Sacraments for sale

“WOE TO transform the churches, the ‘house of God’, into ‘markets’, perhaps even with the price list for the Sacraments. Yes, I have seen it done a few times.”

So rued Pope Francis in his morning Mass in Santa Marta over the weekend.

Of the Lord’s “impetuous” reaction, Francis said: “The Son of God is driven by love, by zeal for the house of the Lord, (seeing that it has been) converted into a market, (where they sold) oxen, sheep and doves, in the presence of money changers, (Jesus) recognizes that that place was populated by idolaters, men ready to serve money instead of God.”  

So, what else is new with this papal lamentation, having been uttered virtually to the letter in November 2014? As we reflected here in March 2015, to wit:

Selling salvation  

“IT IS written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'"

Contemplating Luke 19:46 – also Matthew 21:13 and Mark 11:17 – Pope Francis rued how priests have turned their parishes into “businesses” by affixing price tags to the sacraments, to blessings, to Mass intentions.

When Jesus whipped the moneychangers out of the temple (John 2:15), Francis professed, it was not out of rage, righteous as it was, at them, rather He was “filled with the wrath of God and zeal for His house.”
That, Francis furthered, rising out of the Lord having “an issue with money because redemption is free; it is God’s free gift, He comes to bring us the all-encompassing gratuity of God’s love.”
Thus, with the practice of pricing the sacraments and church services, salvation is essentially on sale. With the parish priest devolved into an entrepreneur: capitalizing on God, profiting in cash. God and mammon served?   

Noted the Pope: “I think of how our attitude can scandalize people with unpriestly habits in the Temple: the scandal of doing business, the scandal of worldliness.”

Admonished the Pope: “It is interesting: the people of God can forgive their priests, when they are weak; when they slip on a sin, the people know how to forgive them.  But there are two things that the people of God cannot forgive: a priest attached to money and a priest who mistreats people. This they cannot forgive! It is scandalous…”
And the scandals have not subsided any, since Francis made that sermon on November 21, 2014 at the Vatican's Domus Sanctae Marthae.

For instance, there is this parish priest called “Father One-Five” for the uniform rate of P1,500 for the sacraments of baptism, confirmation when performed by the bishop in his parish church, and extreme unction, as well as Mass offerings.

It’s not “P1,500 all-in” however for the funeral Mass, with the usual “complimentary” final blessing of the dead priced with a separate P1,500. The poor grief-stricken folk the deceased left behind thereby pushed in an either-or bind. Forced to choose whichever of the funeral Mass or the final blessing they believe would facilitate faster their beloved dead’s passage through the Pearly Gates.

This same Father One-Five has another moniker, “Sobre,”substituted for the first two syllables of his three-syllabic name. Here’s how he got it:   

The intentions for every Mass, this father reads himself – in effect, as both personal and pastoral pious pleadings for the Almighty to grant them; in fact, to take note of the number of persons making the intentions. And cross-referencing them with the number of envelopes offered for the Mass. Woe unto him whose intention was read but failed to back it up with an envelope, filled and sealed, but of course.

There is even this story current in his parish of how he sent back an envelope to the Mass offerer after he found a measly P20 inside it.

Which reminds us of the lesson of the widow’s mite in Luke 21:1-4: “As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.  He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.  ^‘Truly I tell you,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others.  All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’”

It’s not an all-too-different modus for another parish priest. Unfixed but floating are his rates for administering the sacraments, depending on the number of ninong and ninang for baptisms and weddings: from P300 to P500 per capita for the former, from P1,000 upwards for the latter, conditioned on the luxuriousness of the church décor, the expanse of the wedding coverage, the “signatureness” of the wedding party’s apparel.      

Indeed, the Pope: “It is scandalous when the Temple, the House of God, becomes a place of business… [as though] the church was being rented out.”
Then there is yet another one who makes himself an ambulant vendor in offering novenas, going house-by-house in his parish to dedicate the household to a particular patron saint. The sealed white envelope expected, right after the final “Amen.”      

The rate, reportedly depending on the efficacy of the saint in wielding miracles: Saints Jude and Rita, the patrons of the impossible, at the top of the menu; St. Anthony of Padua, intercessor for anything and anyone lost, next; followed by St. Monica, for the reformation of wayward sons; St. Lucia, for clear eyesight; St. Apollonia, for toothache, etcetera. I’ve yet to hear though of a novena that good father celebrated in honor of St. Francis de Sales, the patron of journalists.

Salvation for a price. Sheer simony, first impacted in the Christian world with the sale of indulgences that factored primarily in Martin Luther’s revolt against the Roman Catholic Church embodied in his Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, better known as “The 95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” he supposedly posted on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

Indeed, finding simony, along with the other issues Luther raised in his theses – nepotism, usury, pluralism, and other clerical abuses – still extant, along with the current clerical scandals of paedophilia, non-sacramented wives and unfathered children, a lifestyle anchored on materialism, I am tempted to write my own “100 Theses Disputing the Power and Efficacy of the Catholic Priesthood.”

Lest this be misconstrued as a sweeping indictment of the clergy, let me affirm that a large number have remained steadfast with their alter Christus persona. Like the good Archbishop Emeritus Apu Ceto, they make enough reason to keep faith in the priesthood.

Some feeling akin here to that in Genesis 18:16-33, with Abraham pleading with the Lord to spare Sodom: “…Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?...

…He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

Come to think Pope Francis again: “Who am I to judge?”