Where's the credibility?

[Theoketos]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Dec 10 2004, 06:11 PM'] Yes but Temporal punishment in Purgatory still eventually ends in heaven. [/quote]
Yes, but we can relieve souls of that pain.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Dec 10 2004, 04:59 PM'] Maybe the priest heard his last confession before he died. [/quote]
[font="Courier"]My brother-in-law lived a pretty shabby life and then made a huge effort to turn it around and did go to confession a few days before he died (in his early 20’s)
The Catholic priest that presided over the funeral was the one who heard his last confession and expressed his personal belief that we other faithful in heaven will see him, by what happened about 48 hours before his death…

There was no “promise” that my wife’s brother is in Heaven implied – but a strong hope. And the Priest did not go into detail about the last Confession, btw - he only briefly mentioned it …
This is my only personal experience with a similar situation.

I know there is a general pressure on any pastor to help the grieving to “be positive” and “we will see this person again” and “get over it” and be happy and all that...
But a Catholic Priest does need to be realistic to the Church teachings – and fortunately of the several funerals I’ve been to, my wife’s brother had the closest thing to the “guarantee” that you heard - simply a very strong hope.
All my own family’s funerals had expressions of hope that we will see each other in Heaven that is in accordance with catholic truth.


i hope i make sense here...[/font]