"Resurrection" / Understood or Misinformed

One thing I’ve discovered about peoples’ knowledge of Church Doctrine is there are too many know-it-alls with the wrong understanding of Dogmas.  Most Catholics follow the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), even if it can be arduous for many lay people to grasp fully the teaching it applies.  The know-it-alls are those outside the Catholic arena who pass on their interpretation of what Dogmas mean according to their limited understanding of over 2,000 years of Catholic Tradition.  Usually these proponents of by-passing Catholic Tenets Teaching lead some Catholics away from our church and promote unsound teaching to what the Catholic Church is about.  

As in the past this information comes second-hand from a family member who is Catholic and was raised as such.  Try as I might it becomes a struggle to inform her that the information she has received is against Catholic Doctrine and she should seek and adhere to the truth we teach.

Her daughter, who also was raised in the Catholic Church and is very staunch in her faith, has joined an evangelical church that leaves a lot to be concerned about when it comes to belief in what we teach different than them.  One incident is when this young woman asked her pastor about Jesus in the host (their communion) he told her she could believe that it is Jesus if she wanted  to believe that.  The first of several heretical ideas that she has been fed.

A second particular episode regards “The Final Purification, or Purgatory.   Articles 1030-1032 of the CCC is very explicit, yet my relative who is easily led by misinformation is stead-fast in the belief that Purgatory is not real.  This came from her pastor of a Pittsburgh Diocese Parish.  When I told her he was wrong she said the priest told his parishioners that it wasn’t church teaching.  I informed her to see the Catechism.  It is a Dogma of the Church.

Today, my wife informed me that her sister said her daughter (the young lady in an evangelical church) explained that when we die we are immediately in a resurrected body and of course in heaven.  My wife’s sister agreed with her daughter.  

Article 1038 “The Last Judgement” states;  The resurrection of the dead, “of both the just and the unjust”, will precede the Last Judgement.  This will be the hour when all who are in the tombs will hear the Son of man’s voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgement.  Then Christ will come “in his glory, and all the angels with him….Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left….And they will go away into eternal punishment , but the righteous into eternal life.”  

So much for sinners (as we all are) going straight to heaven and joining their mortal bodies in a resurrected body awaiting what?  I agree there are some who may go straight to heaven, but as receiving a resurrected body at that point is not true.  

My concern is for those who are given the task of leading their flock to God the Father through Christ are presenting some wrong information that leads their followers down the wrong path.  Some may ask, “what is the difference if many don’t understand these church teachings?”  If people do not adhere to the Dogma of Purgatory, then they may just go along in life believing there is no purging needed and don’t care or even worse have no fear of offending God without any expiation for sins. 

Perhaps many are not interested in our resurrection and the aspects of that doctrine.  Our real home is not here and any one interested in their future should at least have a desire to know what awaits us on the other side of heaven  There is an old adage that says, “If its too good to be true, it likely is not.”

It’s ok to hear what those leaders may tell you, but if it’s too good to be true search for the real truth.

Ralph B. Hathaway, April 2020