A Modest Proposal - Mass Savings

While I am in favour of mass education and mass literacy I have a problem with mass cards.

These cards, within the Roman Catholic tradition, signified the "purchase" of a mass, or of its benefits, in favour of a third party.

They were usually used in the context of funerals to attempt to purchase the escape of the recently deceased from the torments of Purgatory and release them into the everlasting bliss of the heavenly abode.

Funerals provoke the purchase and presentation of up to hundreds of mass cards for the benefit of a recently departed individual soul.

Now, this gives rise to a serious theological conundrum. The benefits of a single mass are supposed to be infinite. So a single mass should not only offset the punishment of an individual soul, but it should actually sort out all souls for all time.

The matter has been complicated in recent times by the selling of pre-signed mass cards whose links to bona fide masses by authorised clerics has been a matter of dispute. This has led to some dubiously constitutional legislation which remains to be tested.

I would like to make a concrete proposal.

Why not subscribe (or whatever) to one mass to be said for your intentions during your lifetime. And then simply send "intentions" cards to people which would be backstopped by the infinite benefits of the already "purchased" mass.

A once-off lifetime money-saver but reaping all and every benefit of tradionally repetitive Mass Card purchases.

Where's the catch?