I would be most grateful if someone could show me the Church's teaching   that it is lawful to pray for the repose of the soul of a pertinacious Anglican who died without any wish to convert though had more opportunity than most anglicans, to do so.

I believe to do so denies the dogma of Extra Ecclesium Nulla Sallus. Please show me how it is not heretical.

The Church's teaching is that we don't know the state of someone's soul at the moment of death; only God knows it. Therefore it is lawful to pray for a departed whom for all we know may have been reconciled to the Church before death. We pray precisely in the hopes that that person was converted before death.

Really, though, a good decent Catholic would never see the need to even ask a question like this. It is the poisonous hatred oozing from your infected hearts that makes you want to toss everyone into Hell.

You radical Protestants posing as Catholics look for every possible opportunity to anathematize or cast into Hell, to avoid going to Mass, to avoid the Sacraments, to avoid any commitments to anything except for your own fevered wills, and to submit yourselves to anyone's authority except for your own. All of these polemics are just excuses for you to live free of all control, to rule yourselves by your own laws; in short, you want to be as Gods, knowing good and evil.

I want to be free all of control?  Sheesh, and here I thought that all this time I was craving exactly that from these liberal, sloppy priests who exact no discipline, theological or pastoral.

SJT, you're Polish.  I'm half-Polish.  I know the Polish mind.  It is soft and overly accommodating, and tries to see the beauty even in what is definitely ugly.  It is at times romantic, dreamy, unrealistic.  I recognized the Polockiness of your mind yesterday when you referred to the billion in VII who would be saved.  Now THAT is dreaming.

I think it is hard for you to face the true scale of what's happening, because you will the good for all men.  That is an admirable quality and I'm sure in your case it is very sincere.  But don't let those who DON'T CARE about what is happening in the Church drag you down.  

I'm not letting them drag me down. You're the one who's being dragged down! You can't attend Mass; you can't receive the Sacraments; you can't join a Confraternity or a Society; you can't get married; all because you painted yourself into a corner with this closed-circuit reasoning:  "I'm not a heretic. Therefore anyone who disagrees with me must be a heretic. Ergo, since no one agrees with me, everyone else must be a heretic. It logically follows then that because everyone else is a heretic, and because I don't agree with them, that therefore I cannot be a heretic."

Are you going to jump off a bridge because everyone else is doing it too?

Now I know you're Polish! My mother used to say exactly the same thing!

Are you going to say "This many people can't be wrong?"  That is exactly how so many people have become trapped.  They follow the herd, not the truth.

And if that is how you think, then why did you take the first tentative step towards SSPX, which contains a mere million or so out of a BILLION VII Catholics?  Percentage-wise, even that is pretty grim.

I assist at Mass at an SSPX chapel for positive reasons, not negative ones. The True Mass is celebrated at an SSPX chapel. The traditions of the Church are upheld. The timeless doctrines are taught and preached. I don't hope to convert a billion people. The majority of Catholics today are probably damned and probably always have been even in the past. This is not a numbers game. King David was punished by God for taking a census of his citizens. Why? Because salvation is not about counting heads. It's about trying to convert yourself and others one neighbor at a time. I don't go to the SSPX to flee from the Novus Ordo; I do it to gain the grace and strength to hopefully be of some spiritual use to others.

[Raoul=76] These people have all had their chances just like you.  They could all be on this website learning along with others just like you.  They could read about and study Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, the SSPX, sedevacantism, just like any of us.  But to most people, faith is an afterthought, a way to feel good, or to celebrate themselves -- so they have lost it.  This has now had a snowball effect and that's why there are so many who have had their minds rotted out.  It is the great apostasy, and make no mistake.[/quote]

For most people, you're right. They don't care about anything except satisfying their immediate needs and pleasuring themselves. But how many are this "most?" 70%? 80? 90? 95? Any way you look at it, this still leaves a lot of people who are interested in the things of God, many of whom will respond favorably to proper instruction and good doctrine.

Anyway, don't you think God knows that already? Jesus wept in the Garden for us! He knows what travails we will endure!
He does not ask us to nitpick our way through others' statements looking for "proof" to condemn them. He can do that himself in the blink of an eye. He asks us to live the life that he taught us with his own actions.

Anything He has asked us to do is for our own good. God does not need to be saved. His rules work to our own benefit. When Jesus said, "Judge not," it was for the same reason that He told us, "Thou shalt not kill." We don't have the power or the authority to do those things. They belong to God. Not because God is a tyrant, but because He doesn't want us to waste our lives worrying about who's saved and who's not, who's right and who's wrong, who's going to get punished and who is set free. We have enough on our hands just following God's commandments and the Church's laws.

For example, all the fuss about baptism:  Are you baptized? If you have kids someday, will you have them baptized? If you meet someone who has not been baptized, will you urge them to be baptized? Will you do everything possible to help them get baptized?

If the answer to those questions is "yes," then why worry about a pagan on an island, or a catechumen who got run over and killed halfway through catechesis, or a martyr who died at the hands of Roman executioners 1500 years ago, or a thousand other possibilities? You can't do anything about those people. They're in God's hands now.

The same situation exists with most of the arguments you keep having. Why worry if some Jesuit four hundred years ago was a Marrano? Do you think God is going to quiz you on this when you die? Do you imagine Judgement Day to be like taking the SAT, an enormous cafeteria full of several billion students with No. 2 pencils, and a thousand True-False question test, 1) "True or False--Pope Benedict XV was a heretic. 2) True or False--Cardinal Merry del Vals was a heretic. 3) True or False--Fr. Suarez was a Marrano. 4) True or False--Msgr. Bugnini was a Freemason."

You can see how ridiculous this would be. Yet you have elevated these concerns to a level above that of obeying God's commandments to be humble and charitable. You have paralyzed yourself to the point where you can no longer do what every Catholic is supposed to do: go to Mass and receive the Sacraments.

I avoid a clergymen who appears to be an obvious heretic or charlatan. Any other, I give the benefit of the doubt, as we are supposed to do.
 

The silence about the betrayal of the Church is deafening, especially when you consider that every last one of us is obligated to mourn and to lament what is happening in Rome.  This silence is a fiendish miracle of evil, a public and worldwide betrayal of Christ that makes His death on the cross almost look pleasant in comparison.  At least that was limited to a small group of people, and many of them wept.  For comparison, imagine if He were killed today on international public TV.  In a way, that is what is happening whenever they show this false Pope pretending to be Catholic.  The bride of Christ, the Church, is being stomped on, spit on and brutalized on a daily basis, and this has been going on for decades right in full view of everyone.

As for the suggestion that people here are driven by hatred, that is an emotional comment, so I won't say anything more about it.

It is hatred, either sociopathic hatred of others or self-hatred, that drives a great number of the posts on these threads. Many of these threads are started as nothing more and nothing less than as a means to bait other posters into giving the "wrong answer" so that the OP can tear them apart with cherry-picked quotes. Or as an exercise in self-righteous back-patting. Or as a way to show how "macho" one is by seeing who can condemn, excommunicate, and anathematize more Churchmen than anyone else. It's quite childish and even rather sickening.

Public and private prayer are two very different things.

To pray publicly or in a liturgical fashion for public sinners or heretics is scandalous. This is why those who commit ѕυιcιdє are denied requiem masses.

Private prayer is another matter altogether. Because we have no way to be absolutely certain that any soul is in hell, we are encouraged to pray for such troubled souls privately. If there was a conversion of heart moments before death, our prayers will serve for that soul's benefit.

The Church's teaching is that we don't know the state of someone's soul at the moment of death; only God knows it. Therefore it is lawful to pray for a departed whom for all we know may have been reconciled to the Church before death. We pray precisely in the hopes that that person was converted before death.

Really, though, a good decent Catholic would never see the need to even ask a question like this. It is the poisonous hatred oozing from your infected hearts that makes you want to toss everyone into Hell.

You radical Protestants posing as Catholics look for every possible opportunity to anathematize or cast into Hell, to avoid going to Mass, to avoid the Sacraments, to avoid any commitments to anything except for your own fevered wills, and to submit yourselves to anyone's authority except for your own. All of these polemics are just excuses for you to live free of all control, to rule yourselves by your own laws; in short, you want to be as Gods, knowing good and evil.

Public and private prayer are two very different things.

To pray publicly or in a liturgical fashion for public sinners or heretics is scandalous. This is why those who commit ѕυιcιdє are denied requiem masses.

Private prayer is another matter altogether. Because we have no way to be absolutely certain that any soul is in hell, we are encouraged to pray for such troubled souls privately. If there was a conversion of heart moments before death, our prayers will serve for that soul's benefit.

* DING DING DING DING *
We have a winner!

1st prize for "best Catholic answer" to this question goes to:

Matthew J Hardin
and
St. Jude Thaddeus

You both tied for first.

God bless,

Matthew