New England readers will be interested to know that Prof. Scott Hahn is giving a day of talks at St. Joseph Church in Charlton, MA (that's near Sturbridge) on Saturday, June 28. Tickets are $10, and if you're interested, read on for the details:
I had lunch with Spirit-filled Christian Guy on Friday. We started talking about prayer and I brought up praying for the dead. He said, "There ain't no such place as purgatory!" I told him I wasn't talking about Purgatory. One of the merits of praying for the dead is that God, who is outside of time, takes into account our prayers for someone who has passed on at the time they are judged, even if that is in the past. I think this is sensible and true. He disagreed.
"Someone is either going to heaven or hell based on whether or not they accept Christ while they are alive. You are just wasting your time if you're praying for the dead!"
I appreciate any thoughts or Scriptural passages that might help me out. Thanks!
It's funny, but over the last couple days I've been reflecting on the SSPX situation, and how its various leaders are now quoting Archbishop Lefebvre to justify contradictory offers. Some, like Fr. Aulagnier if I am not mistaken, feel that Lefebvre would have accepted Rome's recent offer. Others don't. Who is right?
In a limited way, probably both. We humans are self-contradictory at times; we also like to create God in our own image. This is why Christ gave us the Roman papacy, so we would always know where the Church is. Take your eye off the papacy and you get chaos and contradiction.
