This story is so bizarre that I have to share it here, though there’s no real fuckery there, only befuddlement:
Short summary: Catholic priests used the wrong wine in the eucharist, so thousands of masses were “invalid”. That obviously means that all prayers for the deceased that the masses were celebrated for are invalid too.
I imagine the heavenly administration:
Angel clerk #1: “I see that a mass was celebrated for Maggie Smith. That means we can allow her from purgatory to Heaven. I’ll check the box.”
Angel clerk #2: “Wait, it was brought to my attention that the eucharist was performed with a wine that contained traces of elderberry! That’s an abomination before the Lord, and the mass was invalid!”
Angel clerk #1: “Woohoo, thanks for the correction! That’ll be 100,000 years more in purgatory for Maggie.”
The fuckery is in the comments I made the mistake of scrolling down to. A few decent-seeming people were getting shouted down by others who seem to have based their fantasy of Heaven on the DMV.
No, I’m pretty sure everyone, religious or not, associates the DMV with Hell.
Seriously, I’m talking about people acting like Jesus personally dictated “The Code of Canon Law 924 §3”, which apparently specifies what kind of wine the Church approves for ceremonial use. (And which, at minimum, smacks of privilege, but also reads like a license for the Church to extort kickbacks under the guise of some kind of certification program. I don’t know if they do, but it has that kind of feel.)
Oregon has a sensible law about marriage–if you believe the person who performed the ceremony (distinct from the state paperwork, generally) was legally qualified to do it, your marriage is valid. This ought to apply to certified wine as well.
One would think that an omniscient god who cares about his flock would have let someone know. “Hey, bud. That wine you’ve started using has elderberry in it and I don’t like that. Pick another one.”
“Come to the Catholic side. We have chocolate” might stop the erosion of believers.
Would at least work better than the bland cracker. When I was still in the club, the hoi polloi never got wine anyway, with or without elderberry. That might have been a bit more of a pull.
It used to be a good brand. But it has decreased in quality while increasing in price. We always used to buy it for Christmas but I don’t anymore. If I want good chocolate I buy other brands, or I go to the local independent chocolate place here in town.
The local department stores will usually have Russell Stover stuff all over their seasonal department around holidays like Easter, Valentine’s Day, Christmas… Any holiday that might include themed chocolates, they’re all over.
It’s not very good. It’s edible, but bland and waxy, and turns dry and crumbly quick if you don’t eat it right away. I don’t buy it anymore.
C. S. Lewis, in the foreword to The Screwtape Letters, mentions that angels are traditionally depicted with bird wings, and devils with bat wings, because people like birds better than bats. But he likes both birds and bats better than bureaucrats, and so that’s how he depicted Screwtape.
Catholicism does have several doctrines along those lines (including, I’m pretty sure, for marriage). Another example is the “baptism of intent”, where a person (or their parents) intends for them to be baptized, but they die before it happens. But I don’t know what the doctrine is concerning invalid Eucharist.
As for the bland communion wafers, I’m honestly not sure why matzoh isn’t more popular as communion bread. The religious requirements on it are the same, since of course communion bread draws from the Jewish tradition of Passover bread in the first place. OK, so matzoh isn’t exactly the most exciting food, either, but it’s better than those little white round things most Catholic churches use.
