Pay and pray

19 Jun 2006

From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding John Marsden’s will comes this:

And if fellow parishioners at St John’s Catholic Church in Campbelltown thought they had heard the last of Mr Marsden they were mistaken, given the money he left for special Masses.

Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, said yesterday that some priests charged nominal fees of $5, $10 or $20 to say prayers for the repose of the soul, while others charged nothing.

Asked yesterday about the $20,000 Mr Marsden had left for this purpose, Dr Pell described it as “a good investment”.

Uhmm, okay. We (Protestants/Catholics) really, really are not on the same page. Or the same book. If Cardinal Pell’s comment is indicative of any kind of official position — and one would hope that it is, for, quite clearly, Protestantism’s failure is that it rejects a central heirarchical (human) authority — we’re probably not even in the same library.

I thought they left all that indulgences/purgatory stuff alone a little while after Luther? Apparently not.