There are tens of millions of lapsed Catholics. Though raised as Catholics, often divorced, remarried, and comfortable with their lives, they do not want to seek reconciliation with The Church for surprisingly few reasons that include:
1. “The priest scandal was so awful that I just lost all respect for The Church.” This is often said with the outside corners of the mouth turned down so that the listener can’t help but be made aware of how very, very seriously the lapsed Catholic takes this opinion. (Responses include: “Priests did not become child molesters. A few child molesters became priests, just as they become ministers, rabbis, and teachers. The old comparison of a flawed priest with a cracked pitcher makes it clear that the flaw in the pitcher has nothing to do with the water poured out of it.”)
2. “I have to get an annulment, and The Church is going to make money from it.” (One may answer: “The Sacrament of Marriage is an important one that is not lightly set aside. There are dozens of hours involved in providing an annulment. Near endless forms must be filled out, interviews made, and all that detailed work requires a paid staff. Isn’t it only fair that the person requesting that all the work be done make a minimal contribution to defray some of the expenses?”
3. “I just don’t believe in all that stuff any more.” Sometimes, this is accompanied by a plaintive plea, “I’d like to believe, but I just can’t.” (The meaning behind the words is tragic, indicating that vanity has, hopefully only temporarily, drowned out the cry of the soul to join with God through cheerful obedience.
4. “As a woman, I feel that the Catholic Church treats me as a second-class citizen.” This is endlessly popular, in several variants that replace “woman” with “pornographer”, “homosexual”, “lesbian”, and “animal rights activist disgusted that Lassie can’t go to Heaven”. TV talk shows frequently have guests who can say this in several ways. When it is duly repeated, a camera often scans the audience, usually composed of women, all of whom are either applauding wildly or nodding grimly in agreement. (One response, “The Catholic Church’s oldest religious enemy is found within the Moslem religion. It teaches that women are so unequal to men that they should not have the right to vote, often should have their clitorises painfully removed, and be divorced, without a property settlement, at the triple recitation, even email, of their husband saying ‘I divorce you’. That’s a much more accurate description of ‘second class citizen’, but evokes absolutely no negative response from the same women who owe their far more equal treatment to two thousand years of Catholic teaching. The only people who can compare the two are either too ignorant or too cowardly.”)
Two possible conclusions to a lapsed soul’s life on earth are summed up in Dante’s account of the souls belonging to the two rapacious brothers, both Dukes of Montefeltro . On his journey through the underworld, Dante met the soul of one Duke in the Circles of Hell, where it was sent after his sudden death in some nefarious enterprise. Dante met the other Duke’s soul in Purgatory. He also died from pursuing some illicit gain, his horse having fallen over on him, trapping him in a mire in which he drowned. His death took some time, and he used a least a moment of his final minutes to ask God to forgive him. That prayer was granted, and his soul made the painful journey through Purgatory, eventually getting, if he didn’t look back, into Heaven.
The souls of the Dukes of Montefeltro symbolize every lapsed Catholic we meet. If we are able to download within their minds the fact that even a brief, heartfelt request for forgiveness in the last seconds of life will be granted, the departing soul may access that information and use it to avoid an eternity of pain.
We also want to point out that it’s far safer, and far better, to avoid unnecessary pain in Purgatory by making the request while we still have time to live in accord with how He wants us spend our lives. But, lapsed Catholics would not be in the state they’re in if they were able to consider that seriously enough to act on it. Sometimes, it may be better to start at the end and work backwards.
