Dear Friends,

Well, they are still at it after a Reformation, and a Counter-Reformation, and Inquisitions everywhere they could get away with it. We speak of course about the granting of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. According to a Reuters UK report of Wednesday 5 December 2007, the Vatican has announced that: “Catholics who visit the ‘miracle shrine’ at Lourdes over the next year will receive ‘indulgences’ which the Church teaches can reduce time spent in purgatory.” Pope Benedict was offering the indulgences to visitors from next weekend.

The shrine in South-western France is preparing to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of an event that alleges that the Madonna appeared to a peasant girl at Lourdes in 1858.

The shrine’s waters are used as a healing centre where people with all sorts of ailments go in the hope of being healed.

Reuters says:
“While some Catholics may consider indulgences an anachronism, Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II, have assigned great spiritual benefit to them.

The church teaches that people who do not go directly to paradise or hell after death must spend some time in purgatory where they can be purified of residual sin before entering heaven. Indulgences offer remission of temporal punishment--- suffering in this life or the next in order to purify a soul of sins which have already been forgiven in confession.

‘Plenary indulgences’ would be granted to pilgrims visiting the shrine during the year from December 8, 2007 until December 8, 2008, the Vatican said. For those who cannot make the journey, the Pope will also grant indulgences to Catholics who pray at places of worship dedicated to the Madonna of Lourdes from Feb 2-11.”

So we have a year of sales promotion. Last year they were forced to admit that Limbo did not exist. For centuries they held people to ransom claiming that their children were caught in this state of spiritual existence of being cut off from God. Poor guilt-ridden parents were exploited for years paying graft to ensure their children were not trapped in this fictitious state, which was contrary to every tenet of the Bible and a gross perversion of Scripture.

Most Roman Catholics could see that a God that behaved in such a way was unfit to be termed God, and the Vatican was at last forced to retract its claims regarding Limbo.

But what of this purgatory? Where do they get it from? It is not in the Bible. That is, it is not in the authorised text of the Canon of Scripture. We have dealt with this issue in the FAQs on Catholicism at Catholicism Frequently Asked Questions (No. 8).

Where also do they get the idea that Mariam, the mother of Christ, is not dead and awaiting the Resurrection like the rest of the saints? Who was Maria?

The answer is that Maria was the aunt of Jesus Christ, his mother Mariam’s sister, and the wife of Clophas. The so-called Madonna is an insertion into “Christianity” from Paganism. The issues concerning Mariolatry are examined in Section 4 of the FAQs on Catholicism above.

In the first two centuries of the Church at Rome, if you said that when you died you went to Heaven, they would have known you were an impostor and kicked you out of the Church. The earliest extant creed, known as the R document, mentions the Resurrection of the Dead and makes no mention of Heaven or Hell.

Mariolatry did not enter the Church until the fifth century from Syria. The creed of the Church in Rome in the second century was as follows:
1. I believe in God the Father Almighty;
2. And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
3. Who was born of (de) the Holy Spirit and of (ex) the Virgin Mary;
4. Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
5. The third day he rose again from the dead,
6. He ascended into heaven,
7. Sitteth at the Right hand of the Father;
8. Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead,
9. And in the Holy Spirit,
10. The Holy Church,
11. The forgiveness of sins;
12 The resurrection of the body.
It was regarded as a fundamental of belief of the Christian faith, a shibboleth, that the resurrection of the body was to take place at the end of the age, and that the Bible was emphatic that “no one had ascended into heaven save he who had descended from heaven, the son of Man” (Jn. 3:13).

The quotes and doctrines are examined in the papers The Soul (No. 92) and The Resurrection of the Dead (No. 143).

The Church could not be more emphatic on this doctrine. It was the test of a true Christian. Anyone who said that when the saints died they went to Heaven showed thereby they were not Christians (cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (80)). This godless and blasphemous doctrine was derived from the Gnostics.

The name catholic was added later for political reasons and from the beginning the Church was simply known as the Church until that title was added to it. In the second century the Church at Rome was known simply as the ‘Church’ and the saints, including Mariam, were regarded as being dead and awaiting the resurrection of the dead, as they held in their creed. The Church split into two sects in 192 CE over what was termed The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277).

The FAQs on Catholicism explains: “The existence of purgatory is denied by most of the Catholic churches and is held as true only for the Roman Catholic faith. The doctrine is denied by the modern Orthodox Church but the Roman Catholic theologians hold it is inconsistent in its doctrine to it (Cath. Encyc., ‘Purgatory’, Vol. XII, p. 576). The doctrine is also denied by the Anglican and Episcopalian, Calvinist and Lutheran, as well as the various Orthodox churches. The Roman Catholic theologian Grattan-Flood holds that Luther was ambivalent in the early days of the Reformation (CE ibid.). This may indicate Luther's real aim was less of restoring the true faith but more of stopping the growing power of the Sabbatarians. The Albigenisans, Waldensians and Hussites all rejected it outright.

Thus it is uniquely Roman Catholic. There was a doctrine advanced by some apologists in the Protestant churches regarding the doctrine of the Middle State, which Roman Catholics interpret as a variant of the purgatory doctrine in a weakened form, but this is highly improbable.

Aerius, in the fourth century, taught that prayers for the dead were of no effect, and Epiphanius records this (Her. lxxv, P. G. XLII. col 513). The doctrine of purgatory is expressed in the Decree of Union of the Council of Florence (Mansi t, XXXI, col. 1031) and in the Council of Trent (Session XXV).

Mosheim taught that the error entered Christianity from the Platonists, and seems to have arisen perhaps as early as the second century with the concept that the soul went to heaven (Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. P. 67 s 3). Now we know beyond dispute from Justin Martyr that the introduction of heaven and hell came into Christianity in the second century from the Gnostics, and Mosheim makes very poor work of this distinction due to his position. He does, however, clearly show that the doctrine of purgatory emerged full-blown in Manes doctrines (P. 109, s 8). It is thus a doctrine of Manichean Dualism of the third century that entered mainstream Christianity in the fourth century, as a purifying fire for the soul when separated from the body, and also aspects of celibacy of the clergy of the worship of images and relics "which in process of time almost banished the true religion, or at least very much obscured and corrupted it" (p. 143, s. 1).

Mosheim says that the absurd notion of prayers to dead saints became entrenched in the fifth century, and the pagan doctrines of assuming that the statues of Jupiter and Mercury could have the spirits of the gods was transferred to the places of burial and the death of the dead saints. "The doctrine of the purification of souls after death by means of some sort of fire, which afterwards became a source of great wealth to the clergy, acquired in this age a fuller development and greater significance” (ibid., p. 191, s 2).

Mosheim places the source of the development of the doctrinal error at the feet of Gregory I, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, who developed these doctrines of worshipping saints and relics and of the purifying fire of souls after death in his writings (p. 230 s 2).

The defence of purgatory is made on the grounds that penance is required even after repentance is granted by God. This view completely misapprehends the doctrine of grace, and the doctrines concerning resurrection. Look at the paper The Resurrection of the Dead (No. 143). This doctrine is fundamental to true Christianity. Look also at the paper The Soul (No. 92).

Purgatory can thus be seen as a pagan doctrine that entered Christianity and which was used as a money making exercise by the early clergy and which is based on the pagan notion of the Soul and those Gnostic doctrines of heaven and hell.”

The text used to justify purgatory comes from the Apocryphal work of 2Maccabees 12:38-46.
38 So Judas having gathered together his army, came into the city Odollam: and when the seventh day came, they purified themselves according to the custom, and kept the sabbath in the place.
39 And the day following Judas came with his company, to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen, in the sepulchres of their fathers.
40 And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth the Jews:
41 Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.
42 And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain.
43 And making a gathering, he twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection,
44 (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)
45 And because he considered that these who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them.
46 It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

The Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition adds the text allegedly of 90 after verse 49:
90 that all plainly saw, for this cause they were slain.
Knox does not add this verse. Quite clearly the text in 2Maccabees chapter 12:38-46 is speaking of the Resurrection of the Dead at the end of the age and the prayers are for the dead. No mention is made of purgatory. So, when all others reject the doctrine as having no scriptural basis, why are the last two popes plugging for the “Madonna” and purgatory, which basically asserts sin to the sick and exploits them?

The major thrust is to establish the Mother Goddess system in the Last Days. Their actions will complete the basis of the destruction of the system as prophesied (see the paper The Last Pope (No. 288)). It is written: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness against those men that hold the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18; cf. also Knox).

Wade Cox
Coordinator General