n though based broadly upon inherited Catholic tradition and dogma. The implication of such parables as the Good Shepherd and especially the Prodigal Son is that God stands ready, eager even, to accept back into His Kingdom truly repentant sinners. Even if a person led a thoroughly reprehensible life, true and sincere sorrow shortly before death, especially if motivated by love of God, would guarantee salvation. The more persistently virtuous might well grow indignant and question whether some distinction should not be made between those who worked a full day and those who entered the vineyard only at the eleventh hour, but then God's justice is beyond human understanding, and His capacity for mercy is infinite. According to Roman Catholic tradition, Purgatory is a place of suffering that helps ensure that the late repentant do not sneak into heaven too easily. Souls are assigned there, if, through repentance before death, they escaped eternal damnation, but are not fully "purified," fully ready to enter God's eternal presence. Protestant sects have for various reasons rejected Purgatory as one of the characteristic inventions of Popery. [Note: On the most basic level, Reformers considered Purgatory a human invention without adequate scriptural justification to command belief. Many of the passages traditionally used in support of this doctrine come from the so-called Old Testament Apocrypha, books included in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, thence translated into Latin in Jerome's Vulgate, and so accepted as canonical by the medieval church. Protestant reformers, however, rejected the canonicity of these texts, and so rejected as non-inspired much of the evidence supporting the doctrine of Purgatory.] The belief was implicated in many of the worst abuses of the late medieval church so offensive to the early Reformation. Beginning in 1300, the Commedia's fictional date, Pardoners would make Indulgences available, in effe...
