Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture

by Diana Walsh Pasulka, D.W. Pasulka

After purgatory was officially defined by the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century, its location became a topic of heated debate and philosophical Was purgatory located on the earth, or within it? Were its fires real or figurative?

Diana Walsh Pasulka offers a groundbreaking historical exploration of spatial and material concepts of purgatory, beginning with scholastic theologians William of Auvergne and Thomas Aquinas, who wrote about the location of purgatory and questioned whether its torments were physical or solely spiritual. In the same period, writers of devotional literature located purgatory within the earth, near hell, and even in Ireland. In the early modern era, a counter-movement of theologians downplayed purgatory's spatial dimensions, preferring to depict it in abstract terms--a view strengthened during the French Enlightenment, when references to purgatory as a terrestrial location or a place of real fire were ridiculed by anti-Catholic polemicists and discouraged by the Church.

The debate surrounding purgatory's materiality has never even today members of post-millennial ''purgatory apostolates'' maintain that purgatory is an actual, physical place. Heaven Can Wait provides crucial insight into the theological problem of purgatory's materiality (or lack thereof) over the past seven hundred years.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Mystery

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did I read a book about Purgatory? The reason has to do with research for my new book Super Natural. Heaven Can Wait is no devotional book. Far from it, it's an absolutely marvelous journey through the history of Catholicism, and documents the moment, toward the end of the 15th century, that the Age of Enchantment gave way to the Age of Reason. As a history buff, this off-the-beaten-path book was a revelation and a delight.

[Margaret Gipson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of information so interesting that it could have been written to read like a thriller, but instead it can be a bit plodding. While she mostly disappears into the academic text, I found myself quite liking the author by the time I finished and I appreciated her respectful and interested voice. A great mix of theological discussion, a bit of sociology, fascinatingly weird history…I recommend!

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating tour of the history of Purgatory as an idea. Pasulka masterfully decides what is essential to know in this brief, readable account of how Catholicism came to uphold Purgatory and Protestantism rejected it. Further comments may be found here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.

[Jon Adler · Rating 4 out of 5]

i got this book from the library last winter, and didn't get around to reading it. after listening to a recent Pasulka interview, i was determined to make it through. rarely do i encounter a scholar i enjoy as much as i do Pasulka early enough in their career to plausibly make it through all their material.

since junior year of high school, i have understood the conceptual appeal of Purgatory. the way my teacher explained it when we - a bunch of teenage Protestants - read Dante's Purgatorio, Purgatory is a simple, practical solution to a litany of questions about what, exactly, happens when a saved soul dies, but isn't necessarily ~ready~ for the perfect realm of Heaven. assuming entrance to Heaven requires perfection, and that the departed soul is already oriented towards God, Purgatory is a way for souls to "shore up the gaps" in their faith, so to speak; a kind of intermediate place, where they can work through whatever lingering moral issues they need to address before joining the ranks of the sanctified saints in Heaven.

as offensive as it is to the Protestant environment i was raised in, i found this explanation quite compelling. it's ironic that Calvinists don't like Purgatory, if you think about it. the whole Calvinist approach is bent on the innate, deplorable evil of all humanity... and yet, somehow the second Christians die, they are off the hook completely! all good! you'd expect that they'd relish the thought of souls having to work even harder for salvation, even after death... but i digress.

a decade later, after my other interests led me to Pasulka's NHI research, it was great to revisit the concept of Purgatory with such a broad, historical lens as this book provides. it was helpful to realize Dante's depiction, which, while obviously of huge import to the concept in Western History, was not the only way pious Catholics viewed the role of Purgatory, even at the time.

while tracing the history of Catholic views to Purgatory, Pasulka explores Catholic history - especially in Ireland, where Lough Derg was for many years said to be an entrance to Purgatory, as a physical reality. Pasulka explores the philosophical problems this caused for dualists at the time, as they tried to make sense of reports that the souls in Purgatory were burning from "real" fire. there is also much discussion of how Catholic thought developed in the United States, before and after the American Revolution; and, centuries later, the effects of Vatican II, both at the time and for subsequent generations of Catholics.

i appreciate Pasulka's tone throughout the book. she explains high-level doctrinal concepts and convoluted historical facts with language that i think anyone could understand. she comes across sympathetic while remaining objective. towards the end, she includes a handful of anecdotes that make her research seem that much more personal. only someone who genuinely wants to understand the topic could have written a book like this; at the same time, it is thoroughly professional, well-researched and academically rigorous.

would recommend to anyone interested in understanding the history of Purgatory as a doctrine, particularly its role in Irish Catholicism and for American Catholics post-Vatican II.