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If You Have Something Blessed By The Pope


IgnatiusofLoyola

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IgnatiusofLoyola

[quote name='Bennn' date='12 May 2010 - 02:58 PM' timestamp='1273694315' post='2109545']
I've always thought it was a sin to sell blessed objects.

Pax Domini,
Ben
[/quote]

Yep, our researches have shown that that is the case--they agree with each other and with you!

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[quote name='Bennn' date='12 May 2010 - 12:58 PM' timestamp='1273694315' post='2109545']
I've always thought it was a sin to sell blessed objects.

Pax Domini,
Ben
[/quote]

It is... :mellow:

I understand the whole "buy our rosary and if you'd like we'll take it to the pope afterwards to get blessed" as that is nothing different then sending it with a friend of yours. The website that was posted though specifically shows rosaries blessed by JPII and it shows them as more expensive b/c they are more rare. To me that is simony and not a good idea.

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IgnatiusofLoyola

[quote name='Slappo' date='12 May 2010 - 03:38 PM' timestamp='1273696700' post='2109555']
I understand the whole "buy our rosary and if you'd like we'll take it to the pope afterwards to get blessed" as that is nothing different then sending it with a friend of yours. The website that was posted though specifically shows rosaries blessed by JPII and it shows them as more expensive b/c they are more rare. To me that is simony and not a good idea.
[/quote]

Excellent catch, Slappo!!!! I did see on the Vatican Web site that they were selling rosaries blessed by JPII. Hmm.....

Well, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, that, since the Vatican is its own separate country, that the Vatican store has a dispensation that the payments for these rosaries are only donations, not that you're "buying" them. But, you've got me curious--I'm going to check the Web site again. It seems strange that the Vatican wouldn't follow its own rules. But, until I hear for sure otherwise, I'll assume that some special rule applies, and these rosaries are "kosher." (If that isn't mixing metaphors too much!)

Addendum: I just checked the Vatican site and it says that the JPII rosaries come in an attractive box. Do you think that, if pressed, the store will say that you are buying the box and not the rosary? I guess, in a pinch, they could get by on that technicality. Except, the selling point of the rosaries (and their higher price) is the fact they were blessed by JPII. And, ALL of the rosaries sold on the Web site come in a gift box--not only those blessed by JPII.

I don't want to think that the Vatican is doing anything against the rules, so I am going to continue to assume that there is a special dispensation of some kind that I don't know about.

Question: Is it "simony" if there are no promises actually attached to the blessing by the Pope? The Web site certainly never claims that prayers made on any of the blessed rosaries will be any more effective than those made on any other rosary.

This turned out to be a more interesting topic than I expected.

Edited by IgnatiusofLoyola
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Marie-Therese

Well, the site that Jason posted (www.vaticangiftstores.com) is not the official gift shop of the Vatican. I became suspicious when I saw those rosaries blessed by JPII. To sell such an item would be simony, imho.

The site which is affiliated with the Vatican is www.vaticangift.com They are the ones which state that they will have your religious objects blessed after you buy them, which is in perfect accord with Church teaching.

That other website, while they have some beautiful stuff, also state that they charge a fee to take your items to be blessed, which seems to me to be questionable. They do not get a private audience with His Holiness, what happens is that the items are taken in bulk to the Papal General Audience. The Apostolic Blessing given at the Audience is specifically stated to apply to any religious items brought to the Audience for the specific purpose of having the Pope bless it. So, to charge 50 Euros to have someone literally walk into the Papal Audience (which is a free event, btw) and hold the rosary out while the Pope pronounces a general blessing seems kind of shady to me.

Of course, that is only my opinion, as I said.

Edited by Marie-Therese
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IgnatiusofLoyola

[quote name='Marie-Therese' date='12 May 2010 - 04:11 PM' timestamp='1273698690' post='2109578']
Well, the site that Jason posted (www.vaticangiftstores.com) is not the official gift shop of the Vatican. I became suspicious when I saw those rosaries blessed by JPII. To sell such an item would be simony, imho.

The site which is affiliated with the Vatican is www.vaticangift.com They are the ones which state that they will have your religious objects blessed after you buy them, which is in perfect accord with Church teaching.

That other website, while they have some beautiful stuff, also state that they charge a fee to take your items to be blessed, which seems to me to be questionable. They do not get a private audience with His Holiness, what happens is that the items are taken in bulk to the Papal General Audience. The Apostolic Blessing given at the Audience is specifically stated to apply to any religious items brought to the Audience for the specific purpose of having the Pope bless it. So, to charge 50 Euros to have someone literally walk into the Papal Audience (which is a free event, btw) and hold the rosary out while the Pope pronounces a general blessing seems kind of shady to me.

Of course, that is only my opinion, as I said.
[/quote]

Ah, the plot gets thicker. Thanks so much for the new information. I'm going to check out the new Web site. I refuse to believe that the Vatican would do something so obviously "hinky," so I figured I was missing some important information.

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When I was in Rome a couple of years ago, we went to St. Peter's for the Wednesday Angelus during which, of course, the Pope blesses the audience. It was a rather warm day, but there were several guys wearing these sort of James Bond-looking black trenchcoats... I couldn't figure out why exactly, but I thought maybe it was a Roman style or something. Then when the Pope got ready to bless the audience, these guys all opened up there trenchcoats like they were exposing themselves or something! Turns out they had pinned rosaries, holy cards, medals, and other religious items all over the inside of their coats and opened up the coats to receive as much papal blessing as possible; then they went to walking around and selling these blessed-by-the-Pope items to the tourists.

If you go to Rome yourself, keep an eye out for them.

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The question of blessed items came up for me a while back. Friend X left his rosary in the chapel, Friend Y picked it up to return it to him, but Friend C reported he had seen Y pick up X's rosary, implying that Y was stealing X's rosary - it was innocent merry mayhem, but a non-Catholic friend said, "Doesn't stealing a rosary rub the magic off of it?" I explained there's no magic on it in the first place although some people do get their rosaries blessed. But it got me to thinking... (and you know how dangerous that is....)

What is a blessing? Is the blessing of a person different from the blessing of a thing? What's the purpose of a blessing? I know there are standard formulae that often incorporate "may" - May God bless you and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon you and so forth. I have some Pentecostal friends who talk about blessings as if they're "positive vibes from God" or something - like plus marks or spiritual pay that God deposits into your judgment account. Others talk about blessings as "something good God did for me" (helped me find an affordable & reliable car). Some even respond to "How are you?" with "I'm blessed of the Lord" meaning God is taking good care of me.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that a blessing (of a thing, in my original conception) is a sort of dedication; a blessed item is dedicated to a particular use. For instance, you could use a rosary to tie things together or whatever, but when we bless a rosary, it is set aside for a particular spiritual purpose. So you buy a rosary, and you intend to pray the rosary - that's typical. What difference does blessing it make? Well, it makes us know more clearly & officially that this rosary is set aside for the particular purpose, we sort of offered it to God to say "Do what you want to with this, use this (almost like a tool, a tool for making holiness) to do your work on Earth."

It seems to me that the general blessing at the end of Mass (maybe no all the special blessings with "may" in them) is pretty much the same thing - the priest is dedicating us almost like tools of God's will. And when we receive the blessing (crossing ourselves and saying amen), we're accepting/agreeing to the dedication of ourselves as tools of holiness.

All of which leads back to the question of "Can a blessed item be sold?" Well, if the person who buys the thing hasn't personally asked the preist/bishop/pope to dedicate this thing as a spiritual tool, then I guess the "dedicatedness" - the blessing - is no longer associated with the thing itself.

Thoughts? Comments? Clarifications? (Take notes, you guys, this WILL be on the final exam!)

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