CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Prayers For the Dead. Help support New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $1. This subject will be treated under the following three heads: General statement and proof of Catholic doctrine. Questions of detail.

Includes downloads, cheats, reviews, and articles. Prayers for the Dead. Help support New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers.

Practice in the British and Irish Churches. General statement and proof.

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Catholic teaching regarding prayers for the dead is bound up inseparably with the doctrine of purgatory and the more general doctrine of the communion of the saints, which is an article of the Apostle's Creed. The definition of the Council of Trent (Sess. XXV), "that purgatory exists, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar", is merely a restatement in brief of the traditional teaching which had already been embodied in more than one authoritative formula — as in the creed prescribed for converted. Waldenses by Innocent III in 1. Denzinger, Enchiridion, n. Greeks by Michael Palaeologus at the Second Ecumenical. Council of Florence in 1.

We define] likewise, that if the truly penitent die in the love of God, before they have made satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for their sins of commission and omission, their souls are purified by purgatorial pains after death; and that for relief from these pains they are benefitted by the suffrages of the faithful in this life, that is, by Masses, prayers, and almsgiving, and by the other offices of piety usually performed by the faithful for one another according to the practice [instituta] of the Church" (ibid., n. Hence, under "suffrages" for the dead, which are defined to be legitimate and efficacious, are included not only formal supplications, but every kind of pious work that may be offered for the spiritual benefit of others, and it is in this comprehensive sense that we speak of prayers in the present article. Watch Somebody`S Hero 4Shared. As is clear from this general statement, the Church does not recognize the limitation upon which even modern Protestants often insist, that prayers for the dead, while legitimate and commendable as a private practice, are to be excluded from her public offices. The most efficacious of all prayers, in Catholic teaching, is the essentially public office, the Sacrifice of the Mass. Coming to the proof of this doctrine, we find, in the first place, that it is an integral part of the great general truth which we name the communion of saints. This truth is the counterpart in the supernatural order of the natural law of human solidarity. Men are not isolated units in the life of grace, any more than in domestic and civil life.

As children in Christ's Kingdom they are as one family under the loving. Fatherhood of God; as members of Christ's mystical body they are incorporated not only with Him, their common Head, but with one another, and this not merely by visible social bonds and external co- operation, but by the invisible bonds of mutual love and sympathy, and by effective co- operation in the inner life of grace.

Each is in some degree the beneficiary of the spiritual activities of the others, of their prayers and goodworks, their merits and satisfactions; nor is this degree to be wholly measured by those indirect ways in which the law of solidarity works out in other cases, nor by the conscious and explicit altruisticintentions of individual agents. It is wider than this, and extends to the bounds of the mysterious.

Now, as between the living, no Christian can deny the reality of this far- reaching spiritualcommunion; and since death, for those who die in faith and grace, does not sever the bonds of this communion, why should it interrupt its efficacy in the case of the dead, and shut them out from benefits of which they are capable and may be in need? Of very few can it be hoped that they have attained perfectholiness at death; and none but the perfectly holy are admitted to the vision of God. Of few, on the other hand, will they at least who love them admit the despairing thought that they are beyond the pale of grace and mercy, and condemned to eternal separation from God and from all who hope to be with God. On this ground alone it has been truly said that purgatory is a postulate of the Christianreason; and, granting the existence of the purgatorial state, it is equally a postulate of the Christianreason in the communion of saints, or, in other words, be helped by the prayers of their brethren on earth and in heaven. Christ is King in purgatory as well as in heaven and on earth, and He cannot be deaf to our prayers for our loved ones in that part of His Kingdom, whom he also loves while He chastises them.

For our own consolation as well as for theirs we want to believe in this living intercourse of charity with our dead. We would believe it without explicit warrant of Revelation, on the strength of what is otherwise revealed and in obedience to the promptings of reason and natural affection. Indeed, it is largely for this reason that Protestants in growing numbers are giving up today the joy- killing doctrine of the Reformers, and reviving Catholic teaching and practice. As we shall presently see, there is no clear and explicit warrant for prayers for the dead in the Scriptures recognized by Protestants as canonical, while they do not admit the Divine authority of extra- Scriptural traditions.

Catholics are in a better position. Arguments from Scripture. Omitting some passages in the Old Testament which are sometimes invoked, but which are too vague and uncertain in their reference to be urged in proof (v.

Tobias, iv, 1. 8; Sirach 7: 3. II Machabees, xii, 4. When Judas and his men came to take away for burial the bodies of their brethren who had fallen in the battle against Gorgias, "they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews: so that all plainly saw, that for this cause they were slain. Then they all blessed the justjudgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.

And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten.. And making a gathering, he [Judas] sent twelve [al. Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection (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), and because he considered that they who had fallen asleep in godliness, had great grace laid up for them.

It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." For Catholics who accept this book as canonical, this passage leaves nothing to be desired. The inspired author expressly approves Judas'saction in this particular case, and recommends in general terms the practice of prayers for the dead.

There is no contradiction in the particular case between the conviction that a sin had been committed, calling down the penalty of death, and the hope that the sinners had nevertheless died in godliness — an opportunity for penance had intervened. But even for those who deny the inspired authority of this book, unequivocal evidence is here furnished of the faith and practice of the Jewish. Church in the second century B. C. — that is to say, of the orthodox. Church, for the sect of the Sadducees denied the resurrection (and, by implication at least, the general doctrine of immortality), and it would seem from the argument of which the author introduces in his narrative that he had Sadducean adversaries in mind.