Old Mass cards. What to do with them

  • Thread starter Thread starter F_Marturana
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
F

F_Marturana

Guest
My father passed away over 20 years ago.

My mom now lives in a nursing home because she has Alzheimer’

I have many of her things in my house, among them, a box of all the Mass cards she received at the funeral and wake for my dad

Most of them have a religious image on them.

I have no idea what to do with them. I feel bad throwing them out because of the religious images. But they are 20 year old cards. Somewhat musty, and in a pretty large storage bin that I don’t have much room for.

Any ideas?
 
You can leave a few of them around in your local churches or Adoration chapels. Some people pick them up because they like the picture, or like the fact that it is an old card, and pray for the person.

We just cleaned out my deceased in-laws’ house and found among other things a small box of the old Catholic mass cards left over from the funeral of my mother-in-law’s Catholic father. At this point, they are “antique” and pretty neat looking. I haven’t decided whether to leave them around here and there or just hold onto them for now.
 
You could capture images of them with a digital camera before disposing of them, especially if they are musty as you say and not likely to be wanted by anyone.
 
That’s a good idea. Many of the images are duplicate though. I think they came from the same parish.

It’s not wrong to discard the originals? I don’t think they are blessed, but I feel guilty to do so. 🙁
 
It’s funny that you post this because I just found mass cards from my grandfather’s funeral in 1978. My mother kept them all these years. I’m going to keep them ,too.
 
I ended up with similar material from various relatives. I didn’t want to just bin the rest, it seemed disrespectful, so I set a pure birchwood fire in my fireplace, lit it from a candle used in prayer and burnt everything else.
 
I often consider where the cards came from. If they are Christmas cards bought from Walmart or Hallmark-and there are a lot of nice religious cards about Jesus- I often don’t feel guilty about discarding them; but will often put them I the “recycle bin”. there’s no knowledge about whether they are blessed or not.
 
Just my sister and myself. My mom’s brother isn’t religious.

I’m thinking the idea of putting the nicer ones in an adoration chapel is s good one. And I’ll keep one for each of my kids.

They didn’t get a chance to meet grandpa.
 
F_Marturana said:
It’s not wrong to discard the originals? I don’t think they are blessed, but I feel guilty to do so. 🙁
Click to expand...
No, it’s not.

I know how you feel, though. I always hesitate to get rid of anything that has a religious image on it, or a Scripture quote. It feels a bit wrong. But then I remind myself that it’s all going back to dust someday. As long as we are not being disrespectful towards something that is blessed, then it is fine.

If it makes you feel better, you can burn or bury them to discard them. That’s how blessed items are disposed of. But in the case of Mass cards like this, I wouldn’t see the need to do that.
 
Last edited:
Updating.

I sorted the bin.

First thing I did was get rid of the envelopes.

Then I put the cards from my dad to my mom in a photo box. In that box I also put some prayer cards and a few things my mom had kept. Those are now in my bedroom closet.

The images and Mass cards I put in a smaller bin. I gave one image to each child. The rest will eventually left at adoration chapels.

Next project is the photos. I’ve got another bin of photographs. Back in the sixties my parents would go to dinner dances, and then come home with 8 by 10 shots of their table.

It’s fun to see them young and fancy. My mom often had a fancy beehive hair style in the pictures.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top