Or even for which they do know the outcome. I’ve heard of Catholics “joining in prayer with St. Monica for the conversion of her son”. Monica’s son being St. Augustine, who it’s probably safe to say did convert.
In my experience, Protestants do refuse to pray for the dead. They see it as something exclusively Catholic. This was true even of the relatively “high church” United Methodists I knew. It wouldn’t surprise me if Episcopalians more willing to do so. I never understood the objection, since as it’s been pointed out, there is more than one interpretation. If you can’t pay for the dead because their fate has already been decided (and that’s not universal doctrine even among Protestants; many believe the dead sleep while awaiting Judgment) what does it mean when pray for a parking space? What about praying for your conceived but unborn child to be certain gender? Individuals may object to such prayers on other ground, but I never heard it suggested that it was undoctrinal.
They want to help Grandpa get a cloud upgrade. The clouds closer to Jesus don’t come cheap, y’know.
Yes, they were.
It’s true that they weren’t formally defined as canonical, but that’s just because there was no formal definition of the OT canon at all. In general Catholic Church Councils don’t start handing out formal definitions and dogmatic pronouncements and the like unless and until someone challenges the status quo, and they feel the need to settle the dispute.
There were early arguments over the canon of the New Testament, and hence early pronunciations on the subject (which Luther, after some hesitation, did not challenge) but the contents of the OT had never been a matter of sufficient dischord to warrant any kind of ruling until Luther came along and said “hey, hold on a minute . . .”.
If you believe in Predestination, why would you bother praying for anything?
If you believe in materialist determinism, why would you bother doing anything?
Previous to the CofT, the Catholic Church called them ‘apocryphal’. That means that they weren’t canonical/accepted/wtf.
With apologies for the slight hijack, but: Wait, what? Does the pope send out a fax to all the churches on Friday, which the Protestants somehow steal?
See post #15.
Revised Common Lectionary, dude.
In turn based on the Ordo Lectionum Missae.