It seems to me that the Catholics must have a different Bible than the Protestants; because, they have many man-made customs,
which are different from the Protestant man-made customs.
which, of course are different from the "jewish" man-made customs.
which are completely different from the Ishmaelite's man-made customs.
Yet we all claim Abraham as out GreatGrandFather.
Paul clearly teaches that the dead know not anything. and all prayer goes thru the Son, to whom ALL authority has been given. We are admonished to call no one Father but our Heavenly Father, and expressly forbidden to pray to or for, any dead thing; that's what the pagans do.
The Book of Second Ezdras goes even further, telling us that the souls of the dead are in storage down in the Earth, not up in heaven.
No one goes to heaven until Judgement Day, and only if their name is found written in the Book of Life; and no Pope can send a soul anywhere, much less "heaven".
The Book of Enoch goes into much more detail about the places where the souls are waiting, already separated into go/no-go places.
Ezdras, and many others, say this place is "in" the Earth, while Enoch says it is "in a great mountain in a corner of the Earth" where a terrible fire is raging, and darkness is otherwise pervasive. We know this as Abraham's bosom. During the time Jesus was in the tomb, he went down to Sheol, preached the good news there, and returned with some 500 resurrected persons, seen and known by many. Perhaps, and it seems most likely, that all three places are one and the same, but in order to reconcile that, you kindof have to believe that the surface of the Earth, and the water that we sail ships on, is flat. Actually, once you go flat, everything written about the Earth, both in the Bible and in antiquity, finally makes sense. Course it helps if you also understand about the Giants.
