A Latin Traditionalist View of Purgatory and Indulgences

The Modern Scandal of Indulgences: It’s Not What You Think

Hebrews 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Some reject the idea of hell as a fiery punishment, maintaining that hell is primary a spiritual state, the sinner's own rejection of God (and thus the beatitude that consists of communion with Him). If God is all-loving and good, then why would He need to inflict an additional punishment to this misery that the unrepentant sinner will experience? But if we accept that there is a sensible component to the Divine glory and love that we can experience, and that those who are in beatitude will experience this as a pleasant sensation (the warmth of the sun, to which the warmth of feeling loved by another is compared), then conversely, those who are in hell because they have turned away from God, might they not they also experience the warmth of this Divine Love as something painful, as they have rejected it? Hellfire then would not be a separate punishment, but the sensible consequence of their rejection of God, an unquenchable fire because the sinner has rejected it and the transformation that it would bring to him.

As for purgatory, even if purgatory will end on the Last Day with the resurrection of all who have died, followed by Judgment, perhaps the soul too will somehow experience the Divine Love as a "fire" as a part the purgation process, the removal of any lingering imperfections, which are burned off, while he is heated and transformed in the Divine Love.

Purgatory

If the "fire" or "heat" of purgatory is God's love purifying those who live in Christ from all remaining perfection, then why might hell not be that same love experienced as a form of torture by those who have rejected God?

(The glory of God, the light of those who have been perfectly transformed or deified is in contrast pleasant.)

A Step in the Right Direction?

Or getting away from the tradition of a particular Church without sufficient expalanation? Regardless of whether Sandro Magister likes the changes in emphasis or not, is his reporting accurate? If the Latins do move away from indulgences what change in teaching accompanies it? If none, then will the faithful be confused? A Latin traditionalist could argue that indulgences are the effect of God's mercy, in so far as He desires that we have a role in the economy of salvation.

Indulgences and Purgatory? Francis Has Mothballed Them

They were constituent elements of all the jubilees. But not of this one. The pope isn’t talking about them anymore, as if they would overshadow the absolute primacy of mercy