Certainly not validation of a collectively accepted doctrine.
You wrote:
“Hardly a mountain, hardly well known and how can extreme cold be a ‘purgatory’?”
All of that is irrelevant as to whether or not the doctrine is know.
“Certainly not validation of a collectively accepted doctrine.”
Oh, so now it’s about “accepted doctrine” rather than “they don’t even KNOW about purgatory”? The ever shifting sands of Protestant lost arguments.
I don’t know Tagalog so I can’t look up much in that language, but Purgatory is obviously well known - and well accepted - in the Philippines. Every Filipino Catholic I ever met knew about it. Maybe your wife needs to lesrn more about her own people and homeland. Even I know - because I’ve bought their books - that Sinag-tala Publishers in Manila has published books on Purgatory over the years. My favorite book from them is Fr. Leo J. Trese’s The Faith Explained. Purgatory is in chapter 14.
Maybe you should download the Catechism for Filipino Catholics: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41395449/Catechism-for-Filipino-Catholics-Book
This is what it says in chapter 29, section 5:
5. Purgatory
2072. The Church doctrine on purgatory, “the state of final purification,” is based mainly on its ancient liturgical practice of offering prayers for the departed (cf. CCC 1030-32). This was done so that they may be purified and be accepted into heaven. Holy Scripture speaks of such prayers for the dead: “Thus he [Judas Maccabaeus] made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from sin” (2 Mc 12:46). Scripture also speaks of a purifying fire: “He himself will be saved, but only . . . through fire” (1 Cor 3:15; cf. 1 Pt 1:7). This doctrine of purgatory proclaimed in the Church Councils (cf. Trent, ND 2310) both moderates and strengthens the Church teaching on the particular judgment. It moderates it by calming excessive anxiety over the remnants of selfishness and sin even in the lives of very generous and loving persons.
But purgatory also reinforces the particular judgment’s stress on the radical demands of salvation. It is not a question of achieving a minimum “passing mark” with God who overlooks the errors still remaining. Rather, to gain eternal life, even the small remaining sinfulness must be purified so the blessed can be permeated completely by the light and love of the Lord. Whether this purifying process takes place within the process of dying itself, or in some other manner, we do not know, since the processes of both death and purification are hidden from our earthly eyes.