Purgatory

Hi, I thought this might be of interest since we were talking about whether medieval people (ie Catholics) thought they could sin as much as they liked and just make a deathbed confession to pop themselves into a state of grace, or whether they feared being caught out with all their sins on their soul. This is from the will of Sir Humphrey Talbot's widow Jane, in which she explains why she is making her will although she isn't unwell:

" ... calling to remembrance that the gracious passage and departing from this transitory life dependeth and ensueth upon a discreet will made by good deliberation in good and virtuous order, and that I and all other Christian people be mortal and must depart from the wretched, uncertain and unstable life, the hour and time of which departure from the same unstable life is uncertain; and also that I and every other mortal person be apt by the sending and visitation of God to receive and take such infirmities and sickness whereby I might, in or immediately before the article or pain of death, lack or fail sure and perfect mind, remembrance and reason to order and make my last will and testament according to the meritorious and wholesome intent to the well of my soul.

The same goes, of course, for making a deathbed confession.

I'm not a theologian, so I can't explain exactly what you would need to do to guarantee dying in a state of grace and so bypass Purgatory, but at least you would need to make a perfect confession, have perfect contrition, which is obviously not going to be possible for the cynical sinner. I don't think that it is even a purely Catholic concept that someone who has sinned greatly can, if truly repentant, still be forgiven and end up on a par with the person who tried to do their best all their life; all Christians have to wrestle with the parable of the Prodigal Son. (That's ignoring the doctrine of predestination, which throws up its own problems.)

I suppose my position is that religion claims to redeem people's souls - and behaviour - but really people are largely what they are and therefore no one denomination is going to have a monopoly on virtue.

Marie

P.S. Still recommending Prof. Eamon Duffy's books as fulfilling all the necessary criteria - i.e. very well qualified Catholic historian specialising in the religion of the 14th to 16th centuries.

Hi

If Myra Hyndley had been brought up CofE and returned to that church later in life, saying loads of prayers in an attempt to help herself in the beyond, would anyone have blamed Anglicanism?

Marie

That was certainly the interpretation in the dramatized version of her story shown a couple of years ago - that she manipulated Lord Longford (her decent but naïve Catholic prison visitor) into believing she'd undergone a genuine reformation in order to enlist his support - and public sympathy - for her campaign to be released when she'd completed the normal life sentence. I must admit I'd never before heard this interpreted as evidence that the Catholic faith is soft on murderers.

Marie