THE WONDERFUL CATHOLIC CHURCH: All Souls Day Homily

Fr.  Joe  Byerly,  Pastor  of   St.  Rose  of  Lima  Parish  in  Haddon  Heights,  New  Jersey,  was  the  celebrant  at  the  8:00  a.m.  Sunday  Mass  celebrating  All  Souls  Day,  November  2,  2014.  His  homilies  are  always  a  good   portrait  of  Christian  theology  relevant  to  the  4  Scripture  readings.

In  raising  the  concept  of  restitution  owed  to  God  in  Purgatory,    he  employed  a  hypothetical   in  which  kids  playing  baseball  inadvertently  put  out  a  neighbor's  window  with  the  baseball,  and  go  to  the  neighbor  and  offer  to  pay  for  the  damage.

In  my  case,  around  1964,    we  were  playing  baseball  on  Rutland  Street   between  Wakeling  and  Allengrove  in  the  Frankford  section  of  Philadelphia.  It  was  my  turn  at  bat.    The  ball  was   pitched  to  me,    I  swung  and  I   caught  that  little  sucker   more  squarely  and  more  perfectly  than  any  other  baseball  ever  pitched  to  me  before  or  since.   Everyone,  including  me,  was  shocked   at  the  power  of  the  hit.  We  all  fell  silent  and  watched  that  ball   fly  about  250  feet   and  cut   a  perfectly  round    hole  through  one  of  the  windows  on  the  garage   of  the  grumpy  old  widower  living  across  the   driveway   from  Judge  Dwyer.  

Everyone  stared  in  shock  --  and  scattered.     Suddenly  I  was  alone  on  the  street.

I  went  down  to  the  guy's  house,  knocked  on  the  door,  and  apologized.  He  said,  "Well,  just  you  pay  for  it!"

I  asked,  "How  much?"

He  answered,  "$2,000,  but  I'll  settle  for  $2."

Fr.  Byerly  began  his   All  Souls  Day  homily  by  saying  that  one  of  his  pet  peeves  is  how  so  many  men  of  the  cloth   presiding  at  funerals,  and  how  so  many  of  the  faithful   going  to  the  funerals  of  friends  and  neighbors,  prostitute  theology  for  the  sake  of  the  bereaved   by  throwing  out  the  concept  of  Purgatory  or  Hell   at  funerals  and  telling  the  mourners  only  that  the  deceased  is  in  Heaven.  "The  deceased  need  our  prayers!"   he  noted.

I  bumped  into  this  problem  only  a  week  ago.   I  was  sitting  down  with  my  neighbor,  who  is  an  Evangelical   Protestant  minister.     "One  of  the  things  that  always  struck  me,"  he  said,  "Is  how   absolutely  Calvanistic   Catholic  priests  are  at  baptisms  and  funerals."

I  knew  what  he  was  talking  about  --  the  same  thing  Fr.  Byerly  complained  of  today  --   talking  at  baptisms  or   funerals   as  though  the  newborn   or  the  deceased,  respectively,  were  predestined  to  Heaven  by  their  Christianity.

"So  let  me  get  this  straight,"  I  responded  to  my  Evangelical  Protestant  minister  friend,   "If  I  go  to  one  of  the  funerals  in  your  church,  I'll  hear  you  warning  the  crying  widow  that  her  husband  might  well  be  smoking  in  Hell."