Can my refusal to forgive keep a soul in Purgatory?
Defined dogma Open question Private revelation
Defined dogma Open question What the Church holds
What detains a soul in Purgatory is its own unpaid debt — that is doctrine — and the living can truly help it. The Church does not define that a particular grudge prolongs a particular soul’s purification (The Last Farthing, section II).
Private revelation What the saints and mystics report
Maria Simma tells of a barn wall that fell every night until a farmer forgave a dead neighbour, and of an old woman held until someone took her in; Schouppe and St Margaret Mary describe Masses diverted to the poor families an unjust soul had ruined. These are devotional testimony, not revealed mechanics.
Accounts that bear on this
- SIM-11Maria Simma: A new barn wall falls every night until the farmer forgives a dead neighbour who slandered his wife
- SIM-12Maria Simma: An old woman met in the woods vanishes when offered shelter; she had once turned the needy away
- EMO-26Margaret Mary: a great lady's Masses applied to the souls of the subjects she ruined
- EMO-71Rossignoli's Merveilles: The Milan hailstorm: a soul explains it as the chastisement of heirs who neglected their father's pious bequests