I forgot to mention they can check out my YouTube channel and subscribe and watch the videos there as well.

But I would just want to say thanks, Brayden.

I enjoy coming on and geeking out with you, man.

I enjoy the deep theological questions, and I hope and pray that For your audience, the questions were adequate and clear so that they can absorb it into their own hearts and minds to be prepared to engage in these sorts of conversations.

Yes.

Tune in next time.

If you guys have any questions of what we've already discussed, we could maybe even address those next time.

So leave them down in the conversation below.

And we hope that by our letting the faith, your faith will be strengthened as well.

You have an amazing day, and we'll see you guys next time.