Tuesday, September 03, 2013

The Gospel reading Friday was from Matthew 25 about the ten virgins, half with extra oil and half without. No extra virgins, just virgins with extra oil. The brief homily talked about spiritual benefits being non-transferable. The peeve in view was inactive Catholics requesting sponsorship slips for baptism and confirmation. Invariably, the would-be sponsor protests the refusal, "But my parents are ardent Catholics who attend mass each week!" Not good enough, says my pastor.

Now, I've heard this myself from lapsed Catholics. Being able to point to someone, family or friend, who attends church covers them also. Well, in a way, no. But, in another way, perhaps somewhat?

I'm speaking of the treasury of merit1 and the communion of saints. We are aided by these things, provided we avail ourselves of them. There may be some question of whether those ecclesial outliers, hanging on the church's hem, draw from that treasury, like the rest of us.


1 CCC 1476-1477

1 comment:

Chris said...

How beautiful. I love your CCC references!

I came over from your visit to MY blog so that I could meet you and thank you for visiting!

Yes, we do rel ed at home, even tho my oldest is rec conf. It was a bit of a struggle with the DRE years ago, but we have a good relationship with him and the rest of the staff in our parish since our boys are actively involved. Soooo, they do let us handle it all at home b.c I think they can witness first hand that our boys's rel educ is not being neglected. I totally understand why DREs don't allow families to HS rel at home. We are the only Hsing fam in the parish and it seems to be working to their liking.
Take care and God bless!