> When you consider the timespan of our lives within the framework of history, it is important to remember and pray for those who no longer have anyone to pray for them.
Amen!
And I have a silly studying-to-be-Catholic question for anyone who is of a mind to answer:
Aside from the obvious doctrinal issues, how different is the concept that you describe — praying for those who no longer have anyone to pray for them — different from the Mormon concept of being baptized for those who are dead already? It would seem that the intention is identical.
Your thoughts?
*DieHard*
I would say the two concepts are very different.
Catholics pray for those already being purged of the dross of sin and attachment to sin in Purgatory. In other words, they’re already saved, we’re just helping them get cleaned up faster by asking God to dip His hand into the treasury of merits gained by His Son and apply them to these soon-to-be-saints.
I think the Mormon practice is much different. A man, very much alive, undergoes baptism vicariously in the place of another long since dead person. It may be a request for mercy and help to the designated soul in a similar fashion to praying for the dead, but not on the part of the living Catholic is really done vicariously. We are wholly dependent upon Christ’s mercy and grace on both sides of the veil, while Mormons almost assume their vicarious baptism carried weight in itself.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Mormonism_Baptism_for_the_Dead.asp
It's quite different. There is no "baptism for the dead". Rather, we offer up prayers for those in purgatory. God is Mercy itself. May our prayers assist those in purgatory attain heaven.
Welcome home! Will you be received into the Church this Easter?
>> Aside from the obvious doctrinal issues, how different is the concept that you describe — praying for those who no longer have anyone to pray for them — different from the Mormon concept of being baptized for those who are dead already? It would seem that the intention is identical. <<
Actually, the intent is quite the opposite.
Mormons baptize non-Mormons after death: those who specifically have declined to be baptized while alive are “baptized” once they have died and can no longer refuse baptism.
Prayers for those in purgatory are for those who have already been baptized as Christians.
“What?” you may ask, “what about the non-Christians in purgatory?”
I’m afraid I have a very politically incorrect answer for that one. Purgatory is for Christians who have died AFTER receiving remission of the eternal effects of original sin through baptism, but who have not experienced complete remission of the temporal effects of sin.
Purgatory is a temporal effect of sin. Protestants say it can’t exist because Jesus forgives sins. Suppose you knock up a girl and she has an abortion, then you become a Christian. Great, your sins are forgiven, so you don’t go to Hell. But there’s still a dead baby, a spiritually damaged woman, and your loss of sexual purity. Those are temporal effects of sins.
But souls which have not had their original sin remitted through baptism don’t go to Heaven... and they don’t go to purgatory, the state wherein souls are purified to prepare them for Heaven. They go to Hell.
“What?” you say, “A loving God couldn’t send all non-Christians to eternal torment, could he?” Well, the idea that Hell is always a place of eternal torment is a Protestant innovation. Non-Christians who lead relatively decent, cruelty-free lives of good will don’t suffer the sorts of eternal punishment that the wicked and rebellious do, but neither do they experience the blissful harmony with Christ in Heaven.
As Christians, we can have hope for the salvation of non-Christians through “extraordinary means of grace” which we know not of. But in recent decades such hope has morphed into a sense that non-Christians don’t really need to convert, and that is perhaps one of Satan’s greatest triumphs.