OK, Here We Go

Me Thinks We've Come to the Meat

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Mark Connolly

10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who,
in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for
purgatory.

I answer that:

I'd like to better understand the genesis of this proposition. The statement, on the face of it, does not make any sense to me at all. Keeping in mind that things may have been very different in the 1500s, here are the issues I have with your point number 10:

1. Did priests in fact "reserve canonical penance" from the dying? I cannot fathom this.
   
2. Do you in fact view purgation and penance as being synonymous? Because they're not.
3. You seem to be implying that priests refused the sacrament of penance to the dying, forcing them into purgatory, I suppose so that they could then bilk their relatives out of money for indulgences. 1
   

Having said all that, if in fact anything like this was happening, then you are right, "ignorant and wicked" indeed are these priests. Let's skip ahead to No. 11, and then consider both of these points together:

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of
purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown
while the bishops slept.

As I've stated earlier, both in this post and in a previous one, penance and purgatory are essentially unrelated. You appear to be stating that they are essentially the same thing. Maybe now is the time to go into this.

I cannot know at this point, definitively, what the understanding of all this was in the 1500s. I also don't know when the doctrine of purgatory was developed.

As I understand the concept of purgatory today, the Church does not 'sentence' anyone to purgatory as penance for the sins they have committed in this life. Your implication is that the Church does just this. Your basis for this is unknown to me. To the best of my knowledge, there is no list of 'penalties' anywhere documented for the commission of sins. When a person goes to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the priest absolves them of their sins and assigns a penance, it is up to the priest what the penance is. He doesn't look in some Manual of Penance. And, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been told "Your penance is 7 years in Purgatory."

Penance is more along the lines of this example: Your kid breaks a window. You forgive him, but there is still a broken window. The window still needs to be repaired. The kid broke it, the kid has to fix it. Even though you have already forgiven him or her. They have to fix what they broke.

Purgation is a purification. Purification is not Penance. I don't know what else to say at this time.

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