Simple straight forward question. What is the Biblical basis of Purgatory?

lucifer = "light-bringer"

There isn't any. This was just another ploy to get pagans to convert to Christianity. Afterall, what's the point of converting if you're going to hell after you die for having committed the un forgivable sin of having a god before the Christian god? This way you are punished for a short time, but get off eventually.

It's all to do with creating a market for anotherwhise useless product. Ever wondered why so many popes come from old Italian 'Beeswax' families, and hold shares in some of the most profitable candle cartels? Me neither, but remember where you heard this rumour first.

Boro Nut

It's here if you really want to know.


http://newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm

This is classic catholicism. Purgatory is not mentioned in the bible but is only (questionably)inferred from certain passages. The main support seems to be from the interpretions of the so-called "doctors" of the church. Now since history has proven that many of the popes were wicked and very unholy during the middle ages, why are the doctors of the church considered such an authority? They are as falliable as any secular philosopher and are more predisposed to error since they are not objective to begin with (i.e. Socrates and the Greek philosophers accepted whatever conclusion the dialectic presented them. For Aquinas and the other church doctors, certain options are never even considered as they conflict with revelation).

My favorite part was where the church claims that purgatory was accepted in a "shadowy way" by the pagans and point to the evidence of souls in Hades given by Virgil and Sophocles. Of course they could never say that the pagans invented the concept of purgatory and the church copied them.

In one of the books included in the Catholic canon, but not the Jewish or Protestant, God tells the people to pray for the souls of the dead. I'm not quite sure which book though.

It's a pretty flimsy argument if you take inot account the metaphysical teaching of the NT. The church obviously adopted the doctrine because they realized the relevancy of the question: are all sins equal in the eyes of God? If you ask me, the protestants who say that only Xians can go to heaven are more honest, but wrong nonetheless.