Hildegarde

Every once in a while, something comes along that makes me think that if you could become a believer by sheer force of will, I’d do it.

And yes, this is the second post of the day.  And yes, I have read all about Malcolm Muggeridge.

But the new issue of Free Inquiry has come out, and with it a new installment of the depredations of Shadia Drury.  I give you the link, because this time the article is online:

http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=reinventing_christianity

And let you make of it what you will. 

In case you don’t remember, Drury is the columnist who has seemed to make a career out of making a hash out of the Middle Ages, with little forays into making a hash out of the philosophy of Edmund Burke. 

And with this article, she has a bit of my sympathy–if I were a Christian, I’d wince at the very idea of having Terry Eagleton as a champion.

But, with all that said, it appears that it doesn’t much matter if Ms. Drury can read the original language of the texts she’s supposed to be explicating, or even if she has access to excellent translations of them. 

I give you the following:

>>>To triumph, the Church had to obscure the cruel and callous aspects of the founder’s religion. For example, Jesus thought that there were only two alternatives—heaven or hell. On Judgment Day, each of us will be consigned to one or the other. This meant that someone guilty of a trivial misdemeanor may share the same fate as a brutal dictator. Without obliterating the abnormally vicious doctrine of hellfire, the Church invented purgatory<<<

That’s a direct quote.  I didn’t elide it.  I didn’t make it up. 

Shadia Drury thinks purgatory is the place people go when they have just minor sins, while hell is the place they go when they have major ones.

I’ll recommend a perusal of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and, yes, the works of Thomas Aquinas, which Ms. Drury claims to know a lot about and has even written a book about.  When Drury writes about Aquinas, she often sounds as if she hasn’t read him so much as she’s just made him up.

But all those sources could have told her what purgatory actually was, and saved her from making this error.

In the first place, nobody–and certainly not Christ–ever claimed that minor sins got you sent to Hell.  That can be determined from all four Gospels, and should be obvious in the story of the good thief.

In the second place, no matter how enormous your sin–even if you’re Hitler–it is forgiven if you ask for it to be forgiven.  And, going back to the Gospels again, Christ gives this ability to forgive any and all sins (no matter how major) to Peter, in the famous “you are Peter, and on this rock” speech. 

Which means that no matter how enormous your sin, you can go to Heaven. 

So what’s purgatory for?

Justice requires that if you do something bad, you pay for it some way.  And some people who commit sins pay for them on earth with earthly punishments.  Assuming those sins have been absolved–formally or by a perfect act of contrition–those people go directly to Heaven.  Yes, even if they’ve been Hitler.

But now let’s say Hitler has a change of heart on his deathbed, confesses and is absolved on his sin.

He is therefore destined to go to heaven, but he has received no punishment for the sins he has committed.

He therefore goes to purgatory to work off the debt he owes for the things he’s done, and only then does he go on to heaven.

A person who did not pay for his sins in life but had only small ones spends a small time in purgatory.  A person who did not pay for his sins in life but had very large ones spends a very large time in purgatory.

But purgatory is not a special place for people with just little sins instead of big ones.

Really, it wouldn’t take much more than half an hour to find out what purgatory really means.  You can even google it.

But Shadia Drury didn’t bother, for the same reason she never bothered to find out if her pronouncements on Aquinas and Burke had any positive relation to reality.

She’s a shoddy researcher and a careless one, but she cares more about making points with an audience that is apparently as ignorant of these things as she is than she does about her own integrity.