... _But whoso are
benefited ... are such as have been guilty of curable transgressions;
their benefit here and hereafter [1] accrues to them through pains and
torments; for it is impossible to get rid of injustice by other manner
of means._" This reads like a page torn from one of the early
Fathers of the Church. [2] More than five centuries before the
Christian era it was penned by Plato. [3] Clearly does he draw the line
between eternal punishment for unrepented crimes and temporal
punishment for curable _Idmpa_ trangressions. Virgil in no
uncertain tone echoes the same doctrine, making no exception to the
rule that some corporeal stains and traces of ill follow all beyond the
grave; _and therefore do they suffer punishment and pay the penalty
of old wrongs._ [4] What antiquity has handed down, and reason has
found to be just and proper, the Church has defined and decreed. She
has gone further. She has supplemented and completed the pagan
conception of expiation by that of intercession; and she has added
thereto, for the comfort and consolation of the living and the dead,
that the souls so suffering "may be helped by the suffrages of the
faithful, but principally by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar."
[5] And in her prayers for deceased friends, relatives and benefactors,
she is mindful of Mary's sweet influence with her Son, and asks their
deliverance through her intercession.
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