Section — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology
Section V. On the Permanence of Virtues After This Life
After the origin, increase, diminution, and destruction in this life of all virtues, both natural and supernatural, have been considered, certain things remain to be explained concerning their permanence after this life. To hand these down in order, the discussion will first be about the permanence of virtues with respect to the Blessed, then with respect to the damned, and finally with respect to those being purified.
I. Permanence of Virtues in the Blessed. As a general rule it can be established: in the blessed there remain all virtues which are, and insofar as they are, compossible with their state of beatitude. For God, as most highly loving the blessed, does not take away their perfections; now that virtues are perfections is clearer than light. Hence we conclude:
Among the theological virtues, in the blessed there remains only charity, and this most perfect. For this follows of itself from the perfect intellectual apprehension of God. But the virtues of faith and hope do not remain. Faith, as such, concerns things not seen and cannot be combined with the light of glory; and hope, since it is occupied around things not possessed, cannot be combined with the apprehension of God itself. And since in the beatitude of the soul the future glorification of the body is already possessed as in an absolute cause, the act which the blessed place with respect to the glorification of the body is not an act of hope, but properly of desire; hence for this reason the virtue of hope is not required.
With regard to moral virtues it must be said that in the blessed they do not remain according to their material being. "For in the future life there will not have place concupiscences and delights of foods and venereal things; nor fears and daring concerning dangers of death; nor distributions and communications of things which come into the use of the present life." Nevertheless they remain according to their formal being, or according to their being in accord with the order of reason, "insofar as the reason of each one will be most right concerning those things which pertain to him according to that state, and the appetitive power will be moved wholly according to the order of reason in those things which pertain to that state; whence Augustine says that prudence will be there without any danger of error; fortitude without the trouble of enduring evils; temperance without the rebellion of passions; so that it belongs to prudence to prefer or equal no good to God, to fortitude to adhere to Him most firmly, to temperance to be delighted by no harmful defect. Concerning justice, however, it is more manifest what act it will have there, namely, to be subject to God; because even in this life it pertains to justice to be subject to a superior" (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 67, a. 1). It must be observed, however, that before the day of resurrection moral virtues, such as fortitude and temperance, which have the sensitive appetite as their immediate subject of inherence, do not remain actually in the separated soul, but only in the root, insofar as radically they are in the intellect and the supernatural will; but after the resurrection they will exist actually, just like the other virtues (St. Thomas, De virtutibus in communi, q. 1, a. 5, ad 3; I-II, q. 67, a. 1).
II. Permanence of Virtues in the Damned. No virtue remains in them, neither natural nor supernatural. For they are so confirmed in evil that at least there is in them a strictly so called moral impossibility of ever placing a naturally honorable act; and certainly there is a physical impossibility with respect to any supernatural act, since grace is entirely lacking. Now a state of soul so perverse, in which no honorable act at all, either supernatural or natural, is ever admitted, certainly does not admit a habit which inclines solely to honorableness.
III. Permanence of Virtues in Souls Being Purified. Since they are in the state of sanctifying grace, they have charity and all moral virtues in that manner in which the Blessed have them before the day of resurrection. Moreover faith and hope remain in them, since they still lack the light of glory, which removes faith in the Blessed, and they still tend toward the fruition of God, who in prison has remained for them a good absent and arduous.