At his first meeting on the second day of his visit to Africa, Francis met with leaders of other Christian denominations and
other faiths, driving home the fact that the name of God “must never be
used to justify hatred and violence”. Interreligious dialogue “is not a
luxury” it is “essential”, he explained
Andrea TornielliIn Nairobi
“The God whom we seek to serve is a God of peace. His holy Name must never be used to justify hatred and violence.” Pope
Francis said this this morning at his meeting with leaders of Christian
Churches and of other religions in the Apostolic Nunciature in Nairobi:
Evangelical Christians, Methodists, Pentecostals and members of the
African Inland Church sat beside leaders of the traditional religion of
Animism and the Muslim faith. It was a chance for the Pope to stress his condemnation of God’s name being used as a pretext for terrorist acts.
“I know that the barbarous attacks on Westgate Mall, Garissa University College and Mandera,” Francis said recalling the three horrific attacks that bloodied the country over the past three years,
“are fresh in your minds. All too often, young people are being
radicalized in the name of religion to sow discord and fear, and to tear
at the very fabric of our societies. How important it is that we be
seen as prophets of peace, peacemakers who invite others to live in
peace, harmony and mutual respect! May the Almighty touch the hearts of
those who engage in this violence, and grant his peace to our families
and communities.”
“It is my hope,” the Pope explained, “that our time together may be a
sign of the Church’s esteem for the followers of all religions; may it
strengthen the bonds of friendship which we already enjoy. “
“To be honest,” he added, “this relationship is challenging; it
makes demands of us. Yet ecumenical and interreligious dialogue is not a
luxury. It is not something extra or optional, but essential,
something which our world, wounded by conflict and division,
increasingly needs. Indeed, religious beliefs and practice condition who
we are and how we understand the world around us. They are for us a
source of enlightenment, wisdom and solidarity, and thus enrich the
societies in which we live. By caring for the spiritual growth of our
communities, by forming minds and hearts in the truths and values taught
by our religious traditions, we become a blessing to the communities in
which our people live. In democratic and pluralistic societies like
Kenya, cooperation between religious leaders and communities becomes an
important service to the common good.”
In this light, he concluded, “we see ever more clearly the need
for interreligious understanding, friendship and collaboration in
defending the God-given dignity of individuals and peoples, and
their right to live in freedom and happiness. By upholding respect for
that dignity and those rights, the religions play an essential role in
forming consciences, instilling in the young the profound spiritual
values of our respective traditions, and training good citizens, capable
of infusing civil society with honesty, integrity and a world view
which values the human person over power and material gain.”
A mother was shocked to find her 1-year-old son playing in the
backyard of their home with a poisonous snake in his mouth in Brazil.
Jaine
Ferreira from Mostardas, has said that her 17-month-old son Lorenzo,
was playing in the backyard when she stopped hearing his giggles and
decided to go check on him.
She stepped outside and was horrified
to find a snake wiggling in her son’s mouth so she quickly carried him
to the hospital thinking he must have suffered a snake bite.
Doctors who examined the child, could not find any injury or poisoning symptoms and concluded that the boy was in good health.
Doctors determined that baby Lorenzo bit the poisonous snake and refused to let go till it died.
The
child had blood in his mouth and hands, and acted as if the snake was a
toy so Doctors had to force open the child’s mouth and hands inodded to
remove the snake.
The snake has been identified to be an Amazonian viper.
Nigeria has been ranked third of the 162 countries of the world that
have been worst hit by terrorist attacks, according to the 2015 Global
Terrorism Index.
The country, Africa’s largest oil producer, was ranked fourth in 2014.
Going
by the latest ranking, Nigeria is only better than two Middle Eastern
countries – Iraq and Afghanistan – who were ranked first and second
respectively.
Another two Middle East countries, Pakistan and Syria are ranked fourth and fifth respectively, after Nigeria.
The
only African countries closer in ranking to Nigeria are Somalia and
Libya which are in the eighth and ninth positions respectively.
France,
which recently experienced deadly terrorist attacks that killed about
160 people in Paris, is ranked 36th, same as the United States of
America.
“Terrorist attacks are much more lethal in Nigeria than any other country,” the GTI report said.
The
report, released on November 16, 2015 by the Institute for Economics
and Peace, said the Islamist terror group in Nigeria, Boko Haram,
overtook ISIL in 2014 to become the most deadly terrorist group in the
world.
The Institute for Economics and Peace is an independent,
non-partisan, non-profit think tank with offices in Sydney, New York and
Mexico City.
The 2015 GTI report said Boko Haram, in 2014, was
also able to spread outside Nigeria to launch two deadly attacks in
neighbouring Cameroon, killing 530 people.
Cameroon, the report said, didn’t record any death from terrorism between 2000 and 2013 until Boko Haram struck in 2014
A man in Texas has been apprehended for pulling a knife on a woman who refused to sniff his armpit.
The
man identified as Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar from midland approached the
unidentified woman as she was washing dishes asking her to smell his
armpit.
The woman refused so he hit her at the back of her head and then grabbed a knife to point it at her.
The woman fled the compound and alerted the police.
Pinilla-Bolivar told police he did not threaten her, but he had a knife he took from her dishes which he threw it into the sink.
He has since been charged with assault.
The police in Kano have arrested nine persons for allegedly selling fake and substandard dettol soap and liquid disinfectants.
The Public Relations Officer of the state’s Police Command, Mr Magaji Majiya, told newsmen in Kano on Monday.
He
said the suspects were apprehended at the Sabon Gari Market in Kano
following a letter of complaint from some concerned citizen in the
state.
“After receiving the letter, the ambush squad swung into
action and raided the market where six retailers and three dealers were
arrested”, he said.
He said that items recovered from the suspects
included 1,301 cartons of the product, four cartons of soap valued at
N11.1 million.
Majiya said as soon as investigation was completed, the suspects would be charged to court for prosecution.
He appealed to the public to continue to cooperate with security agencies in order to rid the state of criminals.(NAN).
You’d be surprised to know what has been and what is currently
against the law in some countries around the globe. Have a look at these
rather odd laws: USA
In Connecticut,
it’s illegal to let someone copy your homework. The statutes explicitly
prohibit selling essays, dissertations, etc. at any education facility
supervised by the state. So, I guess it’s okay at private schools then?
In
Florida, bar owners (or anyone who owns a commercial establishment
where alcohol is sold, for that matter) could be fined $1 000 (over R11
000) if they permit or participate in dwarf-tossing contests. (We don't
think that it's crazy that dwarf-tossing is illegal. It's crazy that it
was prevalent enough so that a law had to be made against it. Seriously
people. Dwarf tossing? No.)
In Minnesota, any game in which
participants attempt to capture a greased-up or oiled-up pig is illegal.
We’re not sure why this is a thing.
I’m not going to Mississippi
any time soon. Apparently, swearing in front of two or more people in
public could get you sent to the chookie for up to a month - or you
could pay a fine. Thailand
No one is permitted to step on any form of the national currency as all bills and coins display a picture of the king’s face. Singapore
Here,
it’s illegal to walk around your own home naked, as it’s considered
pornographic (yes, porn is also illegal). If you break this law, you
could be fined or 3 months in prison. Oh, and if “a person who is clad
in such a manner as to offend against public decency or order” is
around, they will also be thrown in jail.
The sale of gum is also
prohibited in Singapore. While it’s not illegal to chew gum, disposing
of it improperly will get you a massive fine. Cambodia
You
can’t use a water gun when celebrating the New Year, as some
participants used to fill it with sewage. The funniest part? If you’re
found with a water gun, it will be confiscated, but that’s it. No jail
time. No fine. United Kingdom
In England,
it’s legal for a male to urinate in public, as long as it’s on the rear
wheel of his vehicle and his right hand is placed somewhere on his
vehicle.
By law, all cab drivers still need to check with their passengers if they have smallpox or the plague.
A boy under the age of 10 is legally not supposed to ever see a naked mannequin. Oh the horror!
Throughout the whole of England it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day. At Christmas of all days?! Canada
In Petrolia, Ontario, "yelling, shouting, hooting, whistling or singing is prohibited at all times." Shame.
All
business signs in Quebec must be written in French, according to the
law. If you want it in English, that’s cool, as long as the English sign
is twice as small as the French one.
In Halifax, taxi drivers “absolutely cannot wear a t-shirt” according to this law. Philippines
This
is my favourite one so far. In the Philippines, an ‘annoying’ person
can actually be fined for being annoying. The second paragraph of
Article 287 states that “any other coercions or unjust vexations shall
be punished by arresto menor (imprisonment for from one day to thirty
days) or a fine ranging from 5 pesos to 200 pesos, or both.”
A
man who travelled to the United States to cheat on his wife was shocked
to return home to find strangers living in what used to be their house.
The
44-year-old man, Craig Arnolds from the United Kingdom told his wife he
was travelling to the United States for a business trip and
accidentally left his iPhone at home.
Moments after he left, his
mistress abroad sent a text message describing the “warm welcome” she
would give him soon as he arrives the US.
His 42-year-old wife, Laura read the message and decided in that very moment to sell their house.
Laura
who is from Warwickshire, told reporters that she was able to sell the
house as it was in her parents’ name because they were paying the
mortgage since she and her husband encountered financial difficulties.
She
successfully sold the house to students from the University of Warwick
within 2 weeks and then packed only her belongings out of the house.
Craig
returned home to find all the lights on and the television blaring. He
knocked and a young man opened the door. He was greeted with the
shocking news.
He did
not find any of his wife’s belongings. He found only chairs and tables
that he had inherited from his late father along with his golf clubs and
a vintage radio that his wife, Laura always hated.
A repentant Craig told reporters: “I made a mistake and paid for it dearly.”
He is still struggling to stay on good terms with his estranged wife for the sake of their children.
According to news agency AGI, she may be canonised next year, the
most likely date being 4 September. But the miracle attributed to her –
confirmed by doctors from the medical council of the Congregation for
the Causes of Saints – still needs to be approved by the dicastery’s
cardinals and bishops
andrea torniellivatican city
Mother Teresa will be proclaimed a saint next September: this is according to Italian news agency AGI,
which also mentioned 5 September – the feast day of the Blessed Mother
Teresa of Calcutta – as a possible date for the celebration. The date,
which will fall on a Monday, marks the 106th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa, born Anjëzë
Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. The nun was born in Skopje, Albania and became a
symbol of love for the poor, living among them in the streets of
Calcutta. It is far more likely, however, that the canonisation will take place a day earlier, on Sunday 4 December that is.
But some further steps are needed before the canonisation can become official. Vatican insider has learnt that the
miracle attributed to Mother Teresa’s intercession, will be examined by
cardinals and bishops from the Congregation of the Causes of Saints
next month. Although cardinals do not carry out an examination as
such – this is done by the dicastery’s medical council and the outcome
in this case was positive –, they could ask for further evidence, which
could prolong the whole process. Once the Congregation’s bishops and
cardinals have deliberated, the Prefect presents the decision to the
Pope, who approves the miracle and announces the date of the
canonisation ceremony at the Consistory of cardinals.
During his trip to Tirana in September 2014, Francis described his encounter with Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the 1994 Synod. The Blessed woman was never fazed by anything, not even the Synod assembly and “always said what she wanted to say”,
Francis confided to the priest who had acted as his interpreter during
his visit to Albania. This comment was later revealed at the press
conference in Tirana, by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr.
Lombardi.
Remembering the circumstances of his meeting with the Blessed woman
known for her work among the poorest of the poor, Francis said: “She sat
right behind me during the sessions. I admired her strength, the
determinedness with which she spoke, never letting herself be fazed by
the assembly of bishops. She said what she wanted to say…” Francis said
before adding with a smile on his face: “If she had been my superior I
would have been scared!”
The inquiry into the theft and publication of confidential documents belonging to the Holy See has come to an end: the new name is Nicola Maio, who had formerly worked for COSEA. He faces trial alongside Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui, as well as Nuzzi and Fittipaldi, who "put pressure on" Vallejo Balda
Domenico Agasso jrVatican City
The Vatican judiciary has indicted five people after the inquiry into the theft and publication of confidential documents belonging to the Holy See was concluded, ANSA news agency has learnt. Mgr. Lucio Vallejo Balda and Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui were arrested as part of the investigations. The two Italian journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi have also been committed for trial. They “requested and pushed for confidential documents and news to be passed onto them and then used some of this content to put together two books published in Italy” (“Merchants on the Temple” and "Avarice"). The fifth indicted party is Nicola Maio, former collaborator of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA). Lucio Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui were also members of the Commission, the former holding the role of secretary. Maio was Vallejo Balda’s personal secretary.The trial will begin on Tuesday 24 November at the Tribunal of the Vatican City State.
Vallejo Balda, Chaouqui and Maio are also charged with criminal conspiracy.
The individuals were indicted - in a document signed by the Promoter of Justice Gian Pietro Milano and the Adjunct Promoter of Justice, Roberto Zannotti - for violating article 116 bis of the Vatican Criminal Code, in other words, the disclosure of confidential news and documents.
In a statement, the Holy See says that Vallejo Balda, Chaouqui and Maio will be asked to explain “why within the Prefecture for Economic Affairs and in COSEA, they grouped together forming an organised criminal partnership of an autonomous composition and structure, whose promoters were Ángel Lucio Vallejo Balda and Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, with the aim of committing a series of crimes involving the publication of new news and documents relating to fundamental interests of the Holy See and the State.” Furthermore, all the accused will need to be tried “because, acting in concert, Vallejo Balda, as secretary general of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs, Chaouqui as a member of COSEA, Maio as Vallejo Balda’s collaborator on questions relating to COSEA, Fittipaldi and Nuzzi as journalists, illegitimately obtained and later revealed news and documents concerning fundamental interests of the Holy See and the State”; to be precise, Vallejo Balda, Chaouqui and Maio “obtained said pieces of news and documents within their own roles in the Prefecture for Economic Affairs and in COSEA, while Fittipaldi and Nuzzi requested and put pressure on Vallejo Balda in particular, to obtain confidential documents and news. They then used some of this content to put together two books published in Italy in November 2015.”
The offences were “committed in the Vatican City between March 2013 and 5 November 2015.”
Following the request for indiction issued by the Promoter of Justice, the President of the Tribunal and the Vatican City State, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, “issued a Decree establishing that on 24 November 2015, at 10:30, the first hearing in the trial faced by the indicted parties, warning them that if they fail to appear in court, they will be held guilty of contumacy. At the same time, he established that the judging college will be composed as such: Giuseppe Dalla Torre, President; Piero Antonio Bonner, Judge; Paolo Papanti-Pelletier, Judge; Venerando Marano, Substitute Judge. The Decree sets the deadline for submission of evidence in defence for 28 November 2015 at 12:30.”
The accused face between four to eight years in prison. At the moment, one of the alleged “moles”, Vallejo Balda, is still being detained in a cell in the Vatican Gendarmerie, while Francesca Chaouqui was immediately released following her arrest at the start of November, because she collaborated in the investigations.
Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Holy See spokesman, clarified: “Whether the accusations are proportionate, still needs to be evaluated, so for now all we have is a request, not a sentence.”
Ace comedian Ali Baba has advised that one must always upgrade one’s self to improve their relevance.
The controversial stand up comic who habitually dishes advise via his instagram page also advised that fans should increase their worth and embrace technology.
He wrote: “A comedian is as good as his last joke. Staying on top of your game is the best way to keep your career in shape. If you joined a bank in 2008, with a BSc in Economics, and you are yet to add value to your curriculum vitae, you have not accelerated, nor added value, neither have you advanced your value propositions.
“Met an AGM of a bank in 2010, who wanted me to introduce a guest at his bank’s dinner, but did not get the guest’s details, just his last name. I was surprised I wowed him when I googled it. He asked how I got so much info on the man when I didn’t know who he was. So I showed him on my iPad 1. I saw him recently and I said hope he has caught on with the google thing, his reply was no surprise. ‘My brother no be google be my problem now. I have been out of work since 2012. I need to get back into banking’.
“Ironically, what a lot of people count as irrelevant turns out to be one very reason they can remain relevant. After the reggae play the blues. Life is always changing. You can’t use your 3310 for Whatsapp. Most device makers make sure they make allowance for upgrade of their software, for improved performance, reduce battery consumption, allow for apps to work better and increase value of their products. Same thing applies for every human being. Most times, people stop growing and that is when frustrating realities hit home. While you were sitting tight, the person you joined an organization with, has an MBA, a certificate of proficiency in different relevant and core sectors of your industry. Even if you had a first class, the person becomes more indispensable by their increasing value. You become a liability.
Activate your skills. Increase your worth. Embrace technology. How many people still take pictures, develop the negatives and prints? When I started engaging social media, someone told my wife I was jobless. Some months back, same person, tails between her legs, asked if I could help promote something she was doing on my platforms. I smiled. Joseph was relevant to Pharaoh. David was invited to play the harp. If the water isn’t constantly flowing, Pharaoh’s daughter won’t swim there. Stagnancy is not growth. Growing makes you relevant. QED!”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that opposition rebels had regained two northern villages close to the Turkish border from the Islamic State insurgents.
The monitoring group said that the recapture of the villages of Dalhah and Harjala on the northern outskirts of Aleppo province followed heavy fighting between rebels and the insurgents.
“This is an important development because it showed that Islamic State is losing ground in areas near the Syrian-Turkish border,” the group’s head, Rami Abdel-Rahman said.
Islamic State has advanced in areas held by moderate rebels in the countryside of Aleppo, including the villages of Dalhah and Harjala since August.
Russia rejects claim that IS group shot down aircraft
In recent months, the al-Qaeda splinter group has made territorial gains in several parts of Syria.
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A US-led coalition and Russia have separately stepped up airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria in the past weeks, after the radical group claimed responsibility for a series of attacks around the world.
At least 36 people were killed overnight in more than 70 airstrikes, believed to have been mounted by Russian warplanes, in eastern Syria’s province of Deir al-Zour, the group said.
It also said that dozens of oil tanks were also destroyed in the oil-rich province, controlled by the Islamic State.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, started airstrikes against Islamic State and other extremists groups in Syria on Sept. 30.
Around 1,331 people, including more than 400 civilians, have since been killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria, the group reported on Friday.
During the mass for deceased cardinals and bishops, Francis said: “those who do not live to serve have no reason to be alive”; may we “be free from the anxieties of the ephemeral, which pass and vanish”
“Today we remember our brother cardinals and bishops who died in the past year. On this earth, they loved the Church, their bride and we pray that in God they may enjoy full joy, in the communion of saints,” he began by saying. 12 cardinals and 99 archbishops and bishops died between 26 October 2014 and 26 October 2015; Patriarch Nerses Bedro XIX (Lebanon – Cilicia of the Armenians) has been added to the list. 112 in total, according to Italian Catholic news blog Il Sismografo.
The Pope invited those present to remember “the vocation of these Ministers with gratitude: as the word itself indicates, their vocation was to minister, to serve in other words”; and as we ask for the reward promised to “good and faithful servants” to be granted to them, we are called upon to confirm our choice of serving in the Church”. Because “the lord asks this of us. Like a servant, he washed the feet of the disciples closest to him, so that we would follow His example. God,” he clarified, “served us first”. Thus, Jesus’ minister “who came to serve, not to be served, cannot but be a Shepherd who is ready to give his life for his sheep. Those who serve and give are seen as losers in the eyes of the world,” he observed. “In actual fact, it is by losing his life that he finds it once again. Because a life that dispossesses itself, losing itself in love, imitating Christ, overcomes death and gives life to the world. Those who serve, save. On the contrary, those who do not live to serve, have no reason to be alive”.
The Gospel shows us that “God loved the world a great deal,” as Jesus says. Francis pointed out that this “really is a concrete love, so concrete, that it took our death upon itself. In order to save us, it reached us at the point at which we ended up, steering us away from God, the giver of life: in death, in a tomb from which there is no way out. This is how the Son of God lowered himself, bending down to us as a servant to assume everything that is ours, opening wide for us the doors of life”.
The Son of God is compared to the “serpent on a pole”. The image refers to the biblical episode in which poisonous serpents attacked Israelites on their journeys through the desert. Those who were bitten by the serpents escaped death if they looked at the bronze serpent which Moses had fixed to a pole as God had ordered. “A serpent saved them from the serpents. The same logic applies to the cross, which Christ refers to speaking with Nicodemus. His death saves us from our death.”
Pope Francis highlighted that “snakes in the desert caused a painful death preceded by fear and a venomous bite, death also appears dark and agonizing to us”; “the Scriptures tells us it entered the world due to the devil’s envy”. However, instead of avoiding it, Jesus took it fully upon himself, with all its contradictions”; and “now we, looking at Him, believing in Him, are saved by Him: ‘those who believe in God's Son has eternal life,’ Jesus says twice in today’s brief Gospel passage.”
According to Francis, God’s style, “which saves us by serving and annihilating himself, has a lot to teach us”. “We might expect a triumphant divine victory, Jesus shows us a humble one instead. Raised on the Cross, he allows death and evil to assail him while he continues to love.” It is hard for human beings to accept this reality: “It is a mystery, but the secret of this mystery, of this extraordinary humility, lies in the power of love. In the Passover of Jesus we see together death and the remedy for death, and this is possible because of the great love with which God has loved us, because of the humble love with which he lowered himself, because of the service which knows how to assume the condition of the servant.” But that is not all, “Jesus not only overcame death,” he “transformed it into something good. He did not change things with words but with actions; not the appearance of things but their substance; not on the surface but at the core. He turned the cross into a bridge that leads to life.”
The important thing for women and men is that “we too can be winners with Him, if we choose a humble love that serves, that remains victorious for eternity. It is a love that is not loud or imposing but is able to wait with faith and patience, because – as the Book of Lamentations reminds us – it is good ‘to wait silently for the salvation of the Lord’.”
“God so loved the world,” Francis underlined. “We are used to loving what we are in need of and what we desire. God, on the other hand, loves to the end of the world and beyond, he loves us just as we are.”
The Pope concluded with an exhortation: “As we offer this mass for our dear brothers, cardinals and bishops, ask for us what the apostle Paul exhorts us to do: ‘to turn our thoughts to what is on high, not to earthly things”; to think of the love of God and of others, more than our own needs. That we must not be concerned with what we lack on this earth, but with the treasure on high; not with what we need but with what is really needed. May the Passover of the Lord be enough in our lives, enough to be free from the anxieties of the ephemeral, which pass and vanish into thin air; may he be sufficient for us in whom is found life, salvation, resurrection and joy. Then we will be servants according to his heart: not employed officials, but beloved children who give their lives for the world.”
A mild drama played out at the Ota High court premises in Ogun state on Tuesday, September 15, as a mysterious snake forced a judge to release 7 detained journalists.
According to Vanguard report, a judge attached to the state High Court 1, Ota, Ogun state, Justice N. I. Agbelu had ordered the journalists to be arrested and detained for allegedly filming the court premises without his consent.
The detained journalists, Daud Olatunji(Vanguard), Samuel Awoyinfa(The Punch), Ernest Nwokolo(The Nation), Abiodun Taiwo(Daily Times) , Sulaiman Fasasi(Nigerian Pilot ), Wale Adelaja(TVC) and Johnson Akinpelu(Alaroye) had arrived the court at about 11:44a.m. to cover two proceedings involving victims of Pakoto demolition and killing in Oke – Ore community.
A police orderly had identified them as men of the press and left them alone.
Not long after, a woman, said to be the assistant court registrar accosted them, asking to see a letter of authorisation from the Chief Judge or a senior judiciary officer permitting them to enter the court premises.
Before sending them away, Justice Agbelu ordered for them to be brought to his office where he reprimanded them.
He said: “I put you under arrest. You are under arrest. You will discover that this compound is fenced round, is that not so? It is not on the major road that you can just come in. If you are representing the public interest, you must know we have a head in this court. I am a judge and I have an unlimited jurisdiction in the state. I can even say somebody should be arrested without question, but, in exercising my power, I have to inquire into many things.
“If we said you are trespassing into our land, do you have any defence answer me now? I am telling you it it not a public place I am telling you, the court is not a public place.”
The founder and general overseer of City of Reality Christian Centre, Apostle Nsikak Etim, has been arrested by the police for allegedly robbing a widow at her husband’s burial.
Daily Independent reports that the pastor, who was not invited to the burial, sneaked into the venue of the burial at Itung Mbang, Uruan local government area. He was said to have witnessed the widow as sympathizers gave her gifts.
When arrested, Apostle Etim, a native of Enen Atai in Itu local government area of Akwa Ibom state, confessed that he truly stopped by the burial although he was not invited. He went on to reveal how he patiently waited to steal a bag that had about N600, 000, two cell phones belonging to the widow and her late husband, a cheque book with an ATM pin written at the edge of the cover, an ATM card and a briefcase containing the late husband’s documents, which was handed over to the woman’s son for safe keeping.
The pastor immediately used the money to buy a land in Uyo, withdrew all the money in the victim’s account using the ATM which had the pin written on it. He also gave the victim’s late husband’s phone to his wife, while he made use of the widow’s phone.
He was however tracked by the Department of State Services (DSS) through the stolen phones and was arrested during a church session at his City of Reality Christian Centre, Ediene Ikot Obio Imo in Uyo.
Etim who admitted to his crime during the interrogation said he was into photo and video media before he received his calling. He blamed the devil for his crime and promised to hand over the land acquired to the widow.
“Please don’t send me to jail. The devil is trying to rubbish my ministry. Please do not involve my wife in this, she is innocent, I did not tell her where I got the phone from. I don’t want our child to grow up without a father, please have mercy upon me,” he pleaded.
Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Customs Service arrested him for conspiring to import in excess of one kilogram of heroin. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the allegedly smuggling heroin from source countries. Although Jack Musa protested vehemently through his legal team that he was innocent and was framed up, this did not stop him from being sentenced.
Musa in prison, he graduated with a degree in law. Standing with him is his half brother, Richard
However, Musa decided being in prison is not the end of life. He enrolled in one of the universities around and successfully graduated with a degree in Law as a prison inmate. He was also a role model and a legal adviser to all the inmates. He carried himself well and was a source of inspiration to co- inmates who have given up on life. He was rewarded for all his good conducts severally by the prison authorities.
His family however did not relent in efforts at getting him out of the prison. Moves for his release began to grow louder and President Obama heard one of the moves and acted by granting him a parole. Musa walked out of Taft Correctional Facility Bakersfield California as a free man on November 2 and he is currently at ICE Detention Center Bakersfield CA where he will be deported back to Nigeria any moment from now.
Pope Francis on Thursday urged the world to act quickly to prevent “extraordinary” climate change from destroying the planet and said wealthy countries must bear responsibility for creating the problem and for solving it. In a radically worded letter addressed to every person on the planet, the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed for the critical situation “Our Sister, mother Earth” now finds itself in.
Pope Francis
“This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her,” he writes in his long-anticipated Encyclical on the environment.
Arguing that environmental damage is intimately linked to global inequality, he goes on to say that doomsday predictions can no longer be dismissed and that: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
Green activists hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff’s widely-trailed intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate over what causes global warming and how to reverse it. “Everyone, whether religious or secular, can and must respond to this clarion call for bold urgent action,”said Kumi Naido, the International Executive Director of Greenpeace.
Environmentalists hope the pope’s message will significantly increase the pressure for binding restrictions on carbon emissions to be agreed at global talks in Paris at the end of this year. But even before the official publication, climate change sceptics had dismissed the document’s argument that the phenomenon is primarily man-made and that humanity can reverse it through lifestyle changes including an early phasing-out of fossil fuels.
“I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope,” US presidential candidate Jeb Bush said on the eve of the release in comments that underlined the depth of opposition in the United States to a binding agreement to curb greenhouse gases.
– Fast track to disaster –
The Encyclical references the arguments of the sceptics by acknowledging that volcanic activity, variation in the earth’s movements and the solar cycle are factors in climate change. But it maintains that “most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity”.
President Muhammadu Buhari
And it leaves no doubt that Francis believes the world is on a fast-track to disaster after decades of inaction. “If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us,” he writes.
Bemoaning the “remarkable” weakness of political responses to this, Francis accuses the sceptics of cynically ignoring or manipulating the scientific evidence. “There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected,” he writes.
“We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly consume and destroy, while others are not yet able to live in a way worthy of their human dignity,” he adds, saying the time has come for parts of the world to accept decreased growth.
– Conflict and war –
The consequences of climate change, he argues, will include a rise in sea levels that will directly threaten the quarter of the world’s population that lives near or on coastlines, and will be felt most acutely by developing countries. Highlighting warnings that acute water shortages could arise within decades, he writes that, “the control of water by large multinational business may become a major source of conflict in this century”.
He adds: “It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars,” with the ever-present risk that nuclear or biological weapons could be used. One of the strongest themes in the encyclical is that rich countries must accept responsibility for having caused climate change and should “help pay this debt” by cutting their carbon emissions and helping the developing world adopt sustainable forms of energy generation.
“The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse,” the pope writes in perhaps the most radical passage of the document.
Francis says fossil fuel-based technology needs to be “progressively replaced without delay.” Developing countries will need financial help to do this from “countries which have experienced great growth at the cost of the ongoing pollution of the planet” and this pact has to be enshrined in binding accords.
Enugu— A 10-year-old boy was allegedly buried alive by suspected occultic men in Ngwo, Enugu State.
The discovery was made during a three-day fasting and prayer crusade organised to cleanse the community of evil.
Vanguard gathered that the boy was allegedly abducted along Independence Layout axis.
However, a Catholic priest from Abia State, Reverend Father Modestus Chilaka, invited by elders to assist in cleansing the land, rescued the boy.
At press time, it was not known whether the boy had been reunited with the parents; or his whereabouts.
State Police Command’s spokesman, Mr. Ebere Amaraizu, told Vanguard: “I am not aware of the incident, but I will check.
“Maybe it happened and it was not reported. I will get back to know if I have the details.”
However, the traditional ruler, Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1 of Ameke Ngwo, Igwe Jerome Okolo, said: “I was here and I saw a small boy who was buried alive as a sacrifice.
“The priest said there was such thing happening and they have buried a boy for rituals.
“He prophesied and said he will go there and rescue him. He went and they rescued the boy and brought him to this ground and everybody saw him.”
BIAFRA is not one of the problems besetting Nigeria. Those unable to appreciate this fact may require a dose of creative thinking. Nigeria’s stubborn thorn in the flesh is its adamant repudiation of the self-evident concept of the changelessness of change, upon which sits a crippling unwillingness to engage that same constancy of change. There are two random but famous declarations – one little remembered today, the other something of a mantra – that neatly wrap up the national antiparty to inexorable change and its management.
On January 15, 1970, there was a ceremony at Dodan Barracks, Lagos, the then seat of political power. Biafran acting Head of State, General Philip Effiong, Colonel David Ogunewe, Colonel Patrick Anwunah, Colonel Patrick Amadi and Police Commissioner Patrick Okeke had gone to submit Biafra’s document of surrender, which officially marked the end of the civil war. “The so-called rising sun of Biafra has set forever,” declared Head of State General Yakubu Gowon, on that occasion. In the leaps and dips of Nigeria’s turbulence, it is common to hear politicians of varying persuasions declaring, as a way of “helping” to stabilise the listing ship of state, that “Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.”
Between Gowon’s presumption of Biafra’s finality, which rode on the crest of triumphalism and was hailed as prescient by many, including Gowon’s biographer Professor Isawa Elaigwu, and the incessantly voiced exclusion of terms on Nigeria’s oneness, lies the country’s problematic. General Gowon is alive and bouncing. Were he to honestly comment on his 45-year old declaration today, he would readily admit to not having thoroughly considered all sides of everything. For it is clearly outside the bounds of political authority to decree the irreversible amputation of human predilection and proclivity. The current hoopla around Biafra lends credence to the assertion.
Now, there is something baffling in the oft-repeated statement on Nigeria’s unity not being negotiable. The statement does not mean that Nigeria’s unity is a fait accompli. It simply insists on a spiteful denunciation of any thought of mapping out a sustainable road on which the assumed or anticipated national unity must travel, free from iniquity and cataclysms; a method for mastering the imperatives of national unity which is, anywhere in the world, a particularly daunting proposition. It is because Nigeria has kept its back obdurately turned to change that even the littlest molehill on its uncharted road invariably becomes a precipitous mountain.
Why is Nigeria incapable of learning from history? When Biafra came in 1967, it was way ahead of its time. Since January 15, 1970, the world’s political map has continued to be redrawn. Emperor Haile Selassie would have started, and branded any dream in which Eritrea was mentioned a nightmare. Eritrea gained international recognition as an independent state in 1993. South Sudan was only a fictional construct in 1970; it became an independent nation in 2011. Bangladesh was non-existent in 1970; it declared its independence from Pakistan a year later. The Soviet Union dissolved into 12 independent states in 1991. By 1992 Yugoslavia had fractured into about seven independent countries. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into Czech and Slovak Republics. Scotland held an Independence referendum early this year that failed. There is a powerful Catalan movement pushing secession from Spain. Separatist tendencies are not on the wane in Cabinda.
What to bear in mind is that most of the secessions or agitations for secession in the world are along ethnic lines. For an ethnically composite country like Nigeria, the way to avoid potential split props is not by precluding discussion on contentious issues, and it is not by expeditionary repression of peaceful dissent. After all, dissent is not and should never be construed as a crime in a democracy. A country of disparate peoples can only be held together in peace and harmony by the glues of visionary leadership indexed on tried and tested political structures of equity, fairness, justice, innovation and practicality. This cannot be said of Nigeria.
Look at neighbouring Ghana, which, like Nigeria, is multi-ethnic. Who ever heard of secessionist agitation in that country? Here is a point made in a June 28, 2012 Memorandum submitted to the House of Representatives Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo: “In our socio-political and economic intercourse all groups (big or small) must be allowed free-play and equitable access to our country’s resources and strategic political command posts, including particularly the presidency. Sustained imbalance in sharing responsibilities and the ‘national cake’ could conceivably induce in those units aggrieved a rethink of the value to them of our much vaunted national unity.”
One possible way of checking skepticism on Nigerian unity is the implementation of the report of last year’s National Conference. Unfortunately, chameleons, who throughout their dubious political careers had hoisted the National Conference placard, turned up on the eve of the last presidential ballot to execrate the idea.
ONITSHA—Angry youths, yesterday, stormed the palace of the traditional ruler of Obosi in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State, His Magesty, Igwe Chidubem Iweka III, protesting alleged invasion of the community and arrest of innocent citizens by men of the state police anti-cult squad.
The protesters, under the aegis of Obosi Youths Land Management Council, OYLMC, led by Augustine Nwankwo, told the monarch that the police anti-cult squad had stormed his residence at about 11a.m. in about four Hilux pick-ups, yesterday, and allegedly opened fire on them, which led to the shattering of the leg of one Maduabuchukwu Nwokolo.
He noted that the injured Nwokolo was currently hospitalized at Multicare Hospital, Omagba Phase II, Onitsha, adding that he had just been informed by the medical personnel in the hospital that his leg was so shattered by bullet that it would be amputated.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Ali Okechukwu, confirmed to newsmen on phone that some persons were arrested during a raid on suspected cultists at Obosi, adding that investigations were still in progress.
Nwankwo further told the monarch that the anti-cult squad also broke all the glass windows in his house and also used axes to break the iron doors.
He noted that the squad operated for an hour and left, only to return in less than an hour in about 31 patrol vehicles belonging to the police, Navy, Department of State Services, DSS, the local vigilante group and prison officials and made away with about 50 motorcycles belonging to his members, who were attending the prayer session that stopped abruptly as a result of the invasion.
Awka—THE UMUZOCHA community in Awka, which owns the largest part of the Anambra State capital territory, is battling the state government over alleged non-payment of compensation for the land acquired in the area since the creation of new Anambra State in 1991.
The people are also complaining that the N78 million paid as part of compensation by the previous administration for some of their acquired land by the state Ministry of Land was seized by an estate surveyor appointed by the community to serve as its agent.
Rising from a meeting attended by all age grades in the community, the people forwarded a letter to Governor Willie Obiano, asking him to intervene in the matter because they have sacrificed so much as the host of the state capital.
In the letter signed by the chairman, Mr. Chris Ndibe and secretary, Mr. Emeka Chukwu, the people observed that of the 33 villages that make up Awka, Umuzocha contributed the largest portion of land to government for development purposes without being appreciated.
The letter read: “As a village, we donated land for the building of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the University Teaching Hospital, the Anambra Broadcasting Service, the Awka branch of the Nigeria Communications Commission, the House of Assembly, the headquarters of the state Universal Basic Education Board, among others.
“The church also has a large chunk of our land as the Catholic Cathedral and St. John of God Secondary School are on our land. Today, our children have no more land to live on and the compensation paid to the community cannot be accessed.
Those who die in God's grace but are not yet perfectly purified are guaranteed eternal salvation. They undergo purification after death to gain the holiness needed to enter heaven.
This "Purgatory" (Councils of Florence and Trent) is totally different from the punishment of the damned. It is a cleansing fire. "The person will be saved, but only through fire" (1 Cor 3:15). "As for certain lesser faults, there is a purifying fire" (Pope St. Gregory the Great).
The Church has always prayed for the dead and offered Mass for them. Judas Maccabees "made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from their sins" (1 Macc 12:46). "Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them" (St. John Chrysostom).
Hell - Final Separation from God (1033)
We are united to God only if we freely choose to love him. We cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, our neighbor or ourselves. "He who does not love, remains in death" (1 Jn 3:14). Jesus warns us that we could be separated from him if we fail to help the poor in their serious needs (Mt 25:31-46). To die in unrepented mortal sin separates us from God forever by our own free choice. This self-exclusion from God's presence is called "hell."
Jesus' Teaching (1034)
Jesus spoke of hell. "It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna" (Mt 5:29). "Be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna" (Mt 10:28). Jesus will send his angels who "will gather all evil doers and throw them into the furnace of fire" (Mt 13:41-42). Jesus will say to some, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire" (Mt 25:41).
The Church Teaching (1035-1036)
The Church teaches that hell exists and that those who die in mortal sin will suffer "eternal fire." This means a definitive separation from God (who alone is man's happiness).
These teachings on hell call man to use his freedom in view of his eternity. "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction." This call is urgent because "those who find it are few" (Mt 7:13-14). "Since we do not know the day nor the hour we should watch constantly" (Second Vatican Council).
No One Predestined to Hell (1037)
God predestines no one to hell (Council of Trent). Damnation comes about only by a persistence in mortal sin until death. God wants "all to come to repentance" (2 Pet 3:9). The Church prays "save us from final damnation and count us among those you have chosen" (Roman Canon).
We are to save our brothers who did not make it to heaven by praying for them and other mortification,all these are because they cannot bail themselves from the kingdom of purgatory,
But let us try and ask ourselves about our dear brothers who are in hell fire either because of their poor education back ground on their faith about God,thinking they are doing the right thing,saying IF THEY HAD KNOWN
GOD being the most potential liberator and the merciful one,WHY ARE PEOPLE/CONGREGATION BE ADVISED NOT TO PRAY FOR SOULS IN THE HELL FIRE
Purgatory, according to Catholic Churchdoctrine, is an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".[1] Only those who die in the state of grace but have not in life reached a sufficient level of holiness can be in Purgatory, and therefore no one in Purgatory will remain forever in that state or go to hell. This theological notion has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature.
The notion of Purgatory is associated particularly with the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church (in the Eastern sui juris churches or rites it is a doctrine, though it is not often called "Purgatory", but the "final purification" or the "final theosis"); Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief, along with many Lutherans of High Church Lutheranism. Eastern Orthodox Churches believe in the possibility of a change of situation for the souls of the dead through the prayers of the living and the offering of the Divine Liturgy, and many Orthodox, especially among ascetics, hope and pray for a general apocatastasis.[2]Judaism also believes in the possibility of after-death purification and may even use the word "purgatory" to present its understanding of the meaning of Gehenna.[3] However, the concept of soul "purification" may be explicitly denied in these other faith traditions.
The word "Purgatory", derived through Anglo-Norman and Old French from the Latin word purgatorium,[4] has come to refer also to a wide range of historical and modern conceptions of postmortem suffering short of everlasting damnation,[5] and is used, in a non-specific sense, to mean any place or condition of suffering or torment, especially one that is temporary.[6]
While use of the word "Purgatory" (in Latinpurgatorium) as a noun appeared perhaps only between 1160 and 1180, giving rise to the idea of purgatory as a place[7] (what Jacques Le Goff called the "birth" of purgatory),[8] the Roman Catholic tradition of Purgatory as a transitional condition has a history that dates back, even before Jesus Christ, to the worldwide practice of caring for the dead and praying for them, and to the belief, found also in Judaism,[9] which is considered the precursor of Christianity, that prayer for the dead contributed to their afterlife purification. The same practice appears in other traditions, such as the medieval Chinese Buddhist practice of making offerings on behalf of the dead, who are said to suffer numerous trials.[5] Roman Catholic belief in after-life purification is based on the practice of praying for the dead, which is mentioned in what the Roman Catholic Church has declared to be part of Sacred Scripture,[10][11] and which was adopted by Christians from the beginning,[12] a practice that presupposes that the dead are thereby assisted between death and their entry into their final abode.[5]
Shortly before becoming a Roman Catholic,[14] the English scholar John Henry Newman argued that the essence of the doctrine is locatable in ancient tradition, and that the core consistency of such beliefs is evidence that Christianity was "originally given to us from heaven".[15] Roman Catholics consider the teaching on Purgatory, but not the imaginative accretions, to be part of the faith derived from the revelation of Jesus Christ that was preached by the Apostles. Of the early Church Fathers, Origen says that “He who comes to be saved, comes to be saved through [a] fire” that burns away sins and worldliness like lead, leaving behind only pure gold.[16] St. Ambrose of Milan speaks of a kind of "baptism of fire" which is located at the entrance to Heaven, and through which all must pass, at the end of the world.[17] Pope St. Gregory the Great says that the belief in Purgatory is “established” (constat), and “to be believed” (credendum), insisting however, that the Purgatorial fire can only purify away minor transgressions, not “iron, bronze, or lead,” or other “hardened” (duriora) sins.[18] By this he meant that attachments to sin, habits of sin, and even venial sins could be removed in Purgatory, but not mortal sin, which, according to Catholic doctrine, causes eternal damnation. Over the centuries, theologians and other Christians then developed the doctrine regarding Purgatory, leading to the definition of the formal doctrine (as distinct from the legendary descriptions found in poetic literature) at the First Council of Lyon (1245), Second Council of Lyon (1274), the Council of Florence (1438–1445), and the Council of Trent (1545–63).[5][19]
Some churches, typically those with a more "Catholic" structure, recognize the doctrine of Purgatory, while many Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches would not use the same terminology, the former on the basis of their own sola scriptura doctrine, combined with their exclusion of 2 Maccabees from the Bible. The latter because the Orthodox Churches consider Purgatory a non-essential doctrine.
The Catholic Church gives the name Purgatory to the final purification of all who die in God's grace and friendship, but are still imperfectly purified.[20] Though Purgatory is often pictured as a place rather than a process of purification, the idea of purgatory as a physical place with time is not part of the Church's doctrine.[21]
A depiction of purgatory by Venezuelan painter Cristóbal Rojas (1890) representing the boundary between heaven (above) and hell (below)
According to Catholic belief, immediately after death, a person undergoes judgment in which the soul's eternal destiny is specified.[22] Some are eternally united with God in Heaven, envisioned as a paradise of eternal joy, where Theosis is completed and one experiences the beatific vision of God. Conversely, others (those who die in hatred of God and Christ) reach a state called Hell, that is eternal separation from God often envisioned as an abode of never ending, fiery torment, a fire sometimes considered to be metaphorical.[23]
In addition to accepting the states of heaven and hell, Catholicism envisages a third state before being admitted to heaven. According to Catholic doctrine, some souls are not sufficiently free from the temporal effects of sin and its consequences to enter the state of heaven immediately, nor are they so sinful and hateful of Christ as to be destined for hell either.[24] Such souls, ultimately destined to be united with God in heaven, must first be cleansed through purgatory – a state of purification.[25] Through purgatory, souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".[26]
Mortal sin incurs both temporal punishment and eternal punishment, venial sin incurs only temporal punishment. The Catholic Church makes a distinction between these two types of sin.[27] Mortal sin is a "sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent",[28] and "if it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back".[29]
In contrast, venial sin (meaning "forgivable" sin) "does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God"[30] and, although still "constituting a moral disorder",[31] does not deprive the sinner of friendship with God, and consequently the eternal happiness of heaven.[30] However, since venial sin weakens charity, manifests a disordered affection for created goods, and impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good, it merits temporal punishment.[30]
According to Catholicism, purification from our sinful tendencies can occur during life. The situation has been compared to that of someone who needs to be cleansed of any addiction. As from any addiction, rehabilitation from the "disordered affection for created goods" will be a gradual and probably painful process. It can be advanced during life by voluntary self-mortification and penance and by deeds of generosity that show love of God rather than of creatures. After death, a cleansing process can be recognized as a still necessary preparation for entering the divine presence.[32]
The writings of Saint Catherine of Genoa explain: "As for paradise, God has placed no doors there. Whoever wishes to enter, does so. All-merciful God stands there with His arms open, waiting to receive us into His glory. I also see, however, that the divine presence is so pure and light-filled – much more than we can imagine – that the soul that has but the slightest imperfection would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than appear thus before the divine presence. Tongue cannot express nor heart understand the full meaning of purgatory, which the soul willingly accepts as a mercy the realization that that suffering is of no importance compared to the removal of the impediment of sin."[33]
Purgatory is commonly regarded as a cleansing by way of painful temporal punishment, which, like the eternal punishment of hell, is associated with the idea of fire.[34] While "pain of the senses" (as opposed to "pain of longing" for the Beatific Vision) is not doctrinally defined as being a part of Purgatory, the overwhelming consensus of theologians has been that it does involve pain of the senses. Several Church Fathers regarded 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 as evidence for the existence of an intermediate state in which the dross of lighter transgressions will be burnt away, and the soul thus purified will be saved.[34] Fire was the Bible-inspired image ("We went through fire and through water")[35] that Christians used for the notion of after-life purification.[36]St. Augustine described the fires of cleansing as more painful than anything a man can suffer in this life,[34] and Pope Gregory I wrote that there must be a cleansing fire for some minor faults that may remain to be purged away.[37]Origen wrote about the fire that needs to purify the soul[38]St. Gregory of Nyssa also wrote about the purging fire.[39]
Another image of souls being purified by flames in purgatory
Most theologians of the past have held that the fire is in some sense a material fire, though of a nature different from ordinary fire, but the opinion of other theologians who interpret the Scriptural term "fire" metaphorically has not been condemned by the Church[40] and may now be the more common view among theologians. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of a "cleansing fire"[41] and quotes the expression "purgatorius ignis" (purifying fire) used by Pope Gregory the Great. It speaks of the temporal punishment for sin, even in this life, as a matter of "sufferings and trials of all kinds".[42] It describes purgatory as a necessary purification from "an unhealthy attachment to creatures", a purification that "frees one from what is called the 'temporal punishment' of sin", a punishment that "must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin."[43]
Catacomb inscriptions include prayers for the dead.[44]
The Catholic Church teaches that the fate of those in purgatory can be affected by the actions of the living. Its teaching is based also on the practice of prayer for the dead mentioned as far back as 2 Maccabees 12:42–46, considered by Catholics and Orthodox to be part of Sacred Scripture.[45]
In the same context there is mention of the practice of indulgences. An indulgence is a remission before God, through the mediation of the Church, of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.[46] Indulgences may be obtained for oneself, or on behalf of the dead.[47] Despite popular perception, the Catholic Church has never taught that indulgences forgive any sins, for this is God's jurisdiction alone. Any persons who have taught that acts of charity such as indulgences can forgive sins have been condemned as heretics by the Catholic Church. It is also a heretical position to suggest that indulgences are applied no matter how strong a Christian may be in his faith. An indulgence is dependent (or any act of charity for that matter) on the present faith of the individual Christian (see Johann Tetzel).
Prayers for the dead and indulgences have been popularly envisioned as decreasing the "duration" of time the dead spend in purgatory, an idea associated with the fact that, in the past, indulgences were measured in terms of days, "quarantines" (i.e. 40-day periods as for Lent), or years, meaning, not that purgatory would be shortened by that amount of time, but that the indulgences were equivalent to that length of canonical penance on the part of a living Christian.[48] When the imposition of such canonical penances of a determinate duration fell out of custom these expressions were sometimes popularly misinterpreted as reduction of that much time of a soul's stay in purgatory.[48] A prayer roll that once belonged to Henry VIII[49] claimed that "this image of pity devotedly say 5 Pater Noster, 5 Ave Maria and 1 Credo..." gave a pardon and reduction of time in purgatory of "52,712 years and 40 days of pardon".[50] In Pope Paul VI's revision of the rules concerning indulgences, these expressions were dropped, and replaced by the expression "partial indulgence", indicating that the person who gained such an indulgence for a pious action is granted, "in addition to the remission of temporal punishment acquired by the action itself, an equal remission of punishment through the intervention of the Church".[51]
Historically, the practice of granting indulgences, and the widespread[52] associated abuses, led to them being seen as increasingly bound up with money, with criticisms being directed against the "sale" of indulgences, a source of controversy that was the immediate occasion of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Switzerland.[53]
Dante gazes at purgatory (shown as a mountain) in this 16th-century painting.
The envisioning of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory as places in the physical universe is not a Church doctrine. However, in antiquity and medieval times, Heaven and Hell were widely regarded as places existing within the physical universe: Heaven "above", in the sky; Hell "below", in or beneath the earth. Similarly, Purgatory has at times been thought of as a physical location.
In 1206, a peasant named Thurkhill in England claimed that Saint Julian took him on a tour of Purgatory. He gave precise details, including descriptions of what he called Purgatory's "torture chambers", and was widely believed, including by the Church historian Roger of Wendover.[54]
In Dante's fourteenth century work La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), Purgatory is depicted as a mountain in the southern hemisphere. It is apparently the only land there. Souls who loved God and man half-heartedly find themselves at Mt. Purgatory, where there are two levels, then Seven Levels representing the Seven deadly sins with ironic punishments. For example, on the first level for Pride the inhabitants are weighed down by huge stones which force them to look at examples of Pride on the pavement like Arachne. When they reach the top they will find themselves at Jerusalem's antipode, the Garden of Eden itself. Thus cleansed of all sin and made perfect, they wait in Earthly paradise before ascending to Heaven.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II referred to Purgatory as "a condition of existence",[21] implying that it is most likely not an actual physical location or place, but is a state wherein "those who, after death, exist in a state of purification, are already in the love of Christ who removes from them the remnants of imperfection."
In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI, speaking of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), said that in her time the purification of souls (Purgatory) was pictured as a location in space, but that the saint saw Purgatory as a purifying inner fire, such as she experienced in her profound sorrow for sins committed, when compared with God's infinite love. She said that being bound still to the desires and suffering that derive from sin makes it impossible for the soul to enjoy the beatific vision of God. The Pope commented: "We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin."[55]
Purgatory is the state of those who die in God’s friendship, assured of their eternal salvation, but who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven.
211. How can we help the souls being purified in purgatory?
Because of the communion of saints, the faithful who are still pilgrims on earth are able to help the souls in purgatory by offering prayers in suffrage for them, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice. They also help them by almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance.
These two questions and answers summarize information in sections 1020–1032[57] and 1054[58] of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, which also speaks of purgatory in sections 1472 and 1473.[59]
The Eastern Catholic churches are Catholic churches sui iuris of Eastern tradition, in full communion with the Pope. There are however some differences between the Latin Church and some of the Eastern Catholic Churches on aspects of purgatory. The Eastern Catholic Churches of Greek tradition do not generally use the word "purgatory", but agree that there is a "final purification" for souls destined for heaven, and that prayers can help the dead who are in that state of "final purification". In general, neither the members of the Latin Church nor the members of these Eastern Catholic Churches regard these differences as points of dispute, but see them as minor nuances and differences of tradition. A treaty that formalized the admission of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church into the full communion of the Roman Catholic Church stated: "We shall not debate about purgatory, but we entrust ourselves to the teaching of the Holy Church",[62] implying, in the opinion of a theologian of that Church, that both sides can agree to disagree on the theological speculations and opinions of what is called Purgatory, while there is full agreement on essential dogma.[63] Between the Latin-Rite Catholic Church and some other Eastern Catholic Churches, such as the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, there is no variance about theological opinions of Purgatory.[64][65]
Eastern Catholic Churches belonging to the Syriac Tradition (Chaldean, Maronite and Syriac Catholic), generally believe in the concept of Purgatory but use a different name like 'Sheol'. They claim that this does not contradict with Latin-Catholic doctrine.[66]
The moral progress of the soul, either for better or for worse, ends at the very moment of the separation of the body and soul; at that very moment the definite destiny of the soul in the everlasting life is decided. ... There is no way of repentance, no way of escape, no reincarnation and no help from the outside world. Its place is decided forever by its Creator and judge. The Orthodox Church does not believe in purgatory (a place of purging), that is, the inter-mediate state after death in which the souls of the saved (those who have not received temporal punishment for their sins) are purified of all taint preparatory to entering into Heaven, where every soul is perfect and fit to see God. Also, the Orthodox Church does not believe in indulgences as remissions from purgatoral punishment. Both purgatory and indulgences are inter-corrolated theories, unwitnessed in the Bible or in the Ancient Church, and when they were enforced and applied they brought about evil practices at the expense of the prevailing Truths of the Church. If Almighty God in His merciful loving-kindness changes the dreadful situation of the sinner, it is unknown to the Church of Christ. The Church lived for fifteen hundred years without such a theory.[67]
Eastern Orthodox teaching is that, while all undergo a Particular Judgment immediately after death, neither the just nor the wicked attain the final state of bliss or punishment before the last day,[68] with some exceptions for righteous souls like the Theotokos (Blessed Virgin Mary), "who was borne by the angels directly to heaven".[69]
The Eastern Orthodox Church holds that it is necessary to believe in an intermediate after-death state in which believers are perfected and brought to full divinization, a process of growth rather than of punishment, which some Orthodox have called purgatory.[70] Eastern Orthodox theology does not generally describe the situation of the dead as involving suffering or fire, although it nevertheless describes it as a "direful condition".[71] The souls of the righteous dead are in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness; but the souls of the wicked are in a state the reverse of this. Among the latter, such souls as have departed with faith, but "without having had time to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance..., may be aided towards the attainment of a blessed resurrection [at the end of time] by prayers offered in their behalf, especially those offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory."[72]
The state in which souls undergo this experience is often referred to as "Hades".[73]
The Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila (1596–1646), adopted, in a Greek translation by Meletius Syrigos, by the 1642 Council of Jassy, in Romania, professes that "many are freed from the prison of hell ... through the good works of the living and the Church's prayers for them, most of all through the unbloody sacrifice, which is offered on certain days for all the living and the dead" (question 64); and (under the heading "How must one consider the purgatorial fire?") "the Church rightly performs for them the unbloody sacrifice and prayers, but they do not cleanse themselves by suffering something. But, the Church never maintained that which pertains to the fanciful stories of some concerning the souls of their dead, who have not done penance and are punished, as it were, in streams, springs and swamps" (question 66)."[74]
The Eastern Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem (1672) declared that "the souls of those that have fallen asleep are either at rest or in torment, according to what each hath wrought" (an enjoyment or condemnation that will be complete only after the resurrection of the dead); but the souls of some "depart into Hades, and there endure the punishment due to the sins they have committed. But they are aware of their future release from there, and are delivered by the Supreme Goodness, through the prayers of the Priests, and the good works which the relatives of each do for their Departed; especially the unbloody Sacrifice benefiting the most; which each offers particularly for his relatives that have fallen asleep, and which the Catholic and Apostolic Church offers daily for all alike. Of course, it is understood that we do not know the time of their release. We know and believe that there is deliverance for such from their direful condition, and that before the common resurrection and judgment, but when we know not."[71]
Some Orthodox believe in a teaching of "aerial toll-houses" for the souls of the dead. According to this theory, which is rejected by other Orthodox but appears in the hymnology of the Church,[75] "following a person's death the soul leaves the body and is escorted to God by angels. During this journey the soul passes through an aerial realm which is ruled by demons. The soul encounters these demons at various points referred to as 'toll-houses' where the demons then attempt to accuse it of sin and, if possible, drag the soul into hell."[76]
The Armenian Apostolic Church, against most of the other Eastern Churches, does not maintain the doctrine of purgatory.[77]
In general, Protestant churches reject the doctrine of purgatory. One of Protestantism's central tenets is sola scriptura ("scripture alone"). The general Protestant view is that the Bible, from which Protestants exclude deuterocanonical books such as 2 Maccabees, contains no overt, explicit discussion of purgatory and therefore it should be rejected as an unbiblical belief.[78]
Another view held by many Protestants is sola fide ("by faith alone"): that faith alone, apart from any action, is what achieves salvation, and that good works are merely evidence of that faith.[79] Salvation is generally seen as a discrete event that takes place once for all during one's lifetime, not the result of a transformation of character. However, most Protestants teach that a transformation of character naturally follows the salvation experience. Instead of distinguishing between mortal and venial sins, Protestants believe that one's faith dictates one's state of salvation and one's place in the afterlife. Those who have been saved by God are destined for heaven, while those have not been saved will be excluded from heaven. Accordingly, they reject any notion of a provisional or temporary afterlife state such as purgatory.[80]
Some Protestants hold that a person enters into the fullness of its bliss or torment only after the resurrection of the body, and that the soul in that interim state is conscious and aware of the fate in store for it.[81] Others have held that souls in the intermediate state between death and resurrection are without consciousness, a state known as soul sleep.[82]
As an argument for the existence of purgatory, Protestant religious philosopher Jerry L. Walls[83] wrote Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (2011) The book evoked reviews and news stories. It received a positive review in the Roman Catholic University of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Historically informed, philosophically competent, and theologically alert . . . as careful
and fair a discussion of the doctrine of purgatory as one is likely to find.[84]
The Christian Century suggested that, if Protestants followed Walls’ logic, they might accept his view of an intermediate state without calling it purgatory.[85] Within early Christianity, he finds “biblical hints of Purgatory” and examines them. In a survey of Christian writers whom he calls the “Fathers and Mothers of Purgatory,” Walls finds the beginnings of the doctrine of purgatory in their writings. These three sources led up to the “birth of Purgatory” in the 12th century. The 13th century saw the beginnings of Purgatory’s adoption and its adoption as doctrine in 1274.[86] Walls does not base his belief in Purgatory primarily on Scripture, the Mothers and Fathers of the Church, or the Magisterium (doctrinal authority) of the Roman Catholic church. Rather his basic argument is that, in a phrase he often uses, it “makes sense.”[87] For Walls, Purgatory has a logic as in the title of his book. Walls documents the “contrast between the satisfaction and sanctification models” of Purgatory. In the satisfaction model, “the punishment of purgatory” is to satisfy God’s justice. In the sanctification model, Wall writes that “Purgatory might be pictured . . . as a regimen to regain one’s spiritual health and get back into moral shape.”[88] In Roman Catholic theology, Walls finds that the doctrine of purgatory has “swung” between the “poles of satisfaction and sanctification” sometimes “combining both elements somewhere in the middle. He believes the sanctification model "can be affirmed by Protestants without contradicting their theology and find that it “makes better sense” than an instantaneous purging of sin at the moment of death. [89]
Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles states that "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory . . . is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."[91] Prayers for the departed were deleted from the 1552 Book of Common Prayer because they suggested a doctrine of purgatory. The 19th century Anglo-Catholic revival led to restoring prayers for the dead.[92]
John Henry Newman, in his Tract XC of 1841 §6, discussed Article XXII. He highlighted the fact that it is the “Romish” doctrine of purgatory coupled with indulgences that Article XXII condemns as “repugnant to the Word of God.” The article did not condemn every doctrine of purgatory and it did not condemn prayers for the dead. [93]
As of the year 2000, the state of the doctrine of purgatory in Anglicanism was summarized as follows:
Purgatory is seldom mentioned in Anglican descriptions or speculations concerning life after death, although many Anglicans believe in a continuing process of growth and development after death.[94]
John Henry Hobart, an Anglican bishop, writes that "Hades, or the place of the dead, is represented as a spacious receptacle with gates, through which the dead enter."[95]The Anglican Catechist elaborates on Hades, stating that it "is an intermediate state between death and the resurrection, in which the soul does not sleep in unconsciousness, but exists in happiness or misery till the resurrection, when it shall be reunited to the body and receive its final reward."[96] This space is divided into Paradise and Gehenna "but with an impassable gulf between the two".[97]Souls, with exception of martyrs and saints, remain in Hades until the Final Judgment and "Christians may also improve in holiness after death during the middle state before the final judgment".[98][99]
As such, the Book of Common Prayer includes prayers for the dead, both that they may be “purged” of “defilements . . . contracted” in their “earthly life” and that they may increase in the “knowledge and love” of God.[100]
Leonel L. Mitchell (1930-2012) offers this rationale for prayers for the dead:
No one is ready at the time of death to enter into life in the nearer presence of God without substantial growth precisely in love, knowledge, and service; and the prayer also recognizes that God will provide what is necessary for us to enter that state. This growth will presumably between death and resurrection.”[101]
Anglican theologian C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), reflecting on the history of the doctrine of purgatory in the Anglican Communion, said there were good reasons for "casting doubt on the 'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that Romish doctrine had then become", not merely a "commercial scandal" but also the picture of purgatory in the doctrine of the Roman Church, in which the souls are tormented by devils, whose presence is "more horrible and grievous to us than is the pain itself", and where the spirit who suffers the tortures cannot, for pain, "remember God as he ought to do". Lewis believed instead in purgatory as presented in John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius. By this poem, Lewis wrote, "Religion has reclaimed Purgatory", a process of purification that will normally involve suffering.[102]
Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church, believed that it was of no avail to pray for the dead.[103] Nonetheless, a core statement of Lutheran doctrine, from the Book of Concord, states: "We know that the ancients speak of prayer for the dead, which we do not prohibit; but we disapprove of the application ex opere operato of the Lord's Supper on behalf of the dead. ... Epiphanius testifies that Aerius held that prayers for the dead are useless. With this he finds fault. Neither do we favor Aerius, but we do argue with you because you defend a heresy that clearly conflicts with the prophets, apostles, and Holy Fathers, namely, that the Mass justifies ex opere operato, that it merits the remission of guilt and punishment even for the unjust, to whom it is applied, if they do not present an obstacle." (Philipp Melanchthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession).[104] The Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, however, believes in the doctrine of purgatory, as well as papal infallibility and all Roman Catholic dogma. Additionally, High Church Lutheranism, like Anglo-Catholicism, is more likely to accept some form of purgatory.
Methodist churches, in keeping with Article XIV - Of Purgatory in the Articles of Religion, hold that "the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory ... is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God."[105] However, in the Methodist Church, there is a belief in hades, "the intermediate state of souls between death and the general resurrection," which is divided into Paradise (for the righteous) and Gehenna (for the wicked).[106][107] After the general judgment, hades will be abolished.[107]John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, "made a distinction between hell (the receptacle of the damned) and hades (the receptacle of all separate spirits), and also between paradise (the antechamber of heaven) and heaven itself."[108][109] The dead will remain in Hades "until the Day of Judgment when we will all be bodily resurrected and stand before Christ as our Judge. After the Judgment, the Righteous will go to their eternal reward in Heaven and the Accursed will depart to Hell (see Matthew 25)."[110]
Mormonism, the group of beliefs espoused by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, teaches of an intermediate place for spirits between their death and their bodily resurrection. This place, called "the spirit world," includes "paradise" for the righteous and "prison" for those who do not know God. Spirits in paradise serve as missionaries to the spirits in prison, who can still accept salvation. In this sense, spirit prison can be conceptualized as a type of purgatory. In addition to hearing the message from the missionary spirits, the spirits in prison can also accept posthumous baptism and other posthumous ordinances performed by living church members in temples on Earth. This is frequently referred to as "baptism for the dead" and "temple work."[111] Mormons believe that during the three days following Christ's crucifixion, he preached his gospel to inhabitants of spirit prison.[112]
In Judaism, Gehenna is a place of purification where, according to some traditions, most sinners spend up to a year before release.
The view of purgatory can be found in the teaching of the Shammaites: "In the last judgment day there shall be three classes of souls: the righteous shall at once be written down for the life everlasting; the wicked, for Gehenna; but those whose virtues and sins counterbalance one another shall go down to Gehenna and float up and down until they rise purified; for of them it is said: 'I will bring the third part into the fire and refine them as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried' [Zech. xiii. 9.]; also, 'He [the Lord] bringeth down to Sheol and bringeth up again'" (I Sam. ii. 6). The Hillelites seem to have had no purgatory; for they said: "He who is 'plenteous in mercy' [Ex. xxxiv. 6.] inclines the balance toward mercy, and consequently the intermediates do not descend into Gehenna" (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 3; R. H. 16b; Bacher, "Ag. Tan." i. 18). Still they also speak of an intermediate state.
Regarding the time which purgatory lasts, the accepted opinion of R. Akiba is twelve months; according to R. Johanan b. Nuri, it is only forty-nine days. Both opinions are based upon Isa. lxvi. 23–24: "From one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before Me, and they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched"; the former interpreting the words "from one new moon to another" to signify all the months of a year; the latter interpreting the words "from one Sabbath to another," in accordance with Lev. xxiii. 15–16, to signify seven weeks. During the twelve months, declares the baraita (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 4–5; R. H. 16b), the souls of the wicked are judged, and after these twelve months are over they are consumed and transformed into ashes under the feet of the righteous (according to Mal. iii. 21 [A. V. iv. 3]), whereas the great seducers and blasphemers are to undergo eternal tortures in Gehenna without cessation (according to Isa. lxvi. 24).
The righteous, however, and, according to some, also the sinners among the people of Israel for whom Abraham intercedes because they bear the Abrahamic sign of the covenant are not harmed by the fire of Gehenna even when they are required to pass through the intermediate state of purgatory ('Er. 19b; Ḥag. 27a).[113]
In Islam also, Muslims believe hell is a temporary place of punishment for some, eternal for others. Sinning believers who end up in Hell will stay temporarily but eventually will be removed only if Allah will permit them to enter to paradise, otherwise that's not the rule for those who will leave hell later on. And those who refuse to work God and submit to him (i.e. God) alone [114] will remain in Hell eternally.[115]
Barzakh (Arabic: برزخ), a term that appears in the Qur'an Surah 23, Ayat 100, is the intermediate state in which the soul of the deceased is transferred across the boundaries of the mortal realm into a kind of "cold sleep" where the soul will rest until the Qiyamah (Judgement Day). This concept corresponds to that of soul sleep, not to that of purgatory.[116]
The life review undergone by those who have had a Near Death Experience (NDE), can resemble a sort of purgatory. This is what Bruce Horacek Ph.D and the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) write about the Life Review: "During a predominantly pleasurable NDE, usually while in the light, the NDEr may experience a life review. In this review, the NDEr typically re-views (sees again) and re-experiences every moment of his/her life. At the same time, the NDEr fully experiences being every other person with whom the NDEr interacted. The NDEr knows what it was to be on the receiving end of his/her own actions including those that caused others pain. At this time, the NDEr usually reports feeling profound remorse, along with extreme regret that the harm cannot be undone. At the same time, the NDEr typically reports feelings consistent with unconditional love from the light, which communicates forgiveness because the NDEr was still learning how to become a more loving person. NDErs tend to say that this "learning how to love" is the purpose of life."[117] In Richard Matheson's novel What Dreams May Come, a newly dead character sees all the events of his life unfold in reverse, then later experiences the same thing slowly, in a self-evaluation process that the novel equates with purgatory.
Literary references to purgatory go back at least as far as Dante Alighieri. In his Divine Comedy story Purgatorio, Mount Purgatory is split into different terraces for those being made to be ready for heaven. At the top of Mount Purgatory is the Garden of Eden.[118]
In the 1991 film Defending Your Life, “purgatory is like Paradise City” in which “souls hang around awaiting the verdict of their hearings.”[119]
In the TV series Supernatural, purgatory is a place where the souls of monsters such as vampires and werewolves are sent to when they die, destined to hunt and feed on each other for eternity. It also serves as the prison for God's first beasts, the Leviathans, who escape during the show's seventh season due to the actions of the Winchesters' angelic ally Castiel, forcing the Winchesters to try and defeat them; the eighth season includes flashbacks to the time protagonist Dean Winchester spent in Purgatory after killing the Leviathans' leader.[120]
It is also mentioned in the anime Samurai X as Shishio Makoto's Ship was named Purgatory.
In the South Park episode "Dead Celebrities", the experience of waiting for an airplane to take off while on the runway is referred to as purgatory.
In the 1999 film Purgatory by Uli Edel, a band of outlaws find themselves in the town of Refuge, which is really Purgatory.[121]
In the 2015 film, Welcome to Purgatory, “the afterlife is in ruins”. Can new arrivals put things right?[122]
In the TV series The Vampire Diaries, the Other Side was a purgatory-like dimension where all supernatural creatures went after they died, at least up until the Season 5 finale at which point the Other Side was destroyed.
In the 2010 video game Mass Effect 2, Purgatory is the name of a starship that was converted into a prison, infamous for the staff's brutal treatment of prisoners.
In one episode of the cartoon, Animaniacs, the three leads wind up in hell and take a boat to what the devil calls purgatory, after which they sing a short song about it.
In the anime "Angel Beats!", several teenagers find themselves in a purgatorial world. They believe that God gave them unfair lives, and they want to get back at him for it.
In the book series Incarnations of immortality by Piers Anthony, many of the characters reside in Purgatory.
In TV series Sleepy Hollow also use purgatory as the world of the dead and undead. The main character was stuck in purgatory.[123]
In the film, Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006), only those who killed themselves inhabit the story’s purgatorial “afterlife way station”.[124]
"Purgatorium" is one of the Final Dungeons in the 2013 videogame "Shin Megami Tensei IV". The Dungeon has 7 floors, having an unknown meaning up to now. The boss faced in the end is Merkabah instead of God. [125]
Jump up ^"Each one will be presented to the Judge exactly as he was when he departed this life. Yet, there must be a cleansing fire before judgment, because of some minor faults that may remain to be purged away. Does not Christ, the Truth, say that if anyone blasphemes against the Holy Spirit he shall not be forgiven 'either in this world or in the world to come'(Mt. 12:32)? From this statement we learn that some sins can be forgiven in this world and some in the world to come. For, if forgiveness is refused for a particular sin, we conclude logically that it is granted for others. This must apply, as I said, to slight transgressions." Gregory the Great [regn. A.D. 590–604], Dialogues, 4:39 (A.D. 594).
Jump up ^"For if on the foundation of Christ you have built not only gold and silver and precious stones (1 Cor.,3); but also wood and hay and stubble, what do you expect when the soul shall be separated from the body? Would you enter into heaven with your wood and hay and stubble and thus defile the kingdom of God; or on account of these hindrances would you remain without and receive no reward for your gold and silver and precious stones; neither is this just. It remains then that you be committed to the fire which will burn the light materials; for our God to those who can comprehend heavenly things is called a cleansing fire. But this fire consumes not the creature, but what the creature has himself built, wood, and hay and stubble. It is manifest that the fire destroys the wood of our transgressions and then returns to us the reward of our great works." Origen, Homilies on Jeremias, PG 13:445, 448 ( A.D. 244).
Jump up ^"When he has quitted his body and the difference between virtue and vice is known he cannot approach God till the purging fire shall have cleansed the stains with which his soul was infested. That same fire in others will cancel the corruption of matter, and the propensity to evil." Gregory of Nyssa, Sermon on the Dead, PG 13:445,448 (ante A.D. 394).
Jump up ^CCC 1473. In his 2007 encyclical Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI applies to the purgation of souls after death the words of Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 3:12–15 about some being "saved, but only as through fire"; in the encounter with Christ after death, Christ's "gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation 'as through fire'. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God" (Spe salvi, 46–47).
Jump up ^John Meyondorff, Byzantine Theology (London: Mowbrays, 1974) pp. 220–221. "At death man's body goes to the earth from which it was taken, and the soul, being immortal, goes to God, who gave it. The souls of men, being conscious and exercising all their faculties immediately after death, are judged by God. This judgment following man's death we call the Particular Judgment. The final reward of men, however, we believe will take place at the time of the General Judgment. During the time between the Particular and the General Judgment, which is called the Intermediate State, the souls of men have foretaste of their blessing or punishment" (The Orthodox Faith).
Jump up ^In both the Greek and Slavonic Euchologion, in the canon for the departure of the soul by St. Andrew, we find in Ode 7: "All holy angels of the Almighty God, have mercy upon me and save me from all the evil toll-houses" (Evidence for the Tradition of the Toll Houses found in the Universally Received Tradition of the Church). "When my soul is about to be forcibly parted from my body's limbs, then stand by my side and scatter the counsels of my bodiless foes and smash the teeth of those who implacably seek to swallow me down, so that I may pass unhindered through the rulers of darkness who wait in the air, O Bride of God" (Octoechos, Tone Two, Friday Vespers). "Pilot my wretched soul, pure Virgin, and have compassion on it, as it slides under a multitude of offences into the deep of destruction; and at the fearful hour of death snatch me from the accusing demons and from every punishment" (Ode 6, Tone 1 Midnight Office for Sunday).
Jump up ^Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2001 ed.). Wordsworth Editions. p. 62.
Jump up ^Robert L. Millet, By what Authority?: The Vital Question of Religious Authority in Christianity (Mercer University, 2010), 66.
Jump up ^Alan Richardson, John Bowden, eds, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox, 1983), s.v. sola fide, 545.
Jump up ^Alan Richardson, John Bowden, eds, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox, 1983), s.v. salvation 519.
Jump up ^John Calvin wrote: "As long as (our spirit) is in the body it exerts its own powers; but when it quits this prison-house it returns to God, whose presence it meanwhile enjoys, while it rests in the hope of a blessed Resurrection. This rest is its paradise. On the other hand, the spirit of the reprobate, while it waits for the dreadful judgment, is tortured by that anticipation" (Psychopannychia by John Calvin)
Jump up ^Martin Luther, contending against the doctrine of purgatory, spoke of the souls of the dead as quite asleep, but this notion of unconscious soul sleep is not included in the Lutheran Confessions and Lutheran theologians generally reject it. (See Soul Sleep – Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.)
Jump up ^Don S. Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum, eds, An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church (Church Publishing, 2000), 427.
Jump up ^Hobart, John Henry (1825). The State of the Departed. New York: T. and J. Swords. p. 32.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^Holden, George (1855). The Anglican Catechist: Manual of Instruction Preparatory to Confirmation. London: Joseph Masters. p. 40. We are further taught by it that there is an intermediate state between death and the resurrection, in which the soul does not sleep in unconsciousness, but exists in happiness or misery till the resurrection, when it shall be reunited to the body and receive its final reward.
Jump up ^Cook, Joseph (1883). Advanced thought in Europe, Asia, Australia, &c. London: Richard D. Dickinson. p. 41. Anglican orthodoxy, without protest, has allowed high authorities to teach that there is an intermediate state, Hades, including both Gehenna and Paradise, but with an impassable gulf between the two.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^Shields, Charles (2009-05-01). Philosophia Ultima. Applewood Books. p. 184. ISBN9781429019644. Some Anglican divines, from like premises, have surmised that Christians may also improve in holiness after death during the middle state before the final judgment.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^Jonathan, Fr. (5 September 2012). "Either the Saints Are Alive or Jesus is Dead". The Conciliar Anglican. Retrieved 10 April 2014. His Majesty venerates the blessed Martyrs and other saints now reigning with Christ, Who is the head of the triumphant and of the militant Church, and he does not doubt that they assiduously pray for the necessities of the Church, and firmly believes that their prayers are not useless.
Jump up ^Leonel L. Mitchell, Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on The Book of Common Prayer (Church Publishing, 1991), 224.
Jump up ^C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Mariner Books, 2002), 108-109.
Jump up ^Question 201 of Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation (Concordia Publishing House, 1991 edition) answers the question "For whom should we pray?" as follows: "We should pray for ourselves and for all other people, even for our enemies, but not for the souls of the dead" The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod
Jump up ^Withington, John Swann (1878). The United Methodist Free Churches' Magazine. London: Thomas Newton. p. 685. The country is called Hades. That portion of it which is occupied by the good is called Paradise, and that province which is occupied by the wicked is called Gehenna.
^ Jump up to: abSmithson, William T. (1859). The Methodist Pulpit. H. Polkinhornprinter. p. 363. Besides, continues our critical authority, we have another clear proof from the New Testament, that hades denotes the intermediate state of souls between death and the general resurrection. In Revelations (xx, 14) we read that death and hades-by our translators rendered hell, as usual-shall, immediately after the general judgment, "be cast into the lake of fire: this is the second death." In other words, the death which consists in the separation of soul and body, and the receptacle of disembodied spirits shall be no more. Hades shall be emptied, death abolished.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^Jr., Charles Yrigoyen; Warrick, Susan E. (16 March 2005). Historical Dictionary of Methodism. Scarecrow Press. p. 107. ISBN9780810865464. Considering the question of death and the intermediate state, John Wesley affirmed the immortality of the soul (as well as the future resurrection of the body), denied the reality of purgatory, and made a distinction between hell (the receptacle of the damned) and hades (the receptacle of all separate spirits), and also between paradise (the antechamber of heaven) and heaven itself.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^Karen B. Westerfield Tucker (8 March 2001). American Methodist Worship. Oxford University Press. p. 202. ISBN9780198029267. Retrieved 10 April 2014. Decisions made during life were therefore inseparably connected to what came after life. Upon death, according to Wesley, the souls of the deceased would enter an intermediate, penultimate state in which they would remain until reunited with the body at the resurrection of the dead. In that state variously identified as "the ante-chamber of heaven," "Abraham's bosom," and "paradise".
Jump up ^Swartz, Alan (20 April 2009). United Methodists and the Last Days. Hermeneutic. Wesley believed that when we die we will go to an Intermediate State (Paradise for the Righteous and Hades for the Accursed). We will remain there until the Day of Judgment when we will all be bodily resurrected and stand before Christ as our Judge. After the Judgment, the Righteous will go to their eternal reward in Heaven and the Accursed will depart to Hell (see Matthew 25).
Jump up ^"There are three categories of men; the wholly pious and the arch-sinners are not purified, but only those between these two classes" (Jewish Encyclopedia: Gehenna)
