Over the weekend I traveled to attend a burial ceremony of a friends daughter who had passed away. The family is devout Catholics and as expected the burial was conducted by the Catholic church and typically it was read off a script that was written and endorsed by the church.
It got too wrong for me and at some point I stopped saying AMEN and started listening. I then decided that the next time am at my desk, I will write about this and thanks to the internet.
Please think not that I hate catholics , they are awesome people, I have family and friends I care about who are catholics. The purpose of this article is to tell you this is wrong. Please read here about the state of the dead first.
The person presiding over the burial barely said a word of his own. All his words were written out in a book I believe is given to all Catholic churches to conduct such ceremonies.
In the prayers, I found certain things that are not Christian;
They believe the person was ‘going to heaven’. If when one dies, they go to heaven, why does God wait until after burial before the person goes to heaven? Does it mean God has to wait for the cover of darkness combined with a huge mass of earth in the grave to steal the person away? And where does that put God’s word in the bible?
John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 1Thessalonians 4:16-17
This clearly means NO ONE is going to heaven upon death.
They prayed to God to ‘accept’ the dead. This is where it started getting weird. It is also how the catholic church introduced ‘bonus points for heaven.
indulgence: a partial remission of the temporal punishment, esp. purgatorial atonement, that is still due for a sin or sins
(See “indulgence” Random House Dictionary, Random House Inc, 2010; See also The American Heritage Science Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2010)
In other words, the priest is praying (and there was an offering) upon which they expect God to accept this person into heaven. Now am not saying the person is not worth of heaven, that is a decision for God based on how you lived on earth, but where do we get the nerve to tell God to put someone where ‘we want’ based on our prayers and whatever money we contribute? Read here more about this
Finally they actually asked the dead person to intercede for them together with Mary the ‘mother of Jesus’. Apparently praying to God directly is not enough that we have to start asking the dead to wake up from their ‘eternal rest’ and approach God on our behalf.
Catholics easily accept this doctrine because the church has overtime build a foundation where the priests are the ones who can interpret the bible while the congregation is to accept the translation as received no questions asked.
If you are a catholic, I invite you to read these articles on corruptions of Christianity and find out the doctrines you are taught that are completely unbiblical.