More Weirdness

You're made to go to confession in second grade, prior to receiving First Communion. What is one supposed to confess at that age?

Embezzlement?

Adultery?


I myself confessed to poor table manners on that occasion, using a fork incorrectly, and the kind priest told me that wasn't a sin. Well!!! A lot of people ought to be grateful for THAT, I'd say. And the ones who talk with their mouths full--good thing for THEM there's no penalty in the hereafter. If only parents had that to fall back on.

"Hold your fork the right way, Billy, or you will burn for three years."

"What, Mommy?"

"It says right here in the catechism, honey. And I wouldn't sit with your knee up on the chair either. That means a burning log falls on your head."

Some people must die with tremendous sentences attached, mustn't they? I mean a person with bad fork behavior and maybe a few impure thoughts--cough cough--could leave the earth with a very modest and do-able sentence, it seems to me.

"Impure thoughts? Is that it, lady? Go on down to the Hot and Humid area and check in with Louie. I got work to do. Yeah, the one with the Johnny Depp picture on the door."

Maybe the purgatory guidelines run very close to the US penal code. Three to five for this, eight to ten for that. That seems reasonable to me.
What about some of those serial killers or wicked bad criminals? Mustn't they have left this earth with insurmountable terms to serve in Purgatory? Like four life sentences? Of course it would be impossible to complete a sentence like that, which is the point here on earth. There must be "lifers" in purgatory. I wonder if they're given cigarettes.

Catholicism in my day was full of doodads and things you wore around your neck and carried secretly and fondled and prayed on all during the day and night. If you knew the right novenas, you were in. If you uttered the right little phrases (called "ejaculations" and that is no lie), you could lop off a month or two from the purg debt and there were even things called "mortifications" that could further bring your total down. A mortification would be possible if, say, you are comfortable with your elbows on the desk. It's easy. Just don't put your elbows there. Offer it up. Mortify yourself.

Just make yourself miserable. That was basically it.

Only my opinion, folks. And we all know where I'm going later.

A bientot
love,
Becky