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Author: PaulA

Sep 20th 2011 at 10:17:45 PM

If I'm getting angry in this thread, it's because people keep trying to rebut arguments I'm not making. I don't mind being disagreed with, necessarily, but I'm not getting the feeling that I'm even being ''understood''.

It has indeed been repeatedly pointed out that the Catholics do not own the trope. And it's only making me grumpier, because ''I know that''. Of course there are afterlife-waiting-room-things that aren't Catholic. (There's one in Greek mythology, predating Christianity by centuries, which nobody's mentioned yet.)

My point of contention is using "Purgatory", a specific term from Catholic theology, as a general synonym for "afterlife-waiting-room-thing". That not all afterlife-waiting-room-things are Catholic is precisely one of the reasons why.

I myself am not an adherent -- and certainly not a "fan" -- of Catholicism, by the way. I'm a pedant; I get narky about careless misuse of words, and the blurring of useful distinctions.

The word "purgatory" ''means'' something. It's derived from the same root as the word "purge", and means a place of cleansing. In Catholic theology, with a capital P, it means the place in the afterlife where penitent souls are cleansed so they can get into heaven -- not, incidentally, at all "a dull grey space where nothing ever happens", as per the trope description -- but the important word in there is "cleansed", not "afterlife". Most dictionaries will have a definition for "purgatory" that includes cleansing and excludes the afterlife, but you won't find one where "purgatory" means a place in the afterlife without the cleansing.

Once we start saying that it doesn't matter what words mean, anything could banana lutefisk.