keep the "all" in all souls' day

i mean ALL

According to the Enchiridion of Indulgences, a plenary indulgence applicable only to the souls in purgatory (commonly called the poor souls) is granted to the faithful who devoutly visit a cemetery (graveyard) and pray for the dead. The plenary indulgence can be gained between the second and ninth days of Allhallowtide (November 1–8); a partial indulgence is granted on other days of the year. In order to gain the plenary indulgence, the Christian must have received confession and absolution and the eucharist twenty days before or after visiting the graveyard, in addition to praying for the intentions of the Pope.

—All Souls’ Day, Wikipedia

As I understand it, it is common knowledge even among secular society that Halloween is known also as All Hallow’s Eve, and that the following day is then All Hallows’ Day or All Saints’ Day. People also, I assume, are often familiar with Día de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead—though they may not be so aware that Mexicans often drop the los.

I am less sure about how well-known All Souls’ Day is. I’m sure that it must’ve been mentioned, back when I was in Catholic school, but I’m not sure if it went very far beyond the observation being made, in (say) the morning announcements each November 2nd, that it happened to be All Souls’ Day.

If you know the technical meaning of the term “saint”¹¹ Canonization is not, according to Catholicism, a process that turns someone into a saint, but rather a process that (one hopes) suffices to confirm that someone went to Heaven. Anyone in Heaven is a saint, though we may not know one way or the other., then you might have a guess at what All Souls’ Day celebrates—it is not, for some reason, all souls. It is specifically “the faithful departed”, which is, I assume, interpreted by many to refer to specifically dead Christians or even specifically dead Catholics, but which I’m pretty sure includes anyone in Purgatory.

So what I have learned recently is that, apparently, you can—according to Catholic teaching—get one person through their Purgation early, by visiting a cemetery and praying for them in a particular way and meeting some other conditions, once daily, only during the first eight days of November.

Which is a somewhat flabbergasting teaching. Because, you know, if people in general actually believed that to be straightforwardly how anything works, and they were anything like me, every grave would have some sort of marking which communicated whether the person buried therein had received an indulgence—or even better, how sure we are that at least one indulgence was fully valid²² Or, how sure we are that it would be valid supposing the person was not damned, because indulgences don’t work on the damned.. And indulging eight people at the start of November every year would be a solemn duty consistently undertook by anyone old enough to receive Communion. Maybe you can’t descend into Hell and recite the HaMephorash, but in principle³³ In practice, it would be surprising if your army were distributed around the world in proportion to how many people die in any given area each year, so probably you want more. you only really need an army about ten million strong to end Purgatory—or at least, to end it for all those who receive a proper burial⁴⁴ Amusingly, I think this would imply that everyone who someone could manage to properly pray for would either be damned or a saint..

I don’t think it actually works like that. Like, imagine if people tried to, when they could, aim their deaths to happen more in Summer or early Autumn than in Winter or Spring, so as to save themselves the months of Purgation. It’s such a weird belief to take literally and seriously.

There’s a common refrain you will hear around the holidays, if you grow up among Christians⁵⁵ Or at least, if you grow up among the sort of Christian that I grew up around.:

Similarly, if you look up “what is the reason for the season”, then Google will try to tell you about axial tilt, but if you scroll down you’ll see discourse on the common proclamation that Jesus is the reason for the (holiday) season.

Now, I think it should be reasonably clear that Christianity is not responsible for the entire idea of a winter holiday⁶⁶ I specify Christianity because, of course, a First Cause is in some sense a reason for everything that follows, whether thar cause is God or a Big Bang or what. But it’s a sort of vacuous sense.. Other cultures have them too, and even if Santa Claus is oft equated with Saint Nicholas it’s not as though no aspects of Christmas tradition originate from European pagan festivities⁷⁷ Though it varies. Apparently the Christmas tree is sometimes credited very specifically to Martin Luther..

But on another level, the specific holiday emphasized in Western culture sure is called Christmas, and commonly understood to be the birthday of Jesus⁸⁸ Sometimes the plausibility of this date is argued against on the basis of the Nativity narratives seeming better placed in seasons other than Winter. Personally, I think this presumes too much about the historical accuracy of those narratives, and fall back to my prior of ⁴⁰⁰⁄₁₄₆₀₉₇.. (Sometimes people who don’t know enough about Greek get mad at the Χmas⁹⁹ Pronounced /xaɪməs/. abbreviation). And I do see the point that commercializing things too much and stressing everyone out about whether they’re doing the holiday celebrations correctly and so on is very much against the spirit of Christmas. But, you know, I think the A Christmas Carols where Scrooges learn charity and Christmas Who?s where Squidwards get possessed by the Santa Claus egregore and spread Christmas cheer do, to a large extent, cover a lot of the important parts, there, for the atheists and Buddhists and whatnot among us anyways¹⁰¹⁰ Though they seem to do this through the introduction of outright fantastical elements, like ghosts and what seems to be the actual real Santa Claus who can mysteriously predict the actions of the Santa Claus egregore. There are, I’m sure, plenty that are closer to realistic fiction—I like Miracle on 34th Street..

I, being weird, am choosing to support a different nominative crusade: let us keep the “All” in “All Souls’ Day”. The vast majority¹¹¹¹ Well, maybe 93%ish, the population has been rising enough that an appreciable fraction are still alive. The exact proportion is a little sensitive to your definition of “human”, though by a factor of two at most. of all human souls have been pretty much lost to oblivion¹²¹² Or, perhaps, though I doubt it, to something weirder whose details depend on theories of anthropics and multiversal cosmology—that is to say, metaphysics—which we haven’t been able to sort out. Maybe, as I've seen (jokingly?) suggested, you wake up in your medianworld, because that’s where the probability density of people-just-like-you is highest, even if it’s still obviously tiny.

Or maybe literal afterlives or reincarnation are a thing. How would I know., aside from those around today and those select few we have enough data about to encode some small fragment of who they were¹³¹³ How close to my exact brain do you get, exactly, if you ask a superintelligence to craft a human from scratch who would share my DNA and would write every single thing I’ve ever written? Who would remember every event I inferably witnessed? Who would be indistinguishable from me in the slightest detail to every person I’ve ever interacted with?

How much should I care about the parts of me that would be lost, in that case? It doesn't seem to me like there’s much reason to care if you apply some isomorphism to my brain’s layout that has no impact on behavior.

This is the sort of thing that makes me agree the empty individualists have an appreciable point.—or a large fragment, I hope, in the case of the cryonicized.

And this is bad. I would like it to stop. Though I grant the existence of trolley problems and such, and though I care especially much about the innocent, I’m not exclusionary: every death is bad, and every time we forget more of the memory of those we lost is bad.

Not that desperately clinging to memories at the expense of living a full life for yourself is a good idea, but y’know. In the back of my head I used to toss around the idea of someday sitting down with my grandma and recording her tell stories about her life, and I think that would’ve been wonderful if I had ever gotten around to it.

I assume the “universal compassion and grace and mercy” is an ideal shared by many of my readers, and not too much of a revelation, though it feels like it’s a value cherished by a worryingly small portion of the population, sometimes. I don’t want to hear memorials restricted to the “faithful departed” or whatnot. It may be reasonable to grieve the departed from your culture especially hard, but All Souls’ Day should be for all souls.

Attending mass is, generally, not a wholly uncomplicated affair when you're not entirely sure if you can really assent to very much of the Nicene creed. But awkward though a few parts of it may be, it usually feels sort of like returning home nonetheless.

Tonight’s mass was a little further on the complicated end¹⁴¹⁴ For one thing, I was in a bit of a weird headspace and if I did a mental motion somewhere between (charitably) “meditative focus” and (less charitably) “zoning out”, parts of my vision started distorting a little, which was interesting to experience while looking at one of those big crucifices they often have at the front of a church and listening to hymns. Like, gee, they really did kill the guy like that.

Certainly it helps make Fatima seem a little less unbelievable.. There was a lot of talk about how “as Christians, we believe” that death is not the end, but rather a new stage of life promised to us by God through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and so on. And, you know, as much as I am a confirmed Catholic who tends to attend mass at least once or twice a month, it’s not like I have that much right to be bothered if someone construes the term “Christian” such that I am, at the very least an edge case. And I am not, by temperament, one to take all that much issue with the platitudes the religious share on this topic¹⁵¹⁵ Though I do see where the people who take more issue with it are coming from. And when it leads to actual deathism, I definitely can start to take some issue., at least compared to some.

But nonetheless. I felt more excluded than usual, and the ideas that were perhaps meant to be comforting did not land so well. I just don’t know that there really is any of this “life after death” thing. When Paul talks about Death and a New Life in Christ, I mostly hear things that must be talking about some sort of spiritual death and rebirth à la Born Again Christians, if they are to make any sense at all. A literal afterlife? I wish I could believe it.

But to not end off on too sad a note, here’s a comment I didn’t mind too much, and which is I think a little less cliché and easier to get on board with. During the homily, the priest told us of a theologian who, as he was himself nearing death, came to the conclusion that people are often closer to us in death than they were in life.

And, you know, at a first glance, maybe you think that isn’t true at all. It just isn’t true, in most senses. As much as you may be open to carrying on the memory of your lost loved ones and seeing some reflection of what good they brought into the world wherever you look, it’s never going to be the same as when they were alive.

But it reminded me of a comment my dad made while giving my grandma’s eulogy, which I think helped me make at least a little sense of the concept.

My dad said he actually finds it easier to talk to people once they’ve passed—the part that’s harder is hearing the reply.