JESUS SOLD IN THE MASS: MERCENARY MASSES AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Despite saying the mass is the same sacrifice as Jesus made on the cross and his body and blood are dispensed in the form of bread and wine the Church uses it for income!

Interestingly, the Church says that it does not charge for Masses but only accepts the offerings that people make in gratitude for the great service rendered to their loved ones. The favour is getting the departed out of, or closer to it, Purgatory. Purgatory is a place of purification and suffering where you have to go after death if you are not fit to enter the presence of God but not sinful enough to go to Hell forever. If all this is true then the smaller the stipend the lesser the gratitude. To throw the priest an old tenner is to let down those who are liberated from Purgatory by his Masses.

Priests claim that they don’t force anybody to pay them and will say Masses without it. There is social pressure put on the people to pay. People would be too embarrassed to go to the priest empty-handed. Friends would ask them how much the Mass cost so they would pay to avoid lying. The priest is grateful for the fact that people are forced to pay and takes advantage of that while boasting that he is so selfless that he doesn’t mind doing Mass for nothing. His insincerity is evidenced by the fact that he takes the money and keeps the coercive tradition up when one sentence could halt it and suppress it in his parish. The Church teaches that it would be a sin to risk offending the priest in case he sins over it and to make a priest sin is worse than making an ordinary person sin for the priest is consecrated to God. If priests are going to say the Mass anyway what do they accept payment for?

The priests do not make sure that the person who feels they have no choice but to pay for Masses are shown the alleged truth that they are wrong. You will search a long time before you find anybody who was told that they didn't have to feel forced.

Some say that Masses have to be paid for because financially supporting the Church is an act of charity and can be offered to God to vicariously help the souls just like any other good deed. This means that the more you give the priest the better. Not giving all you can is making little of your friends in Purgatory for if you loved them you would spend anything to free them. Giving until it hurts increases the power of the Mass to help the souls.

Priests who don’t charge are no better than those who do for they don’t kick up a fuss to try and stop the practice.

Priests can say the Masses for nothing therefore they should. There are other ways to raise funds and make money. It is disgraceful how some priests like Fr D. Crasso, S.J. (who wrote a book called Why Does God…?, St Paul Publications, Bucks, 1970 in which he told this big lie) claim that priests have the right to charge for Masses because it is their only means of subsistence. A person would need to have no thinking capacity to believe that! Even knocking door to door looking for donations would be better. The Church is wealthy enough so no priest should need to sell Jesus.

Sometimes, priests claim that they are not selling Masses for the Mass belongs to God. If they are not then the employee is not selling her or his services. It is theft to sell what is not theirs and that is what the priests are doing. They are selling God for the whole point of Mass is communion so they are selling God under the form of bread. They are prostituting God.

You need as much evidence for the existence of the sun as you do to say that God is a wafer for the priest might not have been validly ordained or might have chosen to fake the consecration of the wafer. Or perhaps the Church is wrong that the wafer turns into the body of God. Jesus could refuse to enter the communion wafer under some circumstances but the Church says he always becomes the wafer. He must be forced then when he goes that far! The Church has no evidence that it is not knowingly or unknowingly forcing God into a wafer for sale. But it still sells the wafer God.

The Mass proclaims the priest to be superior to God. The Mass treats God like a trinket.

They are putting God up for sale.

Catholics will be upset when they hear that a rich man who committed a lot of Purgatory-sins will go to Heaven quicker than the poor almost saintly man just because he had more money to leave the priests to have Masses celebrated for the repose of his soul. Catholics reply that though the priests will offer a lot more Masses for the rich man, we have no way of knowing what God will do with the sacrifices offered in them. God might accept them as atonement for the sins of the poor man rather than the rich man who paid for them. If God distributes his blessings as he sees fit then he will help those who need his help most.

The Church is deliberately overlooking one thing: the Masses are meant to help the rich man and might help him and not the poor man especially when the rich man is the one who needs the most shielding from God’s anger and who needs the most help. And again you will search a lot before you find a Catholic who has heard of this doctrine that God does what he pleases with the Masses. The practice of saying masses for specific individuals proves that the Masses are for those individuals. And why can’t the Mass be offered in general and instead of one person specifically? It would be if God really could do what he likes with the merits in the Mass. There is no need to give the impression that it is for one person if it is not so the Church does intend it to be for one person and is telling God to forget about whoever needs the most help and to give it to the person the Mass was offered for just because the priest was paid.

Suppose the poor man paid for a Mass for himself after his death while the Rich man paid for hundreds for the repose of his soul. Catholics claim that since the rich man gave out of his abundance that his Masses won’t be as powerful as the poor man’s Mass for it hurt the poor man a lot to purchase his Mass. No, for neither made a great sacrifice for how can leaving money to anyone be a sacrifice when you are dead?

You can say the rich man finds it harder because of his avarice to leave money for Masses than the poor man making the rich man's the bigger sacrifice. It would be harder to part your wealth than to give away what little money you have when you are used to poverty. Or you can say the poor man didn't pay for his Mass in a spirit of sacrifice but to avoid the pains of Purgatory that he feared. The argument that the Rich Man's sacrifice must be lesser than the poor man's doesn't work at all.

And besides the Church teaches that the most important good work we can do is to go to Mass and so the rich man is superior to the poor man when he pays for Masses.

Some say that “It is a mistake to say that the rich man did more good than the poor man because he could get more Masses said and Masses are the most important things and good works in the world. God will regard the poor man as just as good because he would have done the same if he could have.” But actions speak louder than words and Jesus agreed for he said that people coming before him calling him Lord and reminding him of the miracles they did wouldn't be enough for him and he wanted action from them. So the rich man because he pays for more Masses is regarded as better and more worthy than the poor man. The poor man would do anything, if he was good, to pay for Masses and even fast or starve three days a week to manage it. If he failed then the rich man was better.

The message is, the more money you give to the Church the holier you are and the greater the chance that your stay in Purgatory will be short. It would be a sin to let yourself go to Purgatory or to be kept in it.

It is theft to play on the grief of the bereaved to obtain money. Parting people and their money by blackmail is theft. It is no help to say that the graces won may help departed people you don’t even know instead of your loved ones. We have to help strangers so we are still being blackmailed.

Clearly, priests are saying, “Hand over your cash or we will roast your loved ones in Purgatory if they are still there”. With this caring attitude, their prayers for the dead can’t be of any value or much avail for there is no love in them and real love is a prayer. The Masses would offend the dead for this reason.

A mortal sinner deserves and is going to Hell forever. A venial sinner deserves not Hell but Purgatory. The priests’ Masses are devoid of value to God for their prayers are unacceptable to him if he really is a being who accepts only pure love. They tell sinners that they can do good while harbouring evil in their hearts which is a barefaced lie. When the priests believe that a mortal sinner cannot do real good for he is attached to sin, they know that it is the same with a venial sinner. The principle that condemns the mortal sinner’s goodness condemns the venial sinner’s. Many feel that they are in it for the money and by taking your fiver or whatever they are telling you that that is all your loved one is worth if she or he is in agony in Purgatory.

Priests get their income from the people. Then they have to get money to say Masses for their benefactors. There is just no gratitude in them. They have no respect or love for the deceased. They are just flatterers when they pray.

If we love our dead we will not mock and insult them by having anything to do with any Catholic religious rites which are allegedly held on their behalf for they are not marks of respect at all. Some of us will be attacked by our families for staying away from Rome’s Masses. Explain that it is against your conscience and make it clear that you know you are doing the right thing. Do not fail to do this for the priest does try to make non-attendance seem to be some kind of disgrace.

It is even worse that Rome teaches that the priest just causes the sacrifice of the Mass so that we can offer it with him. So, there is no need for purchasing Masses for the dead at all for we can simply go to communion for the dead and offer the sacrifice. Rome says it is all the one sacrifice anyway. Funny nobody is reminded of that when they come with their stipend.

You know that if you live on in this body you are more likely to live than you are if you die. Then for a priest and a Church to come along and tell you that God should be praised for taking lives and to “comfort” you with this astonishing attitude is something that he should be corrected for. God has no right to take lives and expect praise for it and the comforts of the Church cannot work and are really insults and will bring more pain in the long run.

Humanism offers a way to be free from fear and bad inclinations and to become happy without drawing upon alleged forces from another world to do it. The system works by using your own earthly resources and is non-spiritual for that reason. For a religion to offer benefits through sacraments is to offer a distraction from the system and give false hope when there is a better way. The sacraments are therefore anti-virtue and anti-happiness and deserve no reverence and priests need to realise that. The Eucharist being the chief sacrament is naturally the most offensive.

The Bible said that those who preached the gospel could get paid for it. It is hard to believe that it would be permitted to make a profit from religion. The Bible does not say that preachers may have more than they need to do their work. There is no evidence that preachers were paid at all except with food and shelter. There is something vulgar about any religion making a profit. It shows that it is making money from the gift of God which is no better than trying to sell it.  

The rule that you will burn in Hell forever if you miss Mass on Sunday despite going every Sunday is just a threat that is useful for getting people to attend and drop money onto the collection plate. The rule is so harsh it can’t be anything else but mercenary. The Catholic Church should thoroughly research if the Mass really does what it claims – makes people more like Christ. It would return money paid for Masses and gathered at collections if it does not or if the benefits have an alternative explanation.

The God of the Bible says that where sin is plentiful there grace abounds for those who are most sinful need the most help. The Catholic Church denies this because in its sacraments including the Mass, those who love the Lord the most get the most graces (page 9, CEC Journal, Bill Jackson, Indiana, September 1998)

Conclusion

The Catholic Church prostitutes its God and makes money from religion.

BOOKS CONSULTED
Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Book 2, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, MH Gill & Son, Dublin, 1954
Apologetics for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd, London, 1950
Born-Again Catholics and the Mass, William C Standridge Independent Faith Mission, North Carolina, 1980
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Confession of a Roman Catholic, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1985
Critiques of God, Edited by Peter A Angeles (Religion and Reason Section), Prometheus Books, New York, 1995
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
Eucharist, Centre of Christian Life, Rod Kissinger SJ, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1970
Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Fr Charles Chiniquy, Chick Publications, Chino, 1985
Is Jesus Really Present in the Eucharist? Michael Evans, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1986
Handbook to the Controversy with Rome, Vol 2, Karl Von Hase MD, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906
Living in Christ, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne, 1969
Martin Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940
Roman Catholic Claims, Charles Gore, MA, Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1894
Salvation, The Bible and Roman Catholicism, William Webster, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1990
Secrets of Romanism, Joseph Zaccello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Mass, Sacrifice and Sacrament, William F Dunphy, CSSR, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1986
The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments, Rev John A Gregg, APCK, Dublin, 1928
The Student’s Catholic Doctrine, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith, California, 1986
Why Does God…? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls, Bucks, 1970

The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/  

BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible