AsktheBuilder.com News - December 25, 2022

Issue #1213 (I think...)

Dear ,

Merry Christmas! 

We celebrate Christmas at the Carter house because we're Catholics. If you celebrate another holiday at this time of year, Kathy, Willow, and I wish you happiness, peace, and no indigestion should your holiday involve dabbling in food.

You may ask, what's my favorite Christmas song?

Wow, that's a TOUGH question.

I'd have to say it's this one because it evokes several very pleasant thoughts, one of them a possible future event.

Ed's Observation

Last Sunday Ed reached out to me and I felt it was an excellent message to share on Christmas Day. Here's what he sent:

"Thanks for the great job you do helping people/do it yourselfers. I am very curious about what you said in Sunday's edition about "getting to Heaven". Was what you said done as humor or were you serious? I am not taking you to task about this but my curiosity was piqued."

First and foremost I have to come clean about my comment about putting $500 in Kathy's pocket should she precede me in death. That humorous idea came from my best friend in Cincinnati, OH - Richard Anderson.

When Richard's wife Linda called Kathy and me with the sad news about having to send him back to Heaven, she recounted the story about how he had told her, "Linda, if I die first be SURE to put $300 in my pocket so I can pay your way into Heaven."

Richard had a tremendous sense of humor and the LOVE he and Linda shared between one another was as brilliant as the sun is in the sky on a clear New Hampshire day.

I can see him saying that to Linda and I can hear her giggle or come back with a quip about how HE would be the one needing a bribe so he could cross the threshold of the Pearly Gates!

If you want to know all about Richard's other great qualities, I suggest you go here.

The other half of last week's humor about Heaven involved the Catholic practice/history of indulgences. No doubt books have been written about the topic. Perhaps other religions have these but I'm not certain.

But before I get into that, I truly believe that God has a sense of humor. You need that context to understand my comment from last week's issue.

The more trips around the sun I make, the more I'm in awe of how the Catholic Church has mastered the power of psychology.

Countless times in past issues of this newsletter I've referenced how psychology is used on you every day. Just this past week I shared with you a letter I wrote for those of the next generation. It was published by the Epoch Times. If you've not read that letter, do so and share it with young people. The last part of the letter gives examples of how psychology is used on you every day to get you to do things you might not otherwise do.

Scarcity, the most powerful of all psychological buttons, is pushed constantly by the Catholic Church. They want to make getting to Heaven SCARCE. If it was EASY to get into Heaven, then the Church wouldn't have much power over you. Get it?

Please understand that what follows is what Sister Mary Elephant taught me in grade school religion class. It's been dredged up from my tiny gray cells so it may not be altogether accurate. But it's my story.

Hundreds of years ago the Church invented indulgences. In their infinite wisdom, the Church created a holding cell for all of us before we could get into Heaven. It was called Purgatory. After you died, you'd go there and serve some time until you could finally start playing a harp up in Heaven.

The more you sinned on Earth, the longer you'd have to be uncomfortable in Purgatory. It's probably where the phrase pay for your sins originated. You'd pay in Purgatory with your time.

Past popes decided to use the psychological button of reciprocity and created indulgences. You could buy them hundreds of years ago. Think of indulgences as holy hall passes. Popes sold these to kings and wealthy people to stuff the Vatican's coffers with gold and riches.

If you had ENOUGH indulgences, you could bypass Purgatory and enter Heaven immediately upon dying. Remember playing Monopoly and getting that magic yellow card you could get in Monopoly where you advance around the board and go directly to Go and collect $200?

The indulgences morphed into tiny treats for us small folk who didn't have chests of gold to give to the popes. At the end of lots of prayers in my giant missal, you could get an indulgence of a week or two, and sometimes longer, if you said the prayer.

One day I found a prayer in my missal that had a three year's worth of indulgence. Often these prayers had a limit where you could only say it once a month. Not this bad boy!

I hit the indulgence jackpot! I memorized the prayer and said it hundreds/thousands of times as a kid walking home from school and church after serving mass. I had tens of thousands of years of indulgences saved up. Back then I thought I could sin all I wanted as I had my Heaven hall pass.

Indulgences are a huge joke around the Carter house. I told my kids that they MUST PUT MY MISSAL in my casket as it's my Advance to Go (Heaven) card. Kathy just rolls her eyes and says that the indulgences got wiped out with the wretched Vatican II edicts and rule changes.

I cry foul and will plead my case with St. Peter that's it's bad form to change the rules in the middle of the game. I feel that I'm grandfathered in and that anyone born AFTER Vatican II, well they're the ones that can't benefit from indulgences.

That's my Christmas story and I'm sticking to it.

Here are some photos that might make it feel more Christmassy around your home!

Put your thinking cap on. Next Sunday on New Year's Day I'll have a game for you. You get to pick the Ice-In date for my lake. Start looking up historic Ice-In dates for nearby Lake Winnipesaukee. Then do some critical thinking.

Look at a map. Compare my lake, Lake Winnisquam, to Winnipesaukee. Peer into the long-range WX forecast.

Or, you can just guess. Those that get the date right get a FREE copy of my Digital Library. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Tim Carter

Founder - www.AsktheBuilder.com

Morse Man - www.W3ATB.com