I'm a convert, I was baptized in 1988,
and when I was in RCIA they were very
sparse on covering limbo. It was almost
like one of those
topics that weren't comfortable, they
thought it might put people off. So I
kind of formed this idea that maybe
purgatory was something that
happened,
you know, after we died, or maybe even
partially happened here on Earth. And I
didn't really think about it, but
recently I read Pope Benedict XVI's "Saved in
Faith," and there was a line in there
about how
some theologians feel that the pain of
purgatory
isn't so much punitive, but it's
just caused by
the encounter with Christ where you
encounter his holiness that essentially
burns away
whatever impurities you have left.
So that kind of got me thinking about: is
purgatory a place or a
process?
First of all, Rich, 
initially when you started talking, you
started talking about limbo and then you
switched to purgatory. So
just for the sake of clarity for our
listeners out there,
I'm not sure if you are equating
the two,
but in Catholic theology we distinguish
the two. So you have, like, the Limbo of
the Fathers;
that refers to all of the Old Testament
saints where they were
existing in the afterlife prior to the
Ascension of Christ.
These are those souls to whom
Christ descended into the abode of the
dead to
preach to them the good news,
according to 1 Peter 3:19,
and they enter with with Jesus into the
beatific vision at his ascension.
You also have, in the theological
tradition, the limbo of the children;
this is something I mentioned earlier
which the Church
affirmed on an ordinary level, never
infallibly, but ordinarily taught—
or at least rejected any denial
of the limbo of the children, the
idea that
unbaptized infants would dwell in the
afterlife and sort of a natural bliss.
Not hell, of course, but also not the
beatific vision. Now
we have to be very careful not to
confuse that
with what we're talking about here and
what you're asking about: namely,
purgatory,
which the Church defines as "the final
purification of the elect
before entering into the beatific vision,"
at least for those
who die
and are not perfectly holy yet. They do
not have the holiness necessary for
heaven.
So with those clarifications
made, Rich, to get to your question:
is it a place, is it a process? With
regard to a place— And also he wanted to
know, can we accomplish some of it here?
Here, yes.
Okay, so if the question is whether it's
a place, the
Church has never given a definitive
statement on it, but you do have Pope
Benedict XVI, for example,
affirming that it's more of an interior
experience of the soul, a state of being
in the afterlife, right? A condition of
the soul,
not a spatial location where the soul is
bound by some corporeal reality.
With regard to whether it is a process,
this is,
once again, within the speculative realm
of theology. The Church has never
given any sort of teaching on
whether purgatory is instantaneous or
it's a process. It could be both.
For some, it might be instantaneous for
some souls.
But for other souls it may be drawn
out. Now, it's not going to be the
duration or experience of time like we
experience it in this
life. Some theologians speculate and call
it aeviternity, where 
you have a succession
of instantaneous changes. So it's not
change in
our sense in physical reality, where you
have this progressive
actualization of a potential, where
it's like something is progressing from
A to B in this sort 
of progressive
way; but rather, it's
an instantaneous change.
But you could very well have
a succession of instantaneous changes,
right?
And so theologians have called this
aeviternity. It's not the eternity of
God, and it's not our experience of
change in this life within the corporeal
world,
but it is some change nevertheless.
Now with regard to whether we can
experience purgatory to some degree in
this life,
the answer is yes, when understood in
this sense, Rich:
remember, purgatory deals with
those remnants of sin that
impede us from entering into the
beatific vision,
okay? So the question is: can we deal with
those remnants of sin
in this life? And the answer is yes. So
when you have the guilt of venial sin,
you pray an act of contrition, you ask
for God to forgive you,
the guilt of that venial sin will be
removed, right?
Whether with the sacrament of confession,
or even without the sacrament of
confession.
You also have unhealthy attachments to
created goods; well, we can reorder that
through works of charity, works of love,
fasting,
abstinence, etc. And then finally, by
undergoing any suffering in our life
out of love and offering it up to God, we
can discharge
any remaining debt of temporal
punishment due for sin. If some of that's
remaining after this life, we go to
purgatory.
If it's completely taken care of in this
life, we go immediately to heaven.
