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God tells us that nothing imperfect can enter Heaven (Revelation 21:27). Only the very good immediately enter Heaven and the very bad deserve Hell. Seeing as how, when we die, many of us will not fit in either of those two extreme categories we must fit somewhere else; somewhere in the middle; this place is called Purgatory.
You see, the majority of people are neither so free from sin as to merit immediate entrance into Heaven, nor so bad as to be punished forever in Hell.
Human Justice vs. Divine Justice
They are both somewhat similar because our human system is modeled after the divine system. Without the divine justice system we could have no human justice system.
Human justice recognizes big criminals and little criminals and punishes them accordingly. It has a jail to punish criminals for one, ten, or thirty days, and a penitentiary where it punishes many for several years to lifetimes. For instance, say in your community two men are arrested, one for speeding and one for murder; both are tried and sentenced to the penitentiary for life.
Do you consider that justice when one who speeds commits a lesser crime than the other yet gets the same punishment as the murderer?
If you deny Purgatory, then you are accusing God of dealing unjustly with His disobedient creatures.
Purgatory is the place where those who die with small sin(s) unatoned are punished for an amount of time appropriate to the amount and severity of the sin(s) as deemed by God. It is the final purification. Those who make it to Purgatory, die in the state of grace. They are the friends of God, who before death, were guilty of venial sin(s) or they failed to do sufficient penance for sins already forgiven.
The Catechism describes it as a process and not a place of purification after death for the saved. To claim that you are assured of your salvation and entrance into Heaven because you simply believe in Jesus is blasphemy. For if that were true you would have to be as perfect as God and Jesus which no human is capable of (which we, however, are to strive for). You would have to not have the ability to sin.
Are we all sinners? You bet we are.
Anyone with the least bit of reason must see the necessity of Purgatory especially if they had removed the mists of prejudice form their mental vision.
At heart every Christian believes in Purgatory, no matter how vehemently they might denounce it by word. This is evident from the prayers they say almost unconsciously for their deceased friends and relatives. There is scarcely a Christain funeral without prayer; it is a case of actions speaking louder than words.
If there is no such thing as Purgatory then what is the point of prayer for the dead? If a soul is in Heaven it does not need to be prayed for; if it is in Hell, prayer cannot help it.
A common charge against purgatory is that God does not have us atone, or make-up for, our sins against Him therefore there is no need for purgatory.
This is simply untrue that sins do not need to be atoned. We refer to a story in the Old Testament of when David repented of his sin, but God sent the prophet Nathan to give him a message stating, "The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the LORD by this deed, the child born to you must surely die." (Cf. 2 Samuel 12:13-14).
Forgiving the guilt of sin and purifying the spiritual scar which that disease of the soul leaves by expiation of sacrifice is better than leaving the soul in an imperfect state and forever indebted to God's justice. Any one of us could truly forgive a friend for committing an offense and still expect that the friend makes good the damages.
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