The Age of Reason

Is seven years according to Catholic teaching . Because my birthday was in December, I was six when I was preparing for my First Holy Communion.

We were encouraged to go to Confession every week and take Holy Communion every Sunday. The nuns would escort us across the moor to church on a Friday afternoon. If we
committed no sins during the week, we were told to confess to whatever sins we could remember in our lives. I must have asked.

I was at my grandmother's house the week-end after I made my First Holy Communion. My aunts wanted to know what sins I had confessed . I said I missed mass nine times. It was likely as far as my memory would stretch.

Some memories made an impression. Nobody ever gave me a satisfactory explanation of an impure thought.Even though our teachers for that class were not nuns.

I didn't think much of the idea that a new-born child could never see God unless born again of the Holy Ghost. Limbo was the place set aside in nowhere for these throw away souls. I didn't think that was fair.

I think my mother must have been quite melancholy at that time. Her favourite admonition to her quite young children was "Aye, when am deid and gone ye'll be sorry"

My prayer, on my knees every night, was that I would die before my mother. I could not bear the
thought she would die before me .

A couple of years later, in the fourth class, we were learning about everlasting life and the Day of Redemption when all souls will rise again to be to-gether for eternity. I asked Sister Eugenius if we would be re-united with our parents and brothers and sisters. I hadn't lost anyone as yet but my mother continued to remind her children of the impermanence of life.

Sister Eugenius answered promptly and firmly. No, we would not, she said. Family relationships would mean nothing in the hereafter.

Well, it was not what I wanted to hear ....I didn't say it....I was nine. But really, what's the point ?

Year's later, I was listening to a sermon about how life begins at the moment of conception. I thought......wait a minute.....how about all those innocent new-born,throw away souls, assigned to Limbo, never to see the Face of God, because they didn't live long enough, independent of a mother's body, to be born again of The Holy Ghost or whoever was responsible, didn't make sure they were baptised.

A couple of months later I read in the media, the Vatican had abandoned the theology(if that's what it was) of Limbo.

Somebody must have discovered the contradiction between what they used to teach and what they are teaching now.