The problem with Fr. Rooney here isn’t that the intuition is bad; it is that the terminology is completely defective, which causes him to unknowingly set himself in complete opposition to texts like this (which Gemini did not send him for some reason): “punishment is required after faults are forgiven for two reasons, namely, to resolve a debt and to offer a remedy... in the penitential forum punishment must be reckoned for both reasons... But the punishment of purgatory is only for paying the debt, for at that point there is no further room for sinning.” (In IV Sent. d. 20, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1) For St. Thomas, there are not two forms of punishment (“vindictive” and “medicinal”); there are four forms of punishment (poena simpliciter/proper punishment, satisfactory, purgatorial, and medicinal). He lays out three of them in ST I-II, q. 87, a. 8: satisfactory punishment, which is voluntarily assumed and can be borne for another; punishment “inasmuch as it has the nature of punishment,” which is only ever for one’s own sin; and punishment “which has the nature of medicine.” The fourth is named in SCG: the punishment God inflicts on one who does not exact it of himself “will not be called satisfactory, since it was not from the choice of the sufferer, but purgatorial” (SCG III, c. 158). It is closely related to satisfactory punishment vis-a-vis the end and voluntarity, but is slightly different as to the origin. This is why they are sometimes identified. This is exactly what the Counter-Reformation theologians said to the Protestants, who conceded castigatio but denied poena. This is exactly how Catholic theologians refuted the moral arguments against satisfaction given by the Socinian heretics. This is how theologians responded to the various shades of modernist theologians and liberals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries who had a similar problem due to their complete acceptance of contemporary juridical notions that accepted punishment as merely medicinal. After guilt is forgiven, it is fine to say that there is no vindictive punishment properly speaking (although certain theologians keep the terminology insofar as vindication touches the order of justice rather than the person... which is why it is often said that satisfaction is offered to the vindictive justice of God). St. Thomas himself says exactly this, and then separates the two aspects Fr. Rooney confuses: “Satisfaction is both punitive, inasmuch as it is an act of vindicative justice, and medicinal, inasmuch as it is a kind of sacramental. An indulgence therefore takes the place of satisfaction inasmuch as it is punitive, because the punishment another bore is imputed to this man as if he had borne it, and so the debt of punishment is removed; but it does not take the place of satisfaction inasmuch as it is medicinal, because the pronenesses to sin remain... But for the dying such preservation is not necessary, but only liberation from the debt of punishment.” (Quodl. II, q. 8, a. 2, ad 3) One of the strongest points for the traditional account (as one can see from the countless indulgence bulls from the Roman Pontiffs) is how bound up it is with Catholic praxis. Indulgences really do not make any sense under a purely 'medicinal' view of the matter...this gets especially obvious when you spend a few minutes thinking about the fact that the baptized have no debt of temporal punishment (which I will explain below). Theologians clarify that the liability to temporal punishment is no longer a liability to punishment simply speaking, but to satisfactory punishment (ST I-II, q. 87, a. 6): the debt remains, but it is paid voluntarily, insofar as we have violated the order of justice and inflicted injury upon the rights of God, and understand the moral obligation to restore this (note: closely related to this is the purgatorial punishment, which differs slightly from the satisfactory). All you need to do to understand what he means by these matters is simply to read his articles on satisfactory punishment. It is quite easy, actually! The faithful, by charity, are zealous to restore the right honor of God and voluntarily receive penal afflictions so as to restore this honor (which is exactly the context of the passages where St. Thomas and others require charity for satisfaction when they are wrested from their context). By the way, this is, in my opinion, why many are so uncomfortable with the notion. Satisfaction cannot be explained by some sort of necessity or (primarily) as some good of man; it has to be explained in terms of the rights and honor of God. St. Thomas requires that in satisfaction “something be subtracted from the sinner which redounds to the honor of God” (In IV Sent. d. 15, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1), and adopts Anselm’s definition, “to render to God the honor owed” (Suppl. q. 12, a. 3). To justify a doctrine as primarily for the honor of God and to vindicate his rights makes many uncomfortable! It also supposes an objective order of justice (which Fr. Rooney derides as “abstract”), which is a mockery to contemporary jurists and does not correspond too well to modern notions: “it is not that the deficiency is always healed by the punishment in the one in whom it is, as is clear in the damned and in a thief who is hanged, but rather that the punishment compensates for the deficiency in the state of the universe or the republic due to the order of justice that appears in the punishment.” (In II Sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 2) We should simply adopt St. Paul VI's description that these punishments are imposed “for the purification of souls, for the defense of the sanctity of the moral order, and for the restoration of the glory of God to its full majesty” (Indulgentiarum doctrina, n. 2). To reduce the satisfactory punishment to the “medicinal” is completely false. As briefly mentioned above, it makes mincemeat of quite a few fundamental doctrines and practices in Catholicism. To consider just one example among many... the newly baptized adult who has many habitual attachments to sin has no debt of temporal punishment and, upon death, immediately goes to heaven (“no satisfactory punishment is imposed on the baptized, because they are wholly freed by the satisfaction of Christ,” ST III, q. 49, a. 3, ad 2; cf. Florence, DS 1316); on the other hand, the man who has been Catholic for decades, living in a spirit of penance and far more holy than the newly baptized, suffers in purgatory. That is quite a surprise, isn't it! This is also why Fr. Rooney’s recent words on the Passion are so defective. It is true that Christ did not suffer vindictive punishments inflicted upon him by God; yet he did suffer satisfactory punishments insofar as he voluntarily suffered penal afflictions, offered to the vindictive justice of God (note: not inflicted by the vindictive justice of God, but offered to the vindictive justice of God...an important consideration). “Christ bore a satisfactory punishment, not for his own sins but for ours” (ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7, ad 3). This was suffered to restore the rights of God, which we creatures have so grievously injured.