Clement Harrold, St. Paul Center
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
A common Protestant claim is that the Catholic doctrine of purgatory is nowhere to be found in the Bible. But is this true? Since the Bible assures us that nothing unclean shall enter heaven (see Revelation 21:27; cf. Hebrews 12:14), this implies that souls who die in a state of imperfect friendship with God must undergo some kind of final purification prior to their entry into eternal life. This fits with what Sacred Scripture teaches more generally about how God acts as a “refiner’s fire” (Malachi 3:2) who disciplines His children in order to purify them of their unhealthy attachments to sin (see Wisdom 3:1-9; Hebrews 12:5-6, 10-11). But even so, if Catholics are right about purgatory, then we would expect there to be some passages in the Bible that point to its existence. And there are.
