Karlo Broussard discusses the ideas that theologians throughout history have proposed about whether Purgatory is a physical place.
Transcript:
Caller: Good evening, Mr. Karlo. My question is: where is Purgatory?
Karlo: Yes, very good question.
So the question is—you know, this comes up, this has come up throughout the tradition of the Church; primarily, it reached its height in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in the medieval times, of the place of purgatory, Francisco. And really the Church has never given us any sort of defined teaching on the place of Purgatory.
You have, in some of the writings of theologians, referring to purgatory having a spatial locality, you know, under the earth, and sort of “the bowels of the earth,” right, that type of thing, and in the earth. But that’s never been a part of official Church teaching; that’s pure speculation.
And then other theologians will argue that, well, purgatory doesn’t have a place, it’s just a state of existence—a condition of the soul, you might say, where the soul is existing in the afterlife but is not restricted to any spatial location. You know, we might refer to purgatory as a place, but just using it sort of in a metaphorical way, as somebody might refer to hell as currently existing right now with souls in hell, and pure spiritual realities—demons—in hell, and referring to it as a place. But because there’s no matter in hell right now, and because, you know, the souls in purgatory don’t have any bodies, it seems to me that it’s unreasonable to speak of purgatory and hell as a physical location, because there’s no matter to take up space.
So that’s with regard to purgatory specifically, and with regard to the condition of hell right now; but after the final judgement, whenever all those who have died will be raised, will receive their bodies back, both the righteous and the unrighteous, then the question of place has much more significance concerning the new heaven and the new earth for the righteous, and the eternal fires of hell for the unrighteous, because they will have bodies, and so spatial location.