Walther on the Apocrypha: "bad crumbs" (Purgatory)

      The subject of the Apocrypha books comes up at times. If one queries the search engines one is faced with much secondary information, opinions, and confusion among the populace. On the teaching of the Catholic Church Wikipedia reports: 

"Many of these texts are considered canonical Old Testament books by the Catholic Church, affirmed by the Council of Rome (382) and later reaffirmed by the Council of Trent (1545–1563)". 

So when I ran across C. F. W. Walther's comments on this subject, I took note of it. This was included in his essay to the 1873 Western District and his comments are most instructive. In this essay, Walther quotes John Gerhard as he refutes the pope's disrespect of the sacred Scriptures. Walther's comments are in parentheses. Gerhard points out how the popes achieve this (from page 46): 

"2. By appending to the certain and immovable Word of God presented in the canonical books the apocryphal writings, which contain uncertain and false assertions".

(This is very important. We also have the apocrypha in our Bible book, e.g. Jesus Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Maccabees, etc.; but it is stated above that they are not to be regarded as Holy Scripture, but only to be read carefully. From them we can read what the Jewish church believed after the appearance of the prophets up to the time of Christ, which otherwise the common people would not know at all. But they also contain many falsehoods. It says that the witch of Endor brought the real Samuel out of death, that a certain Rhazis performed a great heroic deed with his suicide, that Judas Maccabeus did well to send two thousand drachmas to Jerusalem as a sin offering, and that it was a good and holy opinion to pray for the dead that their sins might be forgiven. Of course, when the Roman priests read about the 2,000 drachmas, they thought: "This is a good passage, we must not delete it from the Bible," and they looked at the 2,000 drachmas with one eye and at purgatory with the other. The Book of Tobit then also condones shameful sorcery. Even though the Apocrypha contains a lot of valuable things, these are still very bad crumbs. The Roman Church, however, insists as much on the acceptance of the Apocrypha as on that of the Book of Isaiah or the Psalter, because it thinks it can prove purgatory, its sorcery at their consecration and the like; whereas anyone who knows history knows that the Apocrypha was never recognized by the Church of the Old Covenant. We have received the Old Testament from the Jewish orthodox Church, but in this Testament there is no Jesus Sirach, no Book of Tobit, no Books of the Maccabees, and so on. The Old Testament church already had these books, but they were not recognized as divine books. They were not originally written in Hebrew, but in Greek, and some of them only exist in Latin. In short, the papists are lying when they say that the Apocrypha is as good a word of God as the other books. We do not recognize them and give God the glory by not imputing to Him books that He did not make. For it is a great ungodliness for someone to write a book and put another name on the title, such as "Luther". But it is a small sin to write on it: "This book is from God", when it was written by men from their own spirit.) 

It was most instructive that Walther gives examples of falsehoods in the Apocrypha.

Does the Roman Catholic Church still teach Purgatory? 

• Yes, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 268 (see here, sections 1030-1031). 

Do they still use the Apocrypha to justify this doctrine? 

• Yes, see section 1032 here., p. 269.

Do they also use Holy Scripture to justify this doctrine?

• Yes, falsely using 1 Cor 3:15 and 1 Pet 1:7 (see here). These do not speak of an intermediate period after death for "purification". Papists use the Apocrypha against Holy Scripture.

Does the Roman Catholic Church teach that the Apocrypha are inspired?

• Yes, section 1032 explicitly states "…Sacred Scripture: "Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead" (Footnote 609: 2 Macc 12:46). The Apocrypha is identified with "Sacred Scripture".

      Many within the LC–MS attempt to soften the view of today's Roman Catholic Church, that it has changed for the better since the days of the Reformation. But we can see by the above that it has only become more deceitful by attempting to mask their doctrine by mixing false Apocrypha teaching with Holy Scripture. — May Walther's clear instruction provide Christians with the tool that they need to refute all false doctrine:

Sola Scriptura!