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The Catholic Church holds that "all who die in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified" undergo a process of purification after death, which the church calls purgatory, "so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".
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]
Hieronymus Bosch's 1500 painting The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things.The four outer discs depict (clockwise from top left) Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. In Christian eschatology, the Four Last Things (Latin: quattuor novissima) [1] are Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, the four last stages of the soul in life and the afterlife.
Mainstream Catholic theology maintains that certain human actions can affect the purification process of the soul in purgatory. [2] According to this theology, good works are held to reduce the degree of purification required, which every person's soul must undergo after death in order to stand in God's holy presence.
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.
A traditional Requiem Mass. In Roman Catholicism, the practice of Gregorian Masses is an ancient tradition in which it is believed that a continuous series of thirty consecutive Masses said in thirty days for the soul of a deceased person will release them from the punishments of Purgatory.
The first Roman Catholic Holy Year is believed to have been instigated by Pope Boniface in 1300. The last ordinary Holy Year was held in 2000 under Pope John Paul II.
This Catholic doctrine is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1030-1032:. All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.