Though it is only a church law, celibacy shows contempt for Scripture. As cults abudantly evidence, one can say a doctrine is “based” upon a text, but that does not mean it is the result of sound exegesis. 1 Cor. 7:8,9,32-38 certainly does support celibacy, but by no means as a mandatory requirement for any class of people, let alone clergy, who were obviously expected to be married in apostolic times and forward. (1Tim. 3:1-5,12) Rather, Paul states that celibacy is a gift, (1 Cor. 7:7), and to require that all Bishop/Elder (same office) have that gift is to add to Scripture, just as the Pharisees did, “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Mk. 7:7).
As for purgatory, this (as taught by Rome) likewise lacks true Scriptural warrant, including the treasury of merit and indulgences, as it must rely on ambiguous texts which are contradicted by clear ones. The “servants” in Lk. 12:42-48 are evidenced to lost souls, with different degrees of judgment being realized in the afterlife. Yet ordinary saved souls are distinctly told that if the rapture occurred they will be “caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thes. 4:17) The penitent criminal who suffered a few hours on the cross himself went that day to paradise, which is later revealed to now be the third heaven.
At the judgment seat of Christ believers are told that carnal works will be burnt up, (1 Cor. 3:11-15) but they themselves will be saved, so as by fire, which does not convey suffering an indeterminate time in purgatory, but of a man who loses everything but himself is saved, the context here being about rewards.
As 2 Maccabees, this book has offers hope for those dying in “mortal sin”, as idolaters, while the apocrypha is not worthy to be classed with Scripture, which is evidenced to be such by its power and purity, resulting in its popularity, while apocrypha remains buried in obscurity. See here for reasons why it is rejected by the revived church.
http://www.christiantruth.com/Apocryphapart1.html
http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_apocrypha_inspired_of_god,
http://www.xenos.org/essays/canon.htm
Of course, when you autocratically declare yourself infallible in a teaching, then lack of Scriptural warrant need not be a problem.
>Though it is only a church law, celibacy shows contempt for Scripture
Now this is just plain biblical ignorance.
To use Scripture alone as a guide in this issue is silly, really, since its accounts of early Church practices only spans the timeframe of Saint Paul, who died by the mid-60s AD. That's really just the middle of the second generation of Christianity at most. Certainly, in the first generation or two, it would be expected that a good number of the bishops and priests would be married. The Church was already growing in such a way that the far greater portion of Christians came from among the Gentiles, who had absolutely no prior emphasis on celibacy among males. Unless one were to ordain no one at all who was an adult former pagan, who would be left to ordain? As time went on, and people were raised as Christians from infancy with greater frequency, it was less and less necessary to have the clergy come from the ranks of the married. It still happened, of course, but with less and less frequency, such that, by the 4th Century or so, it was positively rare in the West, and not even that common in the East.
Your understanding of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 is likelwise faulty. You say this: "At the judgment seat of Christ believers are told that carnal works will be burnt up, (1 Cor. 3:11-15) but they themselves will be saved, so as by fire, which does not convey suffering an indeterminate time in purgatory, but of a man who loses everything but himself is saved, the context here being about rewards."
But, first, understand that the Day in verse 13 is the Judgment Day of God, where the totality of a man's works and life will be laid bare for all to see. Everything about that man's llife will be in the past tense at that point. It's not that he will lose everything, as you say, in some earthly sense. He will need to undergo purification for all of the things he has altready done. The judgment on him is that he will "be saved, but only as through fire" (verse 15). This means that the "judgment" of the man in this scenario St. Paul depicts will, on the one hand, concern the actions of his entire past life, yet will consist of a purification that has yet to happen. That describes the circumstances of Purgatory quite well, without using the word explicitly.
And do not gloss over 2 Maccabees 12 (and by implication, the rest of the Deuteros) so glibly. It was part of the canon of Scripture every bit in good standing from the codification of the 4th and 5th Centuries down to our own day. Largely because of this very part of 2 Maccabees 12, involving a clear reference to Purgatory, a way had to be found to jettison the entire book. This could not be credibly dne without a wider excuse. The excuse came in the form of citing the Hebrew canon only. But how does Jewish authority exercised at the Council of Jamnia, some 60 years after the birth of the Church, and 20 years after the end of Temple sacrifice and the Jewish priesthood, have any mandatory bearing on what the Christian Church decides is canonical Scripture?
After all, that same council specifically denied the Scriptural nature of what would eventually constitute the entire New Testament! If the Christian canon of Scripture was a settled matter for over a thousand years before the so-called Reformation, where was the authority found in the upstarts, who deliberately and radically cut themselves off from continuity with the historical Church, to unilaterally reformulate the canon 14 centuries after its components were written and 1100 years after their nature was determined, to the exclusion of a host of other candidates? Since both Catholics and Protestants have the same New Testament canon, and those books, too, were canonized by 4th and 5th Century Catholic councils, why is that authority thrown aside in attempts to meddle with the Old Testament canon those councils also dealt with?
You would do better to contemplate the fact that all of the historical Churches that have a claim to Apostolic ties (Catholic, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) recognize 1 and 2 Maccabees, and have some notion analogous to, or equivalent with, the Catholic concept of Purgatory. A reasonable person might conclude that this notion, then, is part of the Ancient Faith, part of the Deposit of Faith that comes from the very beginnings of Christianity. It might make you want to explore how, and by what authority that connects to the beginning, the heretofore accepted concept of Purgatory was suddenly chucked out the window by certain Christians in the 16th Century! That you assert 2 Maccabees is "is not worthy to be classed with Scripture," being part of the "apocrypha," is your opinion only. That opinion can only piggyback onto other opinions no more than 480 years old, one-fourth of the way back to the Apostolic Era and, thus, utterly removed from the Deposit of Faith.
Finally, you speak of a "revived church." This implies that, for some interval (I would suppose this is on the order of 1200 years, from the time of Constantine or so, no?), there was no legitimate Church teaching the authentic Gospel to the world, until the "Reformers" showed-up in the 1500s. This betrays a great lack of faith in the providential protection of God for the Church He Himself established, precisely to preach the Gospel to the whole world! Does Jesus say that He will be with His Church all days until the end of time in Matthew 28:20, or not? Does He not promise the protection of the Holy Spirit in the revelation and continued teaching of the Truth through the Church in John 16:3, or not? Does St. Paul maintain in 1 Timothy 3:15 that the Church is the "pillar and ground of the Truth," or does he not? Does not all of this put together form a clear indication that God will preserve His Church from error in order to have it fulfill this fundamental aspect of its purpose as a purveyor of the Truth, from the moment of its establishment until the end of time? Is it not a massive breach of faith for anyone to suppose that there was a "break" in the legitimate exercise of this charism for x-hundred years before the "Reformation" got things back on track? Is there real organic continuity with the early Church to even indicate that, in fact, the Reformation did get things back on track, and that, somewhere, this alleged "authentic Gospel" existed through the whole span of the Christian Era?
The heart of the matter of our dispute rests in this question: Did Christ mean what He said in Matthew 28 and does the Holy Spirit preserve the Truth through all time since Pentecost? If God intended these things, then He accomplished them through the agency of the Church He established for those ends. Otherwise, He is not only not omnipotent, He evidently had not the foresight to be able to really guarantee His promises. That's what the Mormons believe! it is not something any actual Christian should believe!
I trust in God, in spite of the acknowledged sinfulness of many of the members of the Church He established. He always said there would be tares among the wheat. But the tares should not scandalize anyone into thinking that the doctrine they have taught since the times of the Apostles is tainted by their sins. The Mystical Body of Christ, which is His Church, is comprised of sinful men, yet its teachings are pure, inspired by God, safeguarded by Him, and will endure until the end of time. You need to ask yourself why you subscribe to a system of belief that, on many points of doctrine, cannot trace itself back more than 1/4 of the way to the Deposit of Faith Christ and the Apostles left us. Many of your teachings appear out of nowhere in the 16th Century or later. "Sola Scriptura" is but one of them.