The Poor Souls
by Dr. Malcolm Brennan
AS THIS MONTH OF THE POOR SOULS in purgatory was approaching, many of you may have received letters like the following, which came from the community of Benedictines who staffed the parish and high school that I grew up in:
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No doubt Fr. Conan is full of tender sentiments in sending this letter, and for that I thank him, but it takes only a moment's reflection to see that something important is absent from his tenderness.
Just to name the familiar expressions of Catholic belief on prayer for the dead is to reveal that, for all the heartfelt kindliness of the letter, its heart is missing. There is no mention of poor souls, nor of purgatory, nor of the faithful departed; no suggestion that they are alive and not so well, no discrimination between the faithful departed, the unfaithful departed, and the blessed in heaven. (While it is true that we do not know the disposition of each departed soul, yet the fact of this "geography" of the after life is tremendously important.)
As for offering the Sacrifice of the Mass to apply the infinite merits of Calvary to the Church suffering, or any hint that we personally might earn indulgences to alleviate the temporal punishment due to their sins—how alien all this sounds to the spirit of Fr. Conan's letter, a spirit of vague and sweet nostalgia.
Perhaps a genius could read Catholic truth into Fr. Conan's "support them by our love and awareness," but few ordinary mortals could. The phrase seems to be a very limp peg to hang traditional Catholic belief on—perhaps inserted to disarm those who might complain about the otherwise total lack of a Catholic attitude in the letter.
This anemic version of Catholic teaching about the after life is not the isolated slip of one man. If you have been to a Catholic funeral lately or have watched the new clergy minister to the dying (when they agree to), you will have noticed that their greatest attention is given to consoling the survivors. One priest told us from the pulpit that there was nothing we could do now for my friend, that all our tears and regrets would not bring her back (as if we wanted to bring her back, instead of to care for her where she was). Rather, he said, let us imitate her wonderful cheerfulness, her love of life, etc.
Some clergy will go so far as to explain that the Church in the past paid too much attention to the corpse (corpse, indeed; what a slander against our ancestors!) and not enough to the widows and orphans left behind. The new face of the Church, they say, is that of a caring Church, which wishes to bring the sympathy of the faith community to the support of its grieving fellow Catholic.
This is no doubt a version of addressing the mentality of modern man. Modern Man, they tell us, is not much given to complicated theories about the temporal punishment due to sin, the traffic among the communion of the saints, the bookkeeping of applying the treasury of Christ's merits here, there, and yonder, and such stuff. These theories were good enough for our ancestors, only because it consoled them—but contemporary man is less theoretical and legalistic and is more personal, modern churchmen tell us. He sees his neighbor suffer a death in the family, and his heart flows out in a personal gesture of love and caring.
But if they are all that caring, why don't they care for the dead? I wonder how much of their celebrated concern for the poor is directed toward the poor souls in purgatory, and how much of their liberation theology is directed toward liberating the faithful departed from the pains of the temporal punishment due to sin? And as for their exquisite "community," a sort of awareness of togetherness (how fuzzy the language is), what sort of "faith community" is it that excludes a third of the Church, the Church suffering—and, for that matter, the Church triumphant also?
The difference between the old and the new way of dealing with death is, of course, not a difference in how much one cares but a difference in what one cares for. In the old days the Church cared for the next life, but now this life gets most of the attention. Not understanding their own low and narrow view of what a human creature is, the new types smugly ooze with their superior tenderness.
Perhaps I am being too hard on my Fr. Conan? Perhaps. It is not that I expect his simple letter to contain a technically perfect treatise on the doctrine of purgatory. What I would hope, however, and what every Catholic has a right to expect, is that when a priest undertakes to discuss a subject like prayer for the dead, he will not invent a weird new vocabulary that positively muddies the clear stream of Church teaching, but that he will use the language hallowed by the orthodox piety of the ages.
Just a few phrases would do the trick: poor souls ... the pains of purgatory ... faithful departed ... Church suffering ... Masses for the dead ... Why must Fr. Conan and his like studiously avoid those words, those shields against heresy, those pearls of great price? It is a legitimate question.
If you put this legitimate question to the up-dated clergy, you will not get a legitimate answer but will get "the idiom of Vatican II ... the idiom that embodies the experience, the suffering, and the hope of contemporary humanity" (Pope John Paul II, at Puebla)—but which does not, alas, embody revealed truth, for which modern man has no idiom. If Fr. Conan and his kind really wished to address the "experience, the suffering, and the hope" of modern man on the subject of death, let him try to make some sense of the following notices, a kind which occurs regularly on obituary pages of newspapers:
In loving memory of our Father
John Doe
who departed this life five years ago.
No dearer father ever lived
Or dying left so sad
A family to miss him
Than you, our darling Dad.
The entry is signed by members of the family. Another verse on the same page:
Tear still flow although we know
He waits us 'mong the Blest.
Til Mem'ry fades and life departs
You live forever in our hearts.
Or more simply:
Remembering is—forever.
We love you.
What is wrong with these poor tributes is not primarily the wretched poetry or the maudlin sentimentality. What they lack is the doctrine of purgatory. What they have in full measure is the same gooey sentimentality that Fr. Conan is handing out, a mushy nostalgia about people who are as good as non-existant. These suffering mourners are desperate to do something for their dead friend or relative—for love demands action—yet all they know to do is to keep him in their Mem'ry, keep the pain alive (as a sort of penance? but for what purpose?), or else just declare him canonized 'mong the Blest.
Their attempt to care for the dead is clumsy, to be sure, and their perception of the communion of saints is paltry, of course—especially that part of it that tells the relations between the militant and suffering Church. But the awkwardness of their yearning for these merciful doctrines is therefore the more pathetic. These obituary notices reflect the true condition of Modern Man: stupefaction in the face of death, confusion about things spiritual, near hopelessness concerning prayer.
And this notice shows the condition of the Modern Catholic, from the same obituary page:
May the soul of our faithful departed rest in peace.
This is no doubt by some poor wretch who had to turn from his parish church to the secular newspaper in order to pray Catholic truth.
How these lost sheep long for the truths of revelation, long to be assured that their love and penance can indeed comfort the poor souls and hasten them toward the beatitude which they have earned. But instead of extending the light of the doctrines of purgatory and of the communion of the saints to these separated (or separating) brethren, our progressive clergy are busy hiding that light under a bushel of vapid verbiage, in the apparent hope that Catholics will become just as modern as everybody else—that is, just as muddled.
It is worth noticing that these obituary tributes have a great deal in common with Fr. Conan's letter. First are the effusive expressions of good will which, however sickeningly sweet they are, it would be churlish to dismiss as insincere, his or theirs. But sincerity is not the issue; truth is.
Next is the deficiency of the theological virtue of hope. Neither he nor they show any knowledge of or confidence in the divine plan by which God disposes souls in the after life; nor is there any more than the vaguest hint that what we on earth do might have some influence or make some difference in how He treats our fellow man. There is hope aplenty in what they say, but it has no content, form, or substance, and this puts it in danger of becoming the sin of presumption.
Another common feature is the large emphasis placed on memory. The place of memory in Catholic spirituality is limited: we should remember with gratitude the blessings God has bestowed, remember with trepidation our many ingratitudes, and should often recollect that we are in the presence of God. But memory itself, and acts of remembering, are a means to encourage the essential acts, those of faith, hope and charity, and are no substitute for them. If memory were crucial, people with amnesia and senility would be damned.
But in Father's letter, as in the newspaper notices, remembrance is the main thing to do. He mentions it three times in the first paragraph ("remembrance," "recall," "memories"). And remembering is about the only thing we are capable of, apparently, for nothing else is suggested. This tends to confirm the suspicion that Father's November devotions are for the benefit of the living, not the dead, for remembrance has no effect on the thing remembered, only on the one who remembers. Unless, perhaps, remembrance has become the fourth theological virtue that replaces the first three?
What a lost estimate of human nature is here. It is as if the redemption had never occurred, and as if prayer cannot aid others but serves only to promote one's own mental health. There is a book on the market, Prayer: For Curing Life's Hurts, which apparently (I have not read it, and do not intend to) develops at length this stunted, self-serving notion of prayer. This seems to be just what Fr. Conan's letter is doing: urging us to pray for the dead in order to console ourselves, to cure the hurt of losing a loved one.
There is a major error in this thinking, one that is another hallmark of modern man. It is a low regard for thought and for its object, truth, and for its religious expression, doctrine—but a huge confidence in the power of good will or sincere emotion. People imagine that obtuse economic problems like unemployment can be solved by melting at the sight of bread lines, that the danger of nuclear weapons will go away if they throw up their hands in horror, that third world economies can be created by waxing indignant at the prosperity of developed countries, and that souls can be saved by just wanting them to be saved. How silly. Maybe I'll wish myself into a millionaire—what happiness that would bring to an army of nervous creditors.
Truth has taken a severe beating for several centuries and now the clergy is joining the wolfpack. Naturally they do not admit that they are attacking the truth; they prefer to call it "the pastoral approach."
It seems to me that devotions on behalf of the poor souls in purgatory are a particularly fine form of pious practice for traditionalists. By such devotions we affirm the traditional character of our belief, because prayers and Masses for the dead have been a distinctive mark of the Roman Church since Masses were first offered on the tombs of martyrs in the catacombs, and they have distinguished the Church from the sects that broke away at the Reformation. They also affirm that we belong to a much larger community than just the Catholics who happen to be on earth at the present time.
As renewed Catholics pay more attention to the psychology of the living and less to the spiritual welfare of the dead (and of the living), the burden of looking after the helpless Catholics in purgatory must fall more heavily upon those with a lively faith in the condition of the poor souls. In former ages, multitudes stormed heaven on behalf of the faithful departed. It is a job that still needs doing.
Although I am not in a position to assess the new liturgy on these matters, with its white vestments and the rest, still it is clear that just the widespread scarcity of masses for the dead constitutes a liturgical abuse of major proportions, just as the neglect of prayers and penitential sacrifices for the dead is an impoverishment of the spiritual life.
Those who assist the poor souls in purgatory with their prayers and sacrifices will not only keep alive a most precious and most Catholic tradition, until we are blessed with better days, but they will also earn a double reward for their devotions, for their faithful departed and for themselves.
Furthermore, they will build up the whole Church. In the cosmic Church—consisting of the militant, the suffering, and the triumphant—just as the saints can intercede for us on earth, so we can imitate their heavenly charity by interceding for the poor souls in purgatory. And thus they who care for the dead perform the vital function of promoting the flow of divine blessings through the arteries of grace to vital regions of the Mystical Body of Christ.
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MY JESUS, by the sorrows Thou didst suffer in Thine agony in the Garden, in Thy scourging and crowning with thorns, in the way to Calvary, in Thy crucifixion and death, have mercy on the souls in purgatory, and especially on those that are most forsaken; do Thou deliver them from the dire torments they endure; call them and admit them to Thy most sweet embrace in paradise. Our Father, Hail Mary, Eternal rest, etc. —An indulgence of 500 days, The Raccolta |
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