Praying for Dead People

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devonsams

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Can I pray for a Dead person? I know some protestants who say that you can’t pray to a dead person because his soul is already defined after death. But, about the Catholic Church, can we pray for a dead one? Even if he was an atheist, or a muslim, or a very bad person in life, I could pray for him? Thanks.
 
You cannot effectively pray for the salvation of a person who is dead - he has already been individually judged, and his fate (heaven or hell) has already been decided. If he is condemned to hell, no prayers will help him. This is what the protestants are thinking of, and in this regard they are correct.

However, unlike most protestants, the Catholic Church believes in a place that is neither heaven nor hell - namely purgatory. Everyone in purgatory is “saved” (ie, will eventually go to heaven). We believe that prayers offered for these people will help expedite that process.
 
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins. (2 Machabees 12:46)

St. Paul seems to be praying for the dead in 2 Timothy 1:18, when he says, “… may the Lord grant him [Onesiphorus] to find mercy from the Lord on that Day…”

In 1 Corinthians 15:29, St. Paul even mentions the peculiar practice of people being baptized on behalf of the dead.
 
Yes, of course you can, and should, pray for the dead.

None of us know where anyone is in the afterlife. If they are in Heaven, they do not require your prayers and God can use your prayers for the benefit of others. If they are in Hell (God forbid) they can not use your prayers and God can use your prayers for the benefit of others. If they are in Purgatory, God they can use all the prayers they can get.
 
DavidFilmer said:
You cannot effectively pray for the salvation of a person who is dead - he has already been individually judged, and his fate (heaven or hell) has already been decided.
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David - is this opinion or are you basing it on a definitive church teaching? I ask because I have not heard it put that way. In what I have come to understand, once we die and stand before God time ceases to exist as we know it. So, for example, my relative who died 10 years ago will go before God as soon as they die for judgement, but do we know for certain that that judgement happened 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago or 10 years from now in our time? And if we don’t know for certain when judgement has occurred, can we not pray for their salvation always?

To the OP: This is another point. There is no time in Heaven as we know it, so it is never too late or too soon to pray for someone.
 
It is a great act of charity to pray for the dead. There are many prayers online for the deceased.
 
If you pray for Jerry Garcia you will be praying for the Grateful Dead :):)😉
 
I pray for the dead every time I pray the rosary, despite anything praying for people even if they are passed and lived a bad life couldn’t hurt anything
 
I pray for my dead loved ones, that at the moment of death, they had the contrition needed for salvation.

Look at it this way: even though they died years ago, God in His omniscience, would have known and heard all of the prayers that I or anyone else will ever pray for that person. This goes for masses for the dead as well. Knowing that, in His mercy, He may have chosen to answer those prayers and grant contrition and salvation to those people, in anticipation as it were of those prayers/masses.

Time is not an issue for God who exists outside of it. Time is only an issue for temporal beings like ourselves.

This is my understanding anyway.
 
I also pray for people who have died. One of the reasons someone is in purgatory is that even though they have contrition for sin they still have a remaining attachment to it. Which might end up being me or any of us… and I hope (when the time comes - and I’m even considered worthy to enter purgatory) that there will be someone praying for me!
 
But we can’t know whether or not someone is in Purgatory, Heaven or in Hell. Nor Hitler, Stalin and many others, we can’t be 100% sure if they are in hell. When the doubt persists, I pray for him anyway? I mean, if I know somebody is in Hell, I could pray to him to decrease his pain, or something like that? And By the way, I can pray to someone, like a relative who already dead, to make an intercession? Like on the case of the saints? Thanks
 
There are no dead people; we all live forever. With that in mind, it makes sense to pray for them.
 
Seira said:
What’s this? :ehh:
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Apparently it was a local custom of the Church at Corinth; Catholics don’t give any sacramental value to such proxy baptisms. I cite it (1 Cor 15:29) merely as an example from the New Testament of Christians doing something to benefit the dead.
 
devonsams said:
But we can’t know whether or not someone is in Purgatory, Heaven or in Hell. Nor Hitler, Stalin and many others, we can’t be 100% sure if they are in hell. When the doubt persists, I pray for him anyway?
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Yes. If he is in Purgatory he can make use of your prayers. If in Heaven or Hell God can make use of your prayers for another soul who needs them, so by all means pray for him and trust in the mercy of God.
devonsams said:
By the way, I can pray to someone, like a relative who already dead, to make an intercession? Like on the case of the saints? Thanks
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Yes. We can pray for anyone in Heaven to intercede with God for us.
 
TheDoctor said:
David - is this opinion or are you basing it on a definitive church teaching?
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This is the doctrine of the Church. Catholic doctrine maintains that if we die in a State of Grace, we will go to heaven (perhaps by way of purgatory). If we die outside a State of Grace, we will go to hell. Christians place themselves outside a State of Grace through mortal sin.

The Church recognizes the possibility that God may have other means of salvation which have not been revealed to us (ie, invincible ignorance), but this is only a possibility - it is not any sort of assurance (and the Church does not know how it might work).

If someone is not in a state of Grace, our prayers alone cannot put him there - only the Sacraments can do that.

In fact, Scripture specifically refrains from recommending prayers for such a person (because those prayers cannot have any effect):
**If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death **[ie, venial sin], he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death [ie, mortal sin]. **I am not saying that he should pray about that. **[1John 5:16]
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However, since we cannot be sure, the Church recommends that we pray for ALL the departed. After all, it couldn’t do any harm.
 
DavidFilmer said:
You cannot effectively pray for the salvation of a person who is dead - he has already been individually judged, and his fate (heaven or hell) has already been decided.
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This is absolutely not true. We most certainly can and should pray for the salvation of those who have died. Our prayers are MOST helpful to them.

Padre Pio was known to pray for his great, great grandfather to have a happy death…even though he had died many years earlier. I have read of other saints who have done the same. God knows no time…

Here is the exact quote
Code: 
     One day Padre told his doctor: "I'm praying for the good death of my great-great grandfather". But he died more than one hundred years ago!"
“Remember that for God there is no past and no future, and everything is present. So God made use at that time of the prayers I’m saying now.”
 
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