[Catholic Caucus] Praying for the Dead: Duty and Privilege

National Catholic Register ^ | November 28, 2012 | Lori Hadacek Chaplin

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[Catholic Caucus] Praying for the Dead: Duty and Privilege

My mom had a strong devotion to the holy souls and prayed for them often. Even before she became ill, she would tell us to make sure that the priest who buried her did not eulogize about her saintliness. She was brought up to believe that Catholics had a duty to pray for the dead, and not only was it our obligation; it was our privilege.

Straight-to-Heaven-for-All Illusion

Dutch psychologist Gerard van den Aardweg, author of Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages and Warnings From Purgatory (Tan, 2009), thinks Catholics today have a general disinterest in the “Four Last Things” — death, judgment, heaven and hell. “We are children of our age of superficiality and lust of ease,” Van den Aardweg told me. “Many Catholics live on the surface of things and are not really waked up by their spiritual shepherds from their wishful dreams, such as ‘everyone goes straight to heaven.’ They have few moral qualms about whether their lifestyle is incompatible with the will of God and with their Catholic faith.”

Van den Aardweg added, “There’s a deceptive, arrogant mentality predominant in the Christian and Catholic world, which ‘loves an exclusively cheerful religion.’ As Blessed John Henry Newman already foresaw in the 19th century: Sin would come to be seen as merely a fault or human weakness, Christians would think God’s mercy condones everything, and ‘punishment’ and ‘penance’ would be considered medieval ideas.”

Modern Catholics, compared to my mom who grew up pre-Vatican II, may be less informed about the Church’s teaching on purgatory and the needs of the holy souls.

“Purgatory hasn’t been promoted by a segment of the clergy, who, post-Vatican II, found it embarrassing.

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