A PROTESTANT ASKS WHY

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A Protestant who knows Catholics pray for people in Purgatory is confused by this post, and no wonder. Clarification is called for!

If we believe what Father usually says or implies at Requiem Masses, that the dear departed is already in heaven, there's no point praying for them. That presumptuous attitude, that they've gone straight to heaven, means the prayers said at the Mass for their soul are a waste of time. They don't need our prayer any more.

And if the dear departed is in hell, likewise. There's no getting out of hell and praying for people there is a waste of time too. 

BUT no matter how many or awful the sins they committed, how many Masses they missed, they might have sincerely repented before death and asked forgiveness. 

So they're in Purgatory and certainly need our prayers. It's not a nice place to be, except for the fact which consoles them, that they are bound for Heaven. 

But not till they've made atonement for their offences against Almighty God, and that's where our prayer comes in. We can help expiate their sins.

Let's pray! 


Today, on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in my little country church the only ones at Mass were school children and their teacher. I don't suppose Mass attendance was much better elsewhere. I'm prompted to state the obvious, at least to me, about the terrible hurt and offence this causes the Heart of Jesus.


The Catholic Church, in New Zealand at least, has been weakened enormously I believe in two ways.

First, the Second Commandment is put before the First. Enshrined in the Mass text used in our little school, the children pray, we find He came to show us how we can love you, Father, by loving one another. 

Absolutely NOT. According to the First Commandment, we love the Father first by our prayer, especially in the Mass. How can we, frail and weakened by original sin as well as actual, and trying to swim against the tide of our selfish, individualistic society, possibly love one another as Christ loves us?

Only with the help of Christ Himself, in the supreme prayer of the Eucharist, are we empowered to love one another.

The endemic failure to teach and preach this truth in NZ is partly why Mass attendance has dropped so drastically, taking with it the number of men in our seminaries.

The other debilitating factor, closely associated with the first and rampant in the Church, is the presumptuous idea that we're all going to heaven. We fall for this one chiefly through ignorance fostered by non-attendance at Mass, except for Requiem Masses celebrated by aging and very aged priests who take it for granted that the dear departed is already enjoying eternal bliss, in spite of the priest and the congregation all knowing for instance, that they hardly ever or never attended Mass.

That means the deceased was, spiritually speaking, already dead. Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (Jn 6,53).

Yes, as many of his disciples (and more recently Protestants) said, This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? (Jn 6,60). 

CATHOLICS accept it! If they don't they're not Catholics. They are the disciples (or Protestants) who went back and walked no more with him (Jn 6,66).

The awful truth, taught by all the saints - that most people go to hell - appears for many years now to have been seen by Catholic clergy in New Zealand to be 'difficult', and to use the ultimate politically correct put-down, 'unacceptable'.  

Either way, at Requiems, whether our beloved dead is in heaven as Father implies or often states, or in hell as the saints teach is usually the case, it's a waste of time praying for them. Telling children to pray that Grandma will have a wonderful time in heaven is nonsense. The time to pray for them is  before they die - and that's by far the best done at Mass.

And don't try to tell me, as one good Catholic has, that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not affected by any of this, because 'God doesn't have feelings'. 

Jesus wept (John 11,35). Think about it.