PAYING FOR MASSES IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS PROSTITUTING RELIGION

The Mass is believed to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ made present on an altar of sacrifice to be offered for the living and the dead.

Selling Masses would be a sin called Simony.

Simony is named after Simon Magus who tried to purchase the gift of God with money from Peter. Rome says that it is serious sin to try to sell or buy the sacraments for they are presents from God. But don’t think the Church worries about what is right. The Bible prohibits the practice of pressuring people to give money or pledge it to the Church (1 Corinthians 16:2; 2 Corinthians 9:7). The Catholic Church and most others have a system of paying in numbered envelopes in which the payer and the amount is known to the clergy and that pressures people to pay. Some Protestant Churches collect a number of times a year and print the offering amount and the benefactor’s name in the Church magazine.

Catholics might like to have Masses offered for the dead and the priests love offering them far more because they are paid for them. The fee is usually £9.00. It is called a stipend.

The custom these days is, is to have a Mass offered about a month after the person dies and then on every anniversary. The Catholics hold that some people have to go to a place of punishment as severe as Hell, Purgatory, to be purified of sin before they can go to Heaven so the Masses soften God’s anger so that they will get out of Purgatory quicker. See the emotional blackmail in this?

When a person dies and is laid out in the house, Mass cards are bought for a small sum each and these are given to the relatives by those who visit them to see the corpse. They are laid on the coffin and cover the corpse as reminders that the merits won by the sacrifice of the Mass cover the deceased’s lack of merit. 

The priestly practice of selling pre-signed Mass cards takes the biscuit altogether. They are sold for something like £1.50 each and are mainly for the dead though they can be obtained for almost any occasion. In the case of the dead, the cards are taken by people to the house where the dead person lived and where he is being waked and given to the relatives. The signature of the celebrant is printed on them. You have to write the name of the dead person on them and the priest gets a jotter with names of people the Masses were purchased for which he certainly will not look at for thousands of cards are sold every week.

The priest could make a fortune out of a single Mass and of course he cannot say one Mass for every card. He could get £500 for a Mass for one person. He could get £50 for a Mass for ten people. It all depends on how many people buy the cards. None of this is fair. He will probably say the one mass for all these people.

These masses are simply making money out of the dead.

The priests who tolerate the Mass cards are no better than those who sell them. If the Church stops the scandalous practice it will be too late. It would still be a mistake to trust her after her behaviour. The damage is done forever for Jesus said what cannot be trusted in small cannot be trusted in anything else and the Church would be trusting the Church of the past to some extent. Mary in her apparitions says nothing about these scandals in the Church which makes us question if the apparitions are real.

Is the pope sincere when he claims that there is far too much merit to atone for sin and he can use the surplus to cancel the punishment of the souls in Purgatory through giving out indulgences? This contradicts the doctrine that serious sin is endlessly bad for if it is endlessly bad it needs an endless atonement. It insults the Bible doctrine that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin which is in the First Epistle of John. The Church contradicts John the apostle so it can hardly deserve to be called the apostolic Church.

Is the pope sincere when he has people paying for Masses to atone for the souls in Purgatory to help pay the debt of punishment the souls owe to to God so that they may be released sooner when through his power of indulgences he could release them all at a stroke? This is simply the Church using the dead to make money. It is prostituting the dead. It is the sin of Simony for which Peter invoked great evil on Simon Magus for committing. The priests are consenting to this this evil. Where are their protests?

The pope says that the worst evil is being unable to enter the presence of God. So he inflicts a great evil on the souls in Purgatory by helping to keep them there. He might say that is punishment they deserve. But it does them no good. Going to God keeps you perfect and makes you enjoy the happiness of being good. Good punishment tries to help you see the happiness of being good. The pope is just vindictive. Those who say he is lovely and sweet are just turning a blind eye to the evidence that he is fake. They demean themselves by what they say. 

Annual cemetery Masses for the dead are very popular today. They are held in the summer time and in many places the inevitable plastic bucket is passed from person to person to make it the most profitable local religious money spinner of the year.