When describing the mysterious concept called purgatory, the Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/a> starts with the basics.<\/p>\n \u201cAll who die in God\u2019s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,\u201d the text states. \u201cThe Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification. \u2026 The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.\u201d<\/p>\n Alas, any distressed \u201cLost\u201d viewers who rushed to the Vatican website after the show\u2019s finale found no insights about the smoke monster, the Dharma<\/a> Initiative, that mysterious \u201c4 8 15 16 23 42\u201d sequence or why the fate of the world depended on a pool of light on one very strange island.<\/p>\n At least one member of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy has owned up to being tuned into the \u201cLost\u201d phenomenon from the beginning. At the end, all Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark could do was understate the obvious.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve enjoyed the series, considering it to be akin to science fiction,\u201d he noted, reacting to the raging debates about the religious symbols and language that dominated the final moments. \u201cWhile the Catholic Church does believe in Purgatory, I\u2019m not sure that the series presents an accurate understanding of our beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the finale, the scribes who had been running \u201cLost\u201d \u2014 Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse \u2014 said their creation would end by focusing on how the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors answered ultimate questions about the wounds, conflicts and sins in their pasts. The key word, they agreed, was \u201credemption.\u201d All of that pain and suffering had a purpose.<\/p>\n The final episode blended together lots of vague theology, philosophy, pop psychology, religious symbols and references to popular books and movies. Think of it as \u201cOur Town\u201d meets \u201cThe Sixth Sense,\u201d with dashes of \u201cGhost,\u201d \u201cField of Dreams,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d and, at the last minute, a comforting nod to \u201cAll Dogs Go to Heaven.\u201d <\/p>\n After years of flashing back and forth in time, the final year\u2019s action centered on events in two parallel time sequences \u2014 the climactic battle to determine the island\u2019s fate and a purgatorial \u201csideways\u201d timeline in which the characters gained insights into their troubled lives, before and after the fateful crash.<\/p>\n At the end, the castaways gathered in a church sanctuary for one last group hug before entering eternity \u2014 an ocean of bright light outside the exit doors. The big chat explaining these final events \u2014 reuniting the show\u2019s Christ figure, Jack Shephard, with his father, Christian Shephard \u2014 was lit by a stained-glass window containing symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.<\/p>\n But was the show, as some had theorized all along, actually built on the concept of purgatory? Hadn\u2019t Lindelof told the New York Times<\/em> in 2006<\/a>: \u201cPeople who believe that they\u2019re in purgatory or that they\u2019re subjects of an experiment are going to start reassessing those theories. \u2026\u201d The creator of \u201cLost,\u201d J.J. Abrams, had denied the purgatory theory, too.<\/p>\n The finale\u2019s spirituality shocked many critics, including one or two who were so upset that they retroactively (flash backward) dismissed \u201cLost\u201d as a whole. But veteran Washington Post<\/em> writer Hank Stuever, drawing on his Catholic school past, said it\u2019s time to admit the obvious<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the final five minutes, \u201cI realized that the purgatory camp had been right all along, that Occam\u2019s razor (the simplest solution is usually the correct one) had worked,\u201d he argued. \u201cOceanic 815 crashed. Some of its souls awoke in a realm that is neither heaven nor hell. It\u2019s limbo. \u2026 Jack Shephard and his fellow travelers were brought there to resolve a number of problems between heaven and hell.\u201d<\/p>\n But some Catholic viewers struggled to reconcile their church\u2019s teachings with the limitations of a product created in Hollywood, a place that has its own definitions of terms such as \u201csin,\u201d \u201crepentance,\u201d \u201credemption\u201d and \u201csavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the creators of \u201cLost\u201d have offered a glimpse of purgatory \u2014 lite.<\/p>\n