Heaven and Hell
Popular, secular opinion seems to conclude either: 1) there is no after-life or 2) everyone and their pets go to heaven. There isn’t much talk about Hell, except to dismiss the possibility of anyone going there.
But one historical figure spoke very forcefully about the reality of Hell and the very real possibility of human beings spending eternity there. That person is none other than Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who became man. God did not dismiss Hell as either non-existent or not a threat. We should follow His example and learn what He taught.
Who will go to Heaven?
So after the Judgment, one will go to Heaven or Hell. Who goes to Heaven? How can I get there? The simple answer is that the souls of the just who are free of guilt and punishment will go to Heaven. But, we need to break that down a bit.
First, let’s be clear on one point: no one can earn their way into Heaven by their good works… no one. Salvation is a free gift from God. In Catholic terminology, the person who enters Heaven is said to have died in a state of sanctifying grace. Protestants sometimes refer to this as the grace of justification. And they are correct. The souls of the just are those who have been justified by grace through faith.
So the question is, who has been justified? This is where Catholic and non-Catholic teaching parts ways. We receive the grace of justification, that is, Sanctifying Grace, at our baptism when we are born anew from above
Two Types of Punishment Due to Sin
There are two types of punishment due to sin: * Eternal punishment * Temporal punishment
Eternal punishment, what we might call guilt, is forgiven and removed in the Sacrament of Confession. You carry it in when you enter the Confessional, but you leave without it when you receive Absolution. If you had lost Sanctifying Grace, you have received it again and all eternal guilt and punishment is gone.
But, temporal punishment remains to be paid in this life or in the life to come. Also, any attachments to sin may remain after Confession. It might help to understand temporal punishment by way of an analogy. If one steals something from a friend and goes to that friend seeking forgiveness, that friend might indeed forgive him. Those two people are once again friends. That is what God does with us in Confession. He restores Communion between us. But, just as your human friend might expect you to return to him what was stolen, there may likewise be some act that you must do in cooperation with God’s grace after Confession. Jesus is clear, nothing imperfect will enter into Heaven, so, if after the Judgment, any imperfections, punishments and disordered attachments remain in you that you have not overcome in this life, you will be purified of them in the life to come. This purification is what Catholics call Purgatory.

Purgatory
According to Catholic Church doctrine, is an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven". Only those who die in the state of grace but have not in life reached a sufficient level of holiness can be in Purgatory, and therefore no one in Purgatory will remain forever in that state or go to hell. This theological notion has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature, but the poetic conception of Purgatory as a geographically existing place is largely the creation of medieval Christian piety and imagination.
The notion of Purgatory is associated particularly with the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church (in the Eastern sui juris churches or rites it is a doctrine, though it is not often called "Purgatory", but the "final purification" or the "final theosis"); Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief, along with many Lutherans of High Church Lutheranism. Eastern Orthodox Churches believe in the possibility of a change of situation for the souls of the dead through the prayers of the living and the offering of the Divine Liturgy, and many Orthodox, especially among ascetics, hope and pray for a general apocatastasis Judaism also believes in the possibility of after-death purification and may even use the word "purgatory" to present its understanding of the meaning of Gehenna. However, the concept of soul "purification" may be explicitly denied in these other faith traditions.