We are heading off topic with how times something is mentioned or what are the canonical books of the bible. We can find lots of side issues but the topic of purgatory is a very important one, probably best discussed in an open thread if you are really interested in what non catholics believe.
>>probably best discussed in an open thread if you are really interested in what non catholics believe.<<
What the non-Catholics don’t get is...Catholics don’t really care what you believe we believe. We don’t really even give much thought to what you believe, either. Many of us here are Americans and there is freedom of religion. Believe what you like. We don’t much care but will fight for your right to believe it.
We believe what we believe and are pretty comfortable in that.
Do you imagine Catholics are interested in your take on what we believe?
We believe what WE believe.
Many of us used to be non-Catholics. Most of us understand what a lot of Protestants believe. We believe that most of what Protestants believe is valid but incomplete.
On the contrary. For any discussion it is important to understand the source of one's argument. Catholic Bibles have 73 books, 46 in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. Protestant Bibles have 66 books with only 39 in the Old Testament. The books missing from Protestant Bibles are: Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and parts of Esther and Daniel. They are called the 'Deuterocanonicals' by Catholics and 'Apocrypha' by Protestants. Martin Luther, without any authority whatsoever, removed those seven books and placed them in an appendix during the reformation simply because they did not agree with his teaching. They remained in the appendix of Protestant Bibles until about 1826, and then they were removed altogether. The fact that praying for the dead is in the Catholic Canon and not in the Protestant version affirms Luther's determination to remove those books with which he disagreed.
surely if there was such a place God just come out and plainly state so in His Word, after all it would be absolutely necessary we know about it.
You have probably been told that the truth is to be found only in the Bible. However, the Bible never states that it is the sole and only authority of Christianity. The word "Bible" is not even mentioned in Scripture. Is the Bible the sole "teaching from God?" No. The Bible itself states that there are "oral" teachings and traditions that are to be carried on to the present-day (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 11:2; 2 Timothy 2:2; Romans 10:17; 1 Peter 1:24-25). These teachings are what the Catholic Church considers "Sacred Apostolic Tradition." This type of "Tradition" never changes because it was passed down by the Apostles themselves. It is not the same as the man-made traditions condemned in Scripture. The man-made traditions condemned in Scripture were those of the Jewish Pharisees. In fact, as Christians, we are suppose to disassociate ourselves from persons who do not follow Apostolic Tradition (2 Thessalonians 3:6). If oral tradition is not to be followed, why did St. Paul state Christ said something that is not recorded in the Gospels (Acts 20:35)? St. Paul must have "heard" this saying, not read it from any Gospel or "Scripture," thereby, proving that some things Christ said were not recorded in the Gospels (John 21:25) and were passed on orally among His disciples instead, but were just as valid as anything written since St. Paul himself used one of these oral passages in one of his own epistles.
When Martin Luther determined that anyone could interpret Scripture, he opened Pandora's box. Near the end of his life, Luther was afraid that "any milkmaid who could read" would found a new Christian denomination based on his or her "interpretation" of the Bible. To have the Bible as the only and sole authority of Christianity is to invite chaos into His Church. There are at least 5 Protestant denominations created every year based on a different interpretation of the Bible. Theoretically, anyone who owns a Bible can create their own denomination based on their own interpretation of Scripture. Taken to its logical conclusion, chaos is what happens when the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" is applied.
For a clearer understanding of how the Canon of Scripture was compiled, I would recommend the following article.