From someone on Usenet... interesting...

I have a personal hunch/hypothesis/interpretation of the RC theory of Purgatory. My personal hunch is that THIS tough-slog- physical-material-domain where we currently exist IS in fact "Purgatory" -- or at least a segment or level of it. My hunch further presumes -- along with many theosophists, spiritualists and certain Buddhist schools -- that our human consciousness both pre-exists and post-exists our physical embodiedness. Folks in the Apostolic denominations shouldn't have any problem at all with the "post-exists" side of the theory -- since we all believe there's a "soul" which is "coupled" to the body, and which indeed post-exists our physical life. But my additional hunch is that if you weren't wicked enough (at the end of your conscious life) to be obliterated in the cauldron of nuclear fire ("hell"?), or saintly enough to rise immediately to the Divine Presence ("heaven"?), you might just end up in some "in-between place" -- to continue "working out the kinks" in your spiritual understanding and insight. It's a rather attractive and sensible notion -- and our "earth plane" perfectly fits the bill for such a "place". That's why I suspect the earth plane -- at least in its present fallen condition -- is literally one of the "middle levels" of what the Catholics call "Purgatory". Of course you don't NEED to believe it, in order to be a professing Apostolic Christian -- but you don't need to disbelieve it either. It's just a working hypothesis -- something on which the Vatican has never made an official declaration -- but it sure helps to explain a lot of the baffling stuff that goes on down here!