SECOND CHANCE? A new view of purgatory.

We will not meet Nazis in heaven, argues Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, because of the "objective terribleness" of their crimes. Oh yes? Then what about clerical pedophiles, inquisitors, and crusaders? Surely those members of the church who harmed others present more of a problem for a theology of salvation. Can there be divine forgiveness for religious abusers of power who have caused as much destruction as torturers, terrorists, and ethnic cleansers?

Not likely, say hardliners who hold firmly to the existence of a hell with many inhabitants a la Dante. Eternal torments await the wicked, as Scripture and tradition attest. Granted, present defenders of eternal punishment would not go so far as the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards. He described the saved rejoicing in heaven over the torture of the damned in hell. "When they shall see the smoke of their torment...and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries...how they will rejoice!"

This is tough love with a vengeance, but what a gruesome view of God's saints bereft of all empathy. We know that when sinners inflict evil on others they somehow suppress their innate humane feelings of empathy for their victims, but we expect more of good Christians. Yet it must be remembered that well into the last century parents took their children to hangings. Lynching also drew crowds, and in those countries where women still can be stoned and buried alive, crowds will gather to look on. Earlier European eras saw many a populace peacefully attending the burning of witches or heretics. Boiling in oil, blinding, beheading, branding, and drowning could join the pyre in the "service" of justice and truth.

The cruelties that men and women have visited upon helpless victims through the ages offer deeply disturbing evidence of humanity's hardness of heart. I include women in the indictment because women in the French Revolution were also bloodthirsty, and females participated in lynchings during the draft riots in Civil War-era New York. Native American women in some tribes also regularly took part in rituals of torture. Nuns, as well as priests, have abused children.

But, while human individuals callously sin, they can also perform good acts in other areas of their lives. Professional torturers serving a totalitarian regime can go home and live good family lives--you know, as did the Nazi concentration camp commanders who were kind to their wives and children, and loved to listen to Mozart. Certainly, too, some of the priests and bishops who have sexually exploited young people apparently possessed pastoral gifts that benefited others. So what happens on Judgment Day?

An optimist like me believes in universal salvation because Jesus Christ has won a complete victory and nothing can separate a human being from the breadth and depth of Christ's love. But optimists do have a problem that hard-line pessimists are all too eager to point out. How can a sinful cruel person who does not repent be ready and willing to live and rejoice in the company of God and the saints? As one stern priest I know puts it, "If in this life a sinner has never responded to Jesus Christ in his neighbor, he will not even recognize the Lord on encountering him after death." Could not a confirmed sinner continue to choose blindness, gloom, and darkness?

One answer to the optimists' dilemma is a resurgent and slightly revised doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory, in this view, does not consist of enduring quantified amounts of torture but provides more experience in which to develop. A Methodist recently published an article called "Purgatory for Everyone" (Jerry L. Walls, First Things, April 2002) in which he takes issue with Calvin's cry that "purgatory is a deadly fiction of Satan, which nullifies the cross of Christ." A purgatorial time of development is also posited by the Anglican philosopher of religion Marilyn McCord Adams. In her Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Cornell University Press, 1999), God defeats evil by providing after-death opportunities to change and flourish. Victims have a chance to experience what was denied them and evil perpetrators can repent and develop. Adams trusts that God can be imaginative enough to enable and persuade sinners to desire to beautify themselves. Evildoers can know themselves forgiven and that their victims have been compensated.

This vision of an equal-opportunity postmortem purgatory sounds right. The image of God presented is that of a powerful Mother enabling new life. This sounds like the God who will "not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick." Yes, this God is very "like an eagle watching its nest, hovering over its young, he spreads out his wings to hold him, he supports him on his pinions." Now, would this God call a halt to the flight instruction because time runs out at death? Surely the divine liveliness of God, who is the wellspring of novelty and beauty, can prevail.

All right--so some bigtime suffering may still be part of the process. I favor the view that in purgatory you will suffer all the suffering you have ever inflicted upon anyone else, including yourself. This would be an effective lesson in empathy. A vision of how you might have responded in your lifetime, yet didn't (a la It's a Wonderful Life), could be pretty painful too. The great mystic Dame Julian of Norwich thought God would usher his followers into heaven by saying, "Thank you for your suffering, the suffering of your youth." But the sufferings of old age (and the after life), could also count.

A final admission. Surely our present rethinking of purgatory has something to do with the new dialogue with Eastern religions. From those perspectives it is all but impossible for human beings to "get it" in one short life span. Purgatory gives us more of a chance--and more merciful hope.