While RCAs repeat the canard that Luther was alone in excluding the apocrypha, and that he did so for purely doctrinal reasons, he want not alone in his exclusions, and had scholarly reasons for doing so, besides some doctrinal ones. Controversy as to what constituted the canon went on for centuries and right into Trent. See http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Ancients_on_Scripture.html#2
In addition, 2 Maccabees 12: 43-45 supports praying for souls who died because they were idolaters*, which is a mortal sin according to Roman Catholicism, for which there is no purgatory or deliverance, not a confessed sin or unconfessed venial sin which Purgatory is supposed to deal with.
It could thus be used to support praying for the dead i Hell, while nowhere in Scripture do we see such, nor praying to anyone in Heaven but the Lord.
*”Now under the coats of every one that was slain they found things consecrated to the idols of the Jamnites, which is forbidden the Jews by the law. Then every man saw that this was the cause wherefore they were slain.” (2Mac. 12;40)
“...Besides, that noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forsomuch as they saw before their eyes the things that came to pass for the sins of those that were slain. (2Mac. 12;40) More: http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Contentions_Purgatory.html#Contents
Wait - (what is an RCA) How do you know they were praying for idolators? Maybe they were just praying
Pure reason — Heaven is composed of the perfect and perfected. How many of us are perfect when we die?? There is a place of purification. It must exist or we would be praying for the dead in Hell, which is absurd.