Penance and Purgatory

Brief history on "Penance and Purgatory"

1. Penance developed out of the initial experience of the churches with persecution. Persecutions were not constant, but came in waves. During times of peace, when the "lapsed," those who had denied the faith or in some way faltered under persecution, wanted back into the churches, the bishops had to devise ways to test their faithfulness and sincerity. Hence, they might assign various tasks or penalties for them to suffer.
2. In this way, the bishop or his clergy became those who either imposed or remitted the earthly penalties of the church. God's heavenly penalty was beyond the powers of the church to influence, but it came to be believed that the church was a key player in the imposition of penalties.
3. Two biblical concepts were thought to lend credence to the developing views: the seeming contrast between deadly sins (or "mortal" sins) and other sins (found only in I John 5:16,17), and the statements found in the Gospels ("whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven," Matt 16:19, and "If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained," John 20:23)
4. In addition the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible used the term "do penance" to translate "repent." This encouraged the belief that there was a sacrament of penance.
5. Penance was preceded by confession to the priest, who would then pronounce the penance that was to be performed. The priest would also absolve from sins.
6. The doctrine of purgatory is closely related to that of penance. Strictly speaking, the tasks involved in penance are the temporal penalties of sin, not the eternal penalties. (Penance and purgatory strictly applied to sinners who were in a state of grace. Unrepentant sinners would still be under the eternal punishment of hell.) If a Christian dies without fully satisfying the temporal penalties of sin, he goes (according to Catholic theology) to Purgatory to finish paying those temporal penalties. He is then welcomed into heaven, having fully paid the penalties. Purgatory is one of the medieval doctrines that was never accepted by the Eastern Church.
7. Even though the penalties are "temporal," the distinction between divine and human penalties is unclear to me. The priest gives absolution, i.e. forgiveness of confessed sins. As a Protestant I agree that there are varieties of forgiveness that are post-conversion, but the Roman Catholic doctrine seems to play too much into the hands of salvation by works, which is a doctrine accursed in Paul's letter to the Galatians. In the Middle Ages this doctrine reached absurd degrees, in which souls' stay in purgatory was calculated, and indulgences (absolution without penance) were bought and sold in Germany in Luther's time. This practice was a major cause of Luther's revolt against the Pope.