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The Western formulation of purgatory proved to be a sticking point in the Great Schism between East and West. [citation needed] [11] The Roman Catholic Church believes that the living faithful can help souls complete their purification from sins by praying for them, and by gaining indulgences for them [12] as an act of intercession. [13]
The Catholic Church has included in its teaching the idea of a purgatory rather as a condition than a place. On 4 August 1999, Pope John Paul II, speaking of purgatory, said: "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 ...
The Catholic Church had technically banned the practice of selling indulgences as long ago as 1567. As the Times points out, a monetary donation wouldn't go amiss toward earning an indulgence.
The Anima Sola is common throughout much of the Catholic world, though is perhaps strongest in Naples, where it is referred to as "the cult of the souls in Purgatory." In Latin America, one source reports, the Anima Sola is "a belief still deeply rooted in the mass of the campesinos. The devotion dates from the first colonizers who probably ...
Catholics believe the church exists simultaneously on earth (Church militant), in Purgatory (Church suffering), and in Heaven (Church triumphant); thus Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other saints are alive and part of the living church. [148] This unity of the church in heaven and on earth is called the "communion of saints". [149] [150]
The unbaptized dead the church commends to the Divine Mercy, since the Penitent Thief was saved without baptism. [21] Those Christians who die still imperfectly purified must, according to Catholic teaching, pass through a state of purification known as purgatory before entering heaven. [22]
Such prayer came to be restricted to souls in Purgatory, [2] which idea has "ancient roots" and is demonstrated in early Church writings. [3] The Roman Catholic Church offers indulgences for those in purgatory, which evolved out of the earlier practice of canonical remissions. [4] Others, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, affirmed prayer for the ...
The Church's teaching, expressed in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that "Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament", and that "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments".