Image of a non-fiery purgatory (Gustave Doré: illustration for Dante's Purgatorio, Canto 24). Rabbinical Judaism also believes in the possibility of after-death purification and may even use the word "purgatory" to describe the similar rabbinical concept of Gehenna, though Gehenna is also sometimes described as more similar to hell or Hades. The Reformed Churches teach that the departed are delivered from their sins through the process of glorification. The Church of England, mother church of the Anglican Communion, officially denounces what it calls "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory", but the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and elements of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist traditions hold that for some there is cleansing after death and pray for the dead. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have declared that the term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. The council made no mention of purgatory as a third place or as containing fire, which are absent also in the declarations by the Councils of Florence (1431-1449) and of Trent (1545-1563). At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, when the Catholic Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt the doctrine. Le Goff states that the concept involves the idea of a purgatorial fire, which he suggests "is expiatory and purifying not punitive like hell fire". Īccording to Jacques Le Goff, the conception of purgatory as a physical place came into existence in Western Europe toward the end of the twelfth century. English-speakers also use the word in a non-specific sense to mean any place or condition of suffering or torment, especially one that is temporary. The word "purgatory" has come to refer to a wide range of historical and modern conceptions of postmortem suffering short of everlasting damnation. Some concepts of Gehenna in Judaism resemble those of purgatory. Other strands of Western Christianity see purgatory as a place, perhaps filled with fire. Some forms of Western Christianity, particularly within Protestantism, deny its existence. Tradition, by reference to certain texts of scripture, sees the process as involving a cleansing fire. The process of purgatory is the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. Purgatory ( Latin: purgatorium, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. Image of a fiery purgatory by Ludovico Carracci
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