I was very nervous about my confession entry. I thought it might upset people and it seems it may have. I had been thinking about it for quite some time and almost posted about it several times and thought better of it. The combination of the Pope's words about St. Augustine and the news about Limbo put me over the edge.

In my agitated state I made two more errors! I shouldn't have said that I read "The Catechism of the Catholic Church" way back when. I should have said I read the Catechism of the Catholic Church...one by St. Augustine and one by Pope Pius the X. I actually got my hands on "The Catechism of the Catholic Church" in the mid nineties and it was an odd moment in time, I'll tell you.

I was speaking at another parish about the need for help for retired nuns and was peppered with questions about some of the things the old nuns had been up to there in the classroom. Suffice to say we went down the road we traveled yesterday here on the blog for a little ways. The parish priest snuck up to me afterward.

He snuck. I want to make that clear. He said he had a copy of "The Catechism of the Catholic Church" that he wanted to give me. He told me that he wasn't supposed to give it to me and I shouldn't let anyone know I had it. He wasn't joking.

He was so sincere and adamant that I actually kept that copy, which I still have, under lock and key and never told anyone I had it for quite some time.

I have only recently discovered the joys of the internets. It wasn't so very long after I got my clandestine Catechism that I found it online. Doh!

My other babbling about Judas....where do I start? How is it that we are aware of things and unaware of them at the same time?

During a class one day I found myself patiently explaining that we don't take everything so literally in the Bible and the New Testament as some of our separated brethren. I was getting some guff from this group, which included some separated brethren, so I asked them to answer this question: How many angels were at the tomb when Jesus rose from the dead? The answer is none. In John.
The answer is two. In Luke. At least there were two men in dazzling apparel who gave the disciples the word on why the tomb was empty.
In Matthew an angel comes down and rolls the stone away.
In Mark there is an angel sitting alone in the empty tomb. You may know him as Pat Boone.

I thought I had put the lid on their guff. But later in the class the Judas hanging came up and one of the separated brethren brought up the fact that in Acts, Judas buys a field with his thirty pieces of silver and trips in the field and dies. His intestines spill out. I'm sure they brought that up just to get back at me about the angels.

I thought it best to stop talking about the Judas hanging. Although Judas is an interesting case to discuss why we don't ever say for a fact that someone is in hell.

In recent years I stumbled upon (on the internets) some fellow that had an explanation for the two Judas stories. According to this man, Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver to the ground and hanged himself. The Pharisees picked up the thirty pieces of silver and bought the field, Judas hanging from the tree and all. Everyone just left Judas hanging there until the rope he was hanging from rotted and his body fell to the ground. Of course his body was in terrible shape by then and that caused the 'explosion'. Yikes. This fellow with this theory states this story on his website as though it is an absolute fact.

We'll pray for the intercession of St. Augustine for him.