Fr. Perrone: Why pray for the dead?

Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, November 5, 2017):

What we know about life after death pales in comparison with what we do not know. There are so many unanswered questions. Our Lord Himself spoke of the next life in similes, leaving us to glean a literal understanding from the imagery therein. Although the church has officially said relatively little about the souls of the deceased as being in this world (think of ghosts, apparitions of and licit communications with the dead through prayer), we have some hints that the matter may be much more complex than the little doctrinal surety we have about these matters. Upon the death of our Lord, for example, it is written that many holy souls arose from their graves and appeared to many on earth (Mt. 27:53). In our time we have testimony from a convincing number of persons who have had 'near death' experiences in which their souls seem to have hovered over and about their not-quite-yet-dead bodies. How much is fantasy, how much deception, how much undefined truth is unsure. Our doctrinal certainty on the condition of the dead is rather succinct: after the particular judgment there is heaven, or hell, or purgatory. The rest is not specified.

Holy Church however has always prayed for the souls of the faithful departed, that is, for those who were once living members of the Church on earth but who may now, after death, be in need of our prayers. Canonized saints are excluded from this prayer since it is certain that they have successfully achieved their place and their state cannot improve. Likewise, the souls of the damned cannot be ransomed by any degree of supplication for them. Only the souls of the dead in purgatory can profit from our Masses, indulgences, and other prayers and good works offered for their amelioration.


At one time in rather recent history -- before Vatican II -- Catholics had a more manifest devotion to the "poor souls" in purgatory. Ever since the near demise of the Requiem Mass (the Mass for the dead, revived only ten years ago by Pope Benedict XVI by permitting the return of the traditional Latin Mass), Catholics seem to have forgotten that purgatory is a solemnly proclaimed dogma of the Church (which, therefore, no Catholic can deny and yet remain a Catholic) and that Masses and prayers for the dead are a real benefit to those in purgatory, enabling them to be released the sooner from the just punishments they suffer as a result of their sins. (For the uninformed: the daily black vestment Requiem Mass was a common occurrence before the Council; there were in some churches so-called 'privileged altars' where indulgences for the dead were secured; litanies and other prayers for the dead were commonly recited; and people customarily arranged for Masses to be said for their beloved deceased.) With the loss of the doctrinal instruction, today's modern Catholics have the erroneous assumption that nearly everybody goes directly to heaven after death. Given the infallibility of the Church's dogma regarding the existence of purgatory it would be at least negligent, if not cruel, to omit praying for the souls detained in this transcendent 'prison' (cf. Mt 5:25). How many of our beloved may be in need of assistance from the church on earth? With the facile dismissal of the doctrine of purgatory that help will not be forthcoming.


This entire month is set aside to remember the dead and to alleviate their sufferings. It has been estimated that the pains of purgatory are more intense than any known in this life. When one considers the excruciating possibilities of present pains, that's a staggering amount. Charity ought to motivate us to assist souls who have no means to help themselves.

God in His mercy provided a place of temporary punishment for sin which we call purgatory. Let us be grateful that we can help the poor souls by our works.

This weekend our parish will have the 40 Hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We open this on Friday after the 7:30 Mass until 7:00 p.m. It continues on Saturday after the 7:30 a.m. Mass until 7:00 p.m. Next Sunday adoration takes place only in short intervals between Masses and concludes with the solemn high Mass at noon, followed by the procession with the Blessed Sacrament. Plan this weekend on being in church for one hour of prayer besides your usual weekend Mass time.

Fr. Perrone

Death: a history of beliefs

One of our readers cites as one of his favorite books on the subject is by Professor of History at Warwick University, UK, Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). An excellent introduction, he says is the article, also by Peter Marshall, entitled "Death."

[Hat tip to Sri A.S.]

Flannery O'Connor on the dangers of sentimentality in religion

Richard Cipolla responds to a letter asking what happened to the Catholic understanding of death in "Dear Father: IV - What does all this mean?" (RC, November 8, 2014):


The letter is from "Beleaguered in Biloxi," who writes:

On All Souls Day our priest wore white vestments and talked about how all the dead we pray for on this day are already in heaven. And he called us all a "resurrected people," she writes. "This is similar to what I see and hear at almost every Catholic funeral Mass I go to. I thought we were supposed to pray for the dead who are in Purgatory to speed them on their way to heaven. But if everyone goes to heaven as soon as he dies, what does all this mean?"

Father Cipolla responds:

Dear Beleaguered, a religion that does not take death seriously should never itself be taken seriously.

A religion that does not take Kafka’s words, “He died like a dog” as a real alternative to “He who believes in me shall not die…and I will raise him up at the Last Day” should be abandoned. It is as if the pure stream of the Catholic faith has been polluted by the dumping into its waters the slag of the sentimentality of the world that avoids the reality of death and denies that that slag is indeed a poison, a poison so powerful that it kills the fish that live in these waters.

That great Catholic author and fierce opponent of sentimentality in religion, Flannery O’Connor, says in her collection of essays called Mystery and Manners:

“One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him. ... Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus' hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” (emphasis added)

This is really good: Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]