Markup View

Author: Worldmaker

Sep 20th 2011 at 1:23:10 AM

PAUL!  Calm yourself, take a step back, and realize you're being a little unreasonable about this issue.  As has ''repeatedly'' been pointed out, the Catholics do not own this trope.  While I (or no one else here, really) would have no problem with you insisting that the '''Religion and Mythology''' entry regarding the actual dogma of the Roman Catholic Church says about Purgatory and Limbo be written so as to get the actual Catholic view correct, ''you cannot apply the same standard to how this trope, or even the words Purgatory or Limbo, are used outside of references to the Catholic Church.

And your insistence that every use of the concept is a Catholic use of the concept is nothing more than FanMyopia applied to religion.

[[AC:Film]]
* In {{Two Thousand One}}, the "white hotel room" Dave Bowman finds himself in after entering the monolith is a secular version of this, as it is an intermediate step between his existence as a human being and his existence as the immortal [[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Starchild]].

[[AC:Literature]]
* In Piers Anthony's ''IncarnationsOfImmortality'' series, Limbo is where the various Incarnations live when they aren't on Earth actively running the universe.  Their "support staff", the people who serve and support the Incarnations in their jobs, are all dead people who weren't good enough to get into Heaven, nor evil enough to be sentenced to Hell.

[[AC:Live Action TV]]
* In the ''SaintElsewhere'' episode "After Life", Dr. Wayne Fiscus has a near death experience after being shot.  His visions include a trip to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory (which surprises him, since as he says, "I'm not Catholic"), during which he meets the souls of patients and friends who have already died.

Oh, we need a new redirect.