Stefano Maria Legnani’s painting of Archangel Michael and the souls of purgatory at San Francesco da Paola church in Turin.Stefano Maria Legnani’s painting of Archangel Michael and the souls of purgatory at San Francesco da Paola church in Turin.

I was offended by the hostile attitude of a foreign Evangelical pastor perorating on the non-existence of purgatory on one of the local TV channels. His female Maltese colleague could hardly pronounce correctly the word purgatory, let alone expatiate on the councils of Florence and Trent.

Both of them quoted extensively, but rather cynically, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church in an effort to disprove the notion that purgatory is scriptural. A mere very indirect reference in the deuterocanonical Second Maccabees is all there is in the Bible.

The pastor asserted that purgatory owed its inspiration to the Council of Florence 1438-9, subsequently reconvened in Rome in 1443. Dante must have tuned in his grave at such a preposterously ahistorical assertion.

What annoyed me was the hysterical tone used by the pastor in hectoring his viewers. Let’s disagree, by all means, but, in the name of Christian fellowship, love and respect, let’s concentrate on what joins us together as believers rather than pick on some controversial issue to lambast the Catholic Church.

I am saying this since I owe a lot to some foreign Evangelical friends of mine. We have a lot to learn from them.

I do not intend going into this highly controversial issue but would limit myself to just mentioning the problem of unexpiated or unrequited guilt. Perhaps it is pertinent to recall that Trent cautioned “against curiosity, superstition and the quest for profit” (Hans Kung, Credo, p.176).

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