[Newspoetry] Re: Prohibiting Any Chance of Justice

[Donald L Emerick]

Friends, think of opportunity!

One of the rallying out-cries
of the Reformation was this:
May Church sell indulgences,
freeing souls from Purgatory?

Said John Tetzel (1465-1517):
"When coin in the coffer rings,
A soul from purgatory springs."
Indulgence remisses any sin,
per a theory of a god's grace,
so what bars us from selling it?

Martin Luther was incensed:
if great sins may be excused
because of political donations,
then goodness has no meaning.
Sinful men must be punished or,
more often, purged of wrongness,
in afterlife of sins afflicting them,
so as not to pollute pure Heaven
when, at last, they come to it.
Greater sinners had longer waits,
more painful waits, but justly so,
because only in proportion to sin.
The better a life that one leads,
the shorter would be those delays
that purge a soul, cleansing pains.

I myself am not too keen a fan
of suffering or of cleansing pain,
though Cavell thinks it quite sound.
In Must We Mean What We Say,
He says suffering occurs inversely
to faith: the faithful never do suffer,
even when all Hell falls upon them.
I suppose Job is the model here.

I know I've heard many Catholics
endorse this idea of suffering pain,
tho' I do not know its universality,
or its restrictions and limitations,
as to who just believes this way.

But, I do know, regardless of that,
that I find it to be anathematical:
a thing to be cursed by the faithful:
Thou shalt not buy and sell grace,
which esteems our personal labor,
makes possible our human dignity.

Thou shalt grant no legal immunity
to alleged doers of harmful wrongs,
based upon a political correctness
of paying grantors enormous sums.

Thanks for listening,
to a small reference
Donald L Emerick
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