Wright affirms prayers for the dead, because it is intimately connected to the resurrection of dead. This is a Jewish practice going back well before the time of Christ. The Maccebaean chronicles connect the practice to a belief in the resurrection of the dead, and so, of course, Wright is going to approve of it.

The problem is that all the Reformers knew that such a practice was essentially linked to Purgatory or at least a notion that the departed could experience a state that required progress. It basically requires a belief in purgatory. C.S. Lewis prayed for the dead and openly declared his belief in Purgatory because it’s hard to have one without the other.

I thought Wright set up a straw man about the Catholic Church’s doctrine of purgatory. It’s not all gloom and doom with black vestments (a critique of Wright, which is ironically amplified in the practice of Presbyterian ministers wearing “liturgical black” robes all year round). St. Catherine of Genoa (15th century) wrote that the pain experienced in Purgatory is more pleasurable than the greatest pleasure on earth. St. Paul describes a purifying fire that the believer shall experience at death (1 Cor 3:15). This makes sense because we die with attachments to sin and with a lack of charity in our hearts.

Even if Purgatory didn’t exist, I would still ask Christ my Lord to cleanse the defects of my soul before I embraced Him.