“The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” Catechism of the Catholic Church [365]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches unequivocally [362 - 368] that the human person is not a body animated by a separate soul or a soul inhabiting a separate body, but a bodysoul unity. Yet the empirical evidence is that the body dies. But the human person is not dead, because the body alone, though dead, is not a human person. On the other hand, the human person cannot be alive because the soul alone, though living, is not a human person.
Speculation (And we do this cautiously with the intent of avoiding conflict with any matters of faith or dogma). With our body in the grave and our spirit elsewhere we cannot exist as a human person, so could it be that though we die at different points in time, we all arrive at the general judgment simultaneously? What might be the subjective experience of the interval between the moment of our death and the resurrection? Perhaps the soul passes the interval in a state of non-consciousness, (sleep?) and the human person, bodysoul reunited as one at the resurrection, would experience that resurrection immediately upon death. This speculation seems to accommodate the notion of a personal and a general judgment being not two separate events, but two aspects of a single event.
“By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints . . . who died . . . already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment . . . have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.” Benedict XII Benedictus Deus (1336) from CCC [1023]
Some questions begged by this teaching
If the souls described above are not human persons, (and without a body they can’t be human persons) what, I wonder, are they?
Could it be that our understanding of what is meant by ‘the body’, at least in the context of the Resurrection, needs adjusting?
To think that we all arrive at the general judgment simultaneously makes sense. Since “heaven” is outside of time and space your conclusion is logical. However I think that the sould and bocy can’t be separated and thus at death we pass out of time and space. Perhaps this is what is meant by resurrection.