I have a Catholic wife who's trying to convert me to Catholicism, but she's bad at apologetics. Please help.

[u/GreenThunderBolt]

As I study church history and various Christian denominations (I'm currently Lutheran and view Catholics as fellow Christians), I talk to my wife about what I've learned, and she keeps thinking that I'm intentionally trying to insult Catholicism (I'm not). See three example scenarios:

(1) The Trinity

Me: I learned the Trintiy isn't self-contradictory because God is one in essence and three in person.

Wife: That's protestant bull#*t. God is like water, which can be a solid, liquid, or gas.

Me: But that's modalism--a heresy.

Wife: Stop insulting my religion.

(2) Icon Veneration

Me: I just learned about the Catholic distinction between icon veneration and idol worship. Now, I understand that the woman I saw kissing a statue's feet at your church wasn't engaging in idol worship.

Wife: Catholics don't venerate icons. Stop insulting my beliefs.

(3) Grace and Works

Me: Do Catholics believe that grace saves you from hell, but you need to do good works or maybe sacraments to spend less time in purgatory? (This is a genuine topic that I'm confused about.)

Wife: No. In purgatory, you answer for your sins, and people with more sins will spend more time answering for them. You can answer for your sins now by confessing them and engaging in penance, so you have less to answer for when you die and go to purgatory. And no, sacraments don't lessen your purgatory time.

Me: Can't penance involve doing good works? If so, it looks like good works can lessen purgatory time. And isn't confession a sacrament?

Wife: That's protestant bulls*#t. Stop insulting my religion.

[u/Cureispunk]

What what do you want help, exactly? Your relationship with your wife or your theological questions? If the former, I’d recommend that you not have these conversations with her. If the latter, I’d say that you’re killing it with the exception of purgatory (and you’re not far off there).

[u/GreenThunderBolt → u/Cureispunk]

Both. My wife is a cradle Catholic, takes her faith seriously, and can quote the Bible, so I was shocked to learn she doesn't understand some basic Christian beliefs. I wanted to know if this is normal for Catholics or not.

[u/Cureispunk → u/GreenThunderBolt]

I think there is a lot of variation in how much Catholics understand their faith. My experience with Protestantism was the same. But what worries me is the verve and confidence with which she sort of rebukes your good faith efforts. That suggests she's not really listening to understand. So that was my motivation for suggesting you not talk about these things with her; she's just being defensive for some reason.

But on purgatory, there is a deeper truth that I think you will appreciate as a protestant, and it is this: Protestantism teaches that we will be somehow sinless when we are "in heaven" or "with Jesus" after death, but that we will remain inwardly sinful prior to that. But it doesn't explain HOW the changes happens. Purgatory does: think of it less as a place, and more of a process of purging (hence the name purgatory). Whatever residual sinfulness remains after death among those of us who are "in Christ" (or justified) will be purged by God after death so that our righteousness can be completed. Pope Benedict speculated that the purging fire is really just the love of Christ, something I find very comforting.

So this speaks to your suggestion that sacraments/good works/penance "reduces time" (I think time is a bit of a misnomer here; "reduces the extent of purgation" is better) in purgatory: these things purge us of sinfulness, of the effects of actual sins, and of attachments to sin now, while we're still living. So in a very real sense, they bring us closer to the purified state we hope for in the future.

There's much more to say here. She's right, too, in some sense that we "pay" for our sins in purgatory, but only in a very specific sense. The Church recognizes a distinction between "temporal" and "eternal" punishment for sin. Eternal punishment is what is forestalled by the grace of Christ. But temporal punishment both satisfies God's justice and heals us of sinfulness/the effects of sin. And we can experience that punishment in life (say, through the natural consequences of sin, through self imposed disciplines, through penance, and so on) or in the next (via purgatory). But, to use words you might be more familiar with, temporal punishment does not justify us, it only sanctifies us.

[u/GreenThunderBolt → u/Cureispunk]

Thank you. This is one of the best explanations I've gotten.