The Place of Purgatory

"Thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing." — Matthew 5:26

Ask where Purgatory is and three very different answers come back from the tradition. Below: under the earth, near Hell. Here: in the choir stall, the house, the place where the soul sinned. And nowhere, in the sense of no place at all, but a condition of the soul before God. Each answer has serious witnesses behind it. Only one of the three, the last, has the Church's teaching behind it, and even that is not a definition.

What the Church teaches

Defined dogma That Purgatory exists, that souls are purified there after death, and that the suffrages of the living help them. On where it is, the councils say nothing at all. The Lantern's FAQ is right: "The Church has not defined whether Purgatory is a 'place' in the spatial sense."

Common teaching The Church's present catechesis leans firmly toward condition rather than place. Pope St John Paul II taught at the General Audience of 4 August 1999:

"Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church's teaching on purgatory. The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. 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."

The Catechism stresses difference rather than location: "The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned" (CCC 1031, as quoted in the Directory on Popular Piety §251). Even before the Council, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) defined Purgatory as "a place or condition of temporal punishment". The word place was always held loosely.

There is a simple reason for that looseness. A soul separated from its body does not take up room the way bodies do. When theologians speak of the soul being somewhere, they speak by analogy.

Open question The older theologians did speculate about location, and they were honest about the weight of their opinions. St Thomas begins:

"Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question. It is probable, however, and more in keeping with the statements of holy men and the revelations made to many, that there is a twofold place of Purgatory." (Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Appendix II, a. 2)

The first place is "according to the common law", and Thomas puts it "below and in proximity to hell". The second is "according to dispensation":

"Sometimes, as we read, some are punished in various places, either that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored, seeing that their punishment being made known to the living may be mitigated through the prayers of the Church."

He explicitly rejects the idea that, as a rule, a soul is purified where it sinned. "This does not seem probable, since a man may be punished at the same time for sins committed in various places."

Two things follow:

• On weight: Thomas's own word is probable, and he rests it on "the revelations made to many". Most of the location-talk in Catholic tradition goes back to private revelation, not to Scripture or the councils.
• On the earthly appearances: his "dispensation" is the scholastic way of honouring the many stories of souls seen on earth without making them the rule.

Twentieth-century writers went further in caution. Fr Martin Jugie warns that accounts "speaking about its localization are in grave danger of being pure products of the imagination" (The Truth about Purgatory, as quoted in the source catalogue).

What the saints and mystics report

Private revelation The accounts fall into three groups.

1. Beneath the earth.

• St Teresa sees the souls she has helped rise "from the bosom of the earth" (EMO-01).
• In the account of St Louis Bertrand (Valencia, 1557), a layman sees the earth open and the soul of a dead religious rise like a star (EMO-07).
• The Unpublished Manuscript puts Purgatory "in the centre of the earth near Hell" (UMP-R3).
• The Portuguese visionary describes Purgatory "in the center of the earth", a prison without walls or guards surrounded by the souls' guardian angels. He himself takes the phrase as a symbol (VIS-06).
• Emmerich speaks of "a place near the earth" (EMM-17).

2. On earth, often where the soul sinned. This is the oldest and most consistent group.

• In St Gregory's Dialogues (Book IV), the deacon Paschasius serves out his purgation at the hot baths until St Germanus prays for him (MED-02). The dead master of the baths at Centumcellae asks a priest for "the Bread of the Eucharist" (MED-03).
• A dead friar appears in his own choir stall, "because here I sinned by tepidity", brightening with each De Profundis (MED-60). Sister Gertrude returns to "this place where I have sinned" (MED-62).
• St Severinus appears to a canon of Cologne. In one later telling he stands waist-deep in a branch of the Rhine (MED-09).
• The modern cases continue the pattern:
  • a banker seen in his own house at Antwerp (MOD-03);
  • a Benedictine at Latrobe appearing in choir dress, unheeded for seventy-seven years, until the Masses he asked for were said (MOD-02);
  • a monk of Messina stepping from behind the altar at midnight for 140 years, asking for one Mass (MOD-15);
  • Leonarde Collin, dead seventeen years, nursing her sick niece for a fortnight (EMO-84).
• Maria Simma calls Purgatory "a condition" and "most definitely also a place". She says the souls gather at the altar and where they died, and "come to us with Purgatory" (SIM-R3). The Manuscript's soul accompanies her nun by day and is "actually in Purgatory" at night (UMP-02).

3. Near the altar. Again and again, the accounts set the souls before the Blessed Sacrament.

• St Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi sees a dead sister spend her last hour of penance adoring at the altar (EMO-11).
• St Margaret Mary sees Mother de Montoux placed under the chalice on the altar of repose on Holy Thursday (EMO-21).
• St Bernard tells of St Malachy's sister. She is seen first outside the church, then on the threshold, then in the aisle, and at last by the altar, as her brother's interrupted Masses for her were resumed (MED-15).
• The Manuscript speaks of souls who make their Purgatory at the foot of the altar as a reward (UMP-R3).

On "ghosts" and troubled houses

The books in the corpus use the word ghost only to deny it. Where the world sees a haunting, Schouppe sees a forgotten soul returning to claim the suffrages it is owed. Visions of Purgatory says that phantasms are often, but not always, souls, and that apparitions at séances never are. And there is something no witness says:

• that a soul is trapped on earth;
• that it is lost;
• that it needs a medium.

In every account the soul is in God's hand, on God's errand, by God's permission, and it is released by the Church's ordinary suffrages: the Mass, prayer, alms.

The Church's guidance is plain. The Directory on Popular Piety lists among things to be avoided "the invocation of the dead in practices involving divination" and "the interpretation or attribution of imaginary effects to dreams relating to the dead, which often arises from fear" (§258). Anyone who believes a house or a family is troubled should do what the saints in these stories did: have Masses offered, pray, and speak to a priest. Never a séance, a spirit board or a medium.

How to weigh the accounts

• "Beneath the earth" is the language of the old cosmology. For centuries Hell was imagined below and Heaven above, and Purgatory was placed between them. The modern visionaries who still use the phrase are the first to call it a symbol (VIS-06).
• The stories of souls "where they sinned" are the strongest in the corpus as evidence. Several carry contemporary documents or lasting physical traces. Several of the corpus's "strong" cases are in this group: MOD-02, MOD-16 and EMO-84, and EMO-49 and EMO-99, which also left burn marks. But what they show is a visit permitted by God, not the normal place of purification. That is exactly St Thomas's "dispensation": "that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored."
• The altar is the one "place" on which the accounts converge. It is also the one place where the Church herself sends us to help the souls. Trent: "principally by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar."

What it means for us

• The holy souls are not far away. John Paul II: those in purification "are united both with the blessed who already enjoy the fullness of eternal life, and with us on this earth on our way towards the Father's house" (General Audience, 4 August 1999, §6; see V, The Communion of Saints).
• Meet them at Mass. If there is a place where the living and the holy souls are certainly together, it is the altar. Have Masses offered, and offer your Communion for them.
• Go to the graves. The Church attaches indulgences to praying for the dead in a cemetery (see IX). Not because the soul is confined there, but because the Church honours the body that awaits the resurrection, and gathers her prayer around it.
• Leave the geography to God. "Where" is the one question about Purgatory on which our ignorance costs nothing. Charity does not need a map.

Sources for this chapter

Scripture (Douay-Rheims): 1 Corinthians 3:11–15; Matthew 5:25–26.

Councils: Second Council of Lyons (1274), Profession of Faith of Michael Palaeologus; Council of Florence (1439), Laetentur Caeli; Council of Trent, Session XXV (1563), Decree concerning Purgatory, trans. J. Waterworth (1848), pp. 232–233 — https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct25.html

Magisterium and Holy See:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church §1031 (as quoted in the Directory, §251).
• John Paul II, General Audience, 4 August 1999 — https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_04081999.html
• Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), §§47–48 — https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
• Congregation for Divine Worship, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), §§251, 255, 258 — https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20020513_vers-direttorio_en.html
• Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina (1 January 1967), Norm 4 — https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_01011967_indulgentiarum-doctrina.html

Doctors and theologians:

• St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Appendix I, q. 2, aa. 1, 3, 6 (https://www.newadvent.org/summa/6002.htm) and Appendix II, a. 2 (https://www.newadvent.org/summa/7001.htm). The Supplement was completed after St Thomas's death from his commentary on the Sentences.
• E. Hanna, "Purgatory", Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 12 (1911), for Augustine, Gregory and Bessarion at Florence — https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm
• Fr M. Jugie AA, The Truth about Purgatory, and Fr F. X. Schouppe SJ, as quoted in the source catalogue.

The accounts: the 21 books of Encounters with the Holy Souls, cited by account code. Page references are as given in the source catalogue and have not been independently verified against the books.