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The general Protestant view is that the biblical canon, from which Protestants exclude deuterocanonical books such as 2 Maccabees (though this book is included in traditional Protestant Bibles in the intertestamental Apocrypha section), contains no overt, explicit discussion of purgatory as taught in the Roman Catholic sense, and therefore it ...
In general, this position remains indicative of Protestant belief today, with the notable exception of certain Anglo-Catholics, such as the Guild of All Souls, which describe themselves as Reformed and Catholic (and specifically not Protestant) and believe in purgatory. In response to Protestant Reformation critics, the Council of Trent ...
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In the 16th century, Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin challenged the doctrine of purgatory because they believed it was not supported in the Bible. Both Calvin and Luther continued to believe in an intermediate state, but Calvin held to a more conscious existence for the souls of the dead than Luther did.
Protestants were particularly hostile to the Catholic Church's teaching that each Mass was the sacrifice of Jesus for the redemption of the world. To the reformers, to believe that the Mass is a propitiatory offering that forgives sins is to rely on human activity instead of having faith in the efficacy of Christ's death.
It is a good and charitable deed to pray for the dead. However, the doctrine of purgatory is biblically uncertain. Abuses related to purgatory, such as the claim that papal indulgences or masses for the dead offered at certain localities (such as the scala coeli mass) can deliver immediately from purgatory, are to be rejected.