The Pope and Purgatory

In the middle of September, the Pope sent a message to an order of nuns meeting in Rome to rally them to pray for souls in purgatory. The Church of Rome views this as the intermediate realm to which her imperfectly sanctified members go at death, for an unspecified time, in order to suffer penal and purifying pain, until all sin is removed, when they are transferred to the joy of heaven.

The Pope stressed the special need that the deceased have for such intercession. Bellarmine, the well-known Roman Catholic theologian of the sixteenth century, said: "The pains of purgatory are very severe, surpassing anything in this life". The manual of the Purgatorial Society states, "Nothing but the eternal duration makes the fire of hell more terrible than that of purgatory". And, according to another Roman Catholic publication, di Bruno's Catholic Belief, "since death ends the period of man's probation, it follows that the holy souls [in purgatory] cannot help themselves; they cannot make satisfaction and so shorten the period of their pain. But the faithful on earth, the Church Militant, can help them by prayers, indulgences, expiatory works, and especially by the offering for them of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." So Roman Catholics believe that the period of suffering in purgatory can be shortened for themselves or their dear departed ones by giving monetary gifts to the Church and by paying for priests to offer masses.

Little wonder then that Rome's doctrine of purgatory, which did not take formal shape until the sixth century and was not proclaimed an article of the faith until 1439, has been described as "the gold mine of the priesthood". As James Begg rightly points out in his Handbook of Popery, "The gospel says, 'How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven!' Popery says, 'How hardly can he avoid entering!'"

This dreadful doctrine not only holds Rome's devotees in a fear from which their religion gives no relief, but also strikes at the sufficiency of the redemptive work of Christ for the justification and sanctification of those who believe in Him. How different from Rome's teaching is the teaching of Scripture: immediately a sinner believes in Christ he is fully justified. At death he is made perfect in holiness. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, his soul is "absent from the body, present with the Lord" - not banished to the imaginary pains of purgatory to be punished and purified.

NMR

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Founder of Opus Dei Canonised

The campaign to canonise Josemaria Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, an ultra-secretive and extremely powerful organisation within the Roman Catholic Church, reached its climax last month when he was declared a saint by the Pope. Not only was the £735 000 cost of the campaign of special interest to the Financial Times, but also the vast resources of Opus Dei. The paper reported: "The canonisation of Monsignor Josemaria Escrivá de Balaguer comes a mere 27 years after his death, an unusually brief interlude that indicates Opus Dei's financial clout and its influence within the Vatican."

Opus Dei (the name means "Work of God") was founded in 1928, and now has some 80 000 lay members worldwide and 1800 priests. After his accession in 1978, the Pope saw Opus Dei as a natural ally in his fight against liberation theology and liberal Roman Catholicism. So great is the Pope's admiration for Escrivá and Opus Dei that on the eve of the conclave that would elect him Pope he lay prostrate on the green marble slab of Escrivá's crypt.

A 1995 profile of Opus Dei in the traditionalist Roman Catholic magazine Inside the Vatican says that Opus Dei is "considered by many the single most powerful force in the Church today." Another Roman Catholic source, the Maria Auxiliadora Prayer Group, complains, "It is worrying to see that now important departments of the Vatican are hogged by Opus Dei (in addition to the Canonization office), for example Communications and Finance".

A Roman Catholic writer, Gordon Urquhart, describes Opus Dei as "the Pope's right arm in Europe" and says that it "pursues the Vatican's agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical and grassroots pursuits". In following its operating plan of influencing the influential, it maintains a political presence at the highest levels of governments and European institutions and thus is a direct line from the Vatican to the secular heart of Europe.

The clandestine activities of Opus Dei in many countries indicate that it is an especially subtle, satanic and dangerous foe of Biblical Protestantism. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph 6:12).

NMR