The Mercy Doors Are Coming For You!
When I wrote my article comparing the Year of Mercy to the movie Dogma, I honestly didn’t think that my analysis would be proven right. But alas, it has been.
The Year of Mercy if anything is a parody of the Catholic Church, in which everybody is going to get mercy whether they like it or not. I had heard rumblings about a “travelling door of mercy”, but when I wrote the article, I couldn’t find anything. It was almost as if all traces of it had disappeared from the internet.
Over at the Catholic Herald, we read that Portable Doors of Mercy are on the road!
The Bishop of Wrexham says it allows the sick and less mobile to experience God’s mercy
Doors of Mercy have become a familiar sight during the Holy Year, present in every cathedral and in many churches in Britain and around the world, through which Catholics can pass to gain an indulgence.
But the Diocese of Wrexham has gone one further, with a portable Door of Mercy to travel the diocese.
Bishop Peter Brignall of Wrexham said the portable Door of Mercy makes the indulgence available to those who can’t travel.
“The Portable Door of Mercy provides that opportunity for those who might not be able to go on pilgrimage to the cathedral of our diocese and pass through the door,” said Bishop Brignall.
“It allows for those who are less able and who are sick to pass through and receive the Mercy of the Father.”
The door is being transferred to different deaneries around the diocese on each Saturday in Lent.
During the Year of Mercy, Catholics can gain an indulgence by passing through a Holy Door, receiving the Eucharist and going to Confession, and praying for the Pope’s intentions.
In a statement, the Diocese of Wrexham said: “The diocese has an ageing population and many would be unable to make the journey to the cathedral – this initiative of Bishop Peter’s extends God’s mercy to all in bringing the door directly to the people.
“Last weekend, the portable Door of Mercy was taken to the parish of Buckley, Flintshire, where many hundreds of people from all over North Wales attended “24 hours for the Lord”, where priests of the diocese were stationed to hear confessions throughout that period.”
This weekend the door will be taken to Our Lady of Sorrows, Dolgellau. On Saturday 19, the Feast of St Joseph, it will be taken to St Joseph, Denbigh.
Pope Francis began the Jubilee Year of Mercy by opening a Holy Door at St Peter’s Basilica on December 8 last year. The Year of Mercy ends on November 20.
“God’s judgment will always be in the light of His mercy,” the Pope said. “In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we feel that we ourselves are part of this mystery of love.”
First and foremost, there are plenty of ways a person can receive a plenary indulgence without the need to go through the mercy doors! There is no reason at all for traveling mercy doors.
Second, you can receive the “Mercy of the Father” by going to confession and confessing your sins. You can’t receive a plenary indulgence by just performing some action.There are specific actions you must also perform to gain the indulgence. Those actions are:
- Complete detachment from sin of any kind, including venial sin.
- You must perform the work or the prayer attached to the indulgence (in this case, walking through the Mercy Door).
- Go to confession and confess all sins.
- Receive Holy Communion worthily.
- Praying for the intentions of the Pope.
The Year of Mercy weakens the notion of plenary indulgences because mention of these conditions is few and far between. Catholic and non-Catholics alike are left with the impression that all one must do to gain the plenary indulgence is to walk through these mercy doors. This article happens to mention the actions, but not until seven paragraphs in, long enough in where the reader has likely stopped reading and is now left with the false impression. If an individual does not perform the works necessary for a plenary indulgence, they are left with only a partial indulgence, yet they are left to believe they have been forgiven all temporal punishment for their sins.
Third, all of this talk about passing through these doors and making them more accessible so that the person can feel God’s mercy is a hallmark of Modernism, in which a person’s faith is only as strong as their emotional connection with it. If a person feels that what they are doing brings them closer to God, then who are you to judge if it is correct or not?
It is sad that we live in a time where those running the Church mock it. As I wrote in the other article, indulgences are a beautiful and wonderful gift from God to show his love for us. It is too bad that mercy has been redefined not to mean what it means. According to Pope Francis, one must only walk into a confessional to be forgiven, without the need to confess their sins.
Pray that God sends His mercy upon this Church and either convert this Pope or sends us another. It will be a miracle if there is any Catholicism left in the Church when Francis is through.
Number 5, praying for the intentions of the Pope, is a sticky wicket for me. I know, the SSPX says those are like unchanging charters of the Church (eg the conversion of sinners, etc), but what about his monthly, often times heretical, intentions? Haven’t been able to add those to our daily rosary for some time now. Ecumenism? The Sins Against the Earth? I’ll pass.
Very well stated, Jeff. And what a catastrophe that Almighty God our Father of Mercies’ Work of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus has been completely left out of this Year of “Mercy” which should be an important opportunity to educate people properly and stop the colossal descent in authentic, inspiring, profound, and not self-serving teaching in the Catholic world. Why was something so important left out by Catholic Church authorities at the highest levels of Church hierarchy? Because the demons behind all this desecrating who are influencing the wolves in shepherds’ clothing, the demons behind the watering down and as a result the dumbing down of Christ’s shepherds and His flock which has been going on for generations and on purpose, know its EXTRAORDINARY supernatural value. They reward, intermittently (the strongest way to influence behavior) all the fun loving, self promoting, arrogant, self worshiping, deeply feeling, bullying yet so prayerful, very busy and very noisy people ignorant of even the basics of their Faith while professing to be Catholic, those who misplace their trust in the almighty dollar (and constantly seek to acquire the money of others) who turn God’s Catholic parishes into concert venues, marketplaces, coffee shops, houses of distractions, stores whose responsibility it is now to promote only the work of certain persons (what a wonder, how dynamic), people who lead Catechism programs designed to teach children to really hate their Faith and who crown themselves with the authority to tell authentic Catholic adults and their families and not always charitably (wink) to get the hell out, people of every age, vocation, and position who were formed on purpose into sheeple who love only what serves their interests, may their will be done. Thank you for educating all people properly against this grave and very real danger (modernism, NeoCatholicism) to each precious, priceless, and immortal soul, Jeff, with another powerful article. God is at work in you!
Michelle, very well stated! I had to leave a parish for many of the reasons you’ve stated. We objected to a very Catholic-lite confirmation program (actually, that’s putting it mildly – the program didn’t really introduce anything remotely Catholic until the later chapters of the textbook, and only then it did so in a seemingly embarrassed manner). We were not on board with this parish’s move toward the Charismatic so-called renewal (which is anything but a renewal – please tell me how one ‘renews’ Catholicism by making it look, feel and sound more like pentecostal Protestantism), and since we were rather vocal about our objections, were basically shown the door. At least, the pastor didn’t seem too upset that we were leaving.
Thank God for our current parish, which is about as polar-opposite to the former one as possible.