p. 9 | Masses at Reduced Rates by W. W. P.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1912

Masses at Reduced Rates

By W. W. P.

We believe in advertising, and we commend the shrewdness of those dealers in material things who attract customers by announcing special sales and attractive bargains. But we are not quite prepared to approve of the same methods when applied to spiritual things. There are those, however, who urge that the church should compete with the commercial world, both in the extent and in the character of its advertising; and the sensational nature of some church announcements has evoked much unfavorable criticism. It remains, however, for a representative of the Roman Catholic Church to surpass all of this in an advertisement offering masses at bargain rates. This is done in an advertisement in a Roman Catholic publication entitled St. Vincent’s Visitor, issued once a year in Brooklyn, N. Y. In the number for 1911, appeared a full-page advertisement, with the following heading in large type: “St. Vincent’s Purgatorial Society for the Living and the Dead, 5,508 Masses Offered Each Year for Its Members.”

From the body of the announcement we take the following paragraphs:—

With the kind permission of the Rt. Rev. Charles E. McDonnell, D. D., bishop of the diocese of Brooklyn, the perpetual membership fee in St. Vincent’s Purgatorial Society has been reduced to ten dollars.

This means that all who become members of our Purgatorial Society, whether living or dead, and having paid the sum of ten dollars, will have read for them each year five thousand five hundred and eight masses; in other words, they will share in all the masses and other spiritual benefits as long as this society shall last.

Those not in a position to pay the amount of ten dollars in cash may make weekly or monthly payments to suit their own convenience.

We can not say that because our friends or relatives have been dead a long time they do not need our assistance. Nothing definite is known as to the longer or shorter duration of purgatorial pains. We do know this, that they are proportioned to the purity of heart wherewith the deceased appears before the judgment-seat of God; proportioned to the amount of penance done while on earth; proportioned to the help given after death by those still left behind. But when we reflect that on the other side of the grave justice, not mercy, holds the balance; when we recall St. Peter’s thrilling question, “If the just shall hardly be saved, how shall it be with sinners?” and when we consider that even the saints, after long and severe penances for slight faults, trembled before and feared the severity of God’s judgments, we may justly conclude that the pains of purgatory are of longer duration than is sometimes imagined. Therefore, we should hasten generously to the help of the poor souls, and continue our prayers for them until death bids us depart hence.

We do not recall any instance that is quite parallel to this effort to make merchandise of the gospel. While we fully believe that the reduced price is all that these masses are worth, yet when we seriously consider that this appeal is made to persons who have been taught to have confidence in the efficacy of this so-called religious service, and that their fears in behalf of deceased friends are played upon in order to induce them to purchase these masses, we are filled with a sense of abhorrence of such priestly quackery, and with a feeling of pity for those who are held in bondage by this system of deception.

This advertisement of Roman Catholic masses follows closely the lines of many modern announcements which offer special attractions to the public. The price has been reduced by “kind permission” of the obliging bishop of the diocese, and “weekly or monthly payments” are accepted as a further inducement to the purchaser. Only one thing more is needed to make the parallel complete. If it were possible to announce “a great bankrupt sale of masses,” it might attract even a greater number of buyers.

It is astonishing that in this enlightened country, and in this year 1912, there should be found those who could seriously make such an announcement as we have quoted, and it is pitiful that there are others who will pay their money in the vain hope that these representatives of the Pope, who claims to be “king of heaven, and of earth, and of the lower regions,” can do anything to change the condition of the dead. This whole idea of purgatory and prayers for the dead grows out of that false teaching concerning the condition of the departed which represents them as being in a conscious state, and as undergoing punishment or enjoying their reward. The plain teaching of the Scriptures upon this subject sweeps away the whole foundation of this traffic in prayers for the dead.

W. W. P.