You are sleeping soundly, when suddenly, in the middle of the night, you are woken up by the SMS ring tone of your mobile phone. When you read the message it contains a short story about a person receiving a wonderful blessing by praying a certain prayer. You only get to receive the blessing if you pass on the SMS; if you don’t do anything or fail to pass the SMS, the exact opposite of the blessing will come upon you.

Sound familiar? Perhaps, you did not receive it as an SMS. Instead, you read it on a friend’s Facebook Wall Post, where you are encouraged to copy and paste (not just share) the post on your own wall as a status update. You may have even received a similar message via email some years ago, when you were encouraged to forward the message to everyone on your contact list. If you were writing correspondences before email, you would have probably received it in it’s first form: a letter via the post office.

Having received such messages in all of the mediums above shows my age doesn’t it? In any case it is what’s called a Chain Letter. We can call it chain e-mail, chain posts, or chain texts. For the purposes of this article, we will call it chain mail.

Chain mail often have these things in common:

  1. A story about a good thing happening to ceratin people
  2. This good thing can happen to you.
  3. You need to do something for this good thing to happen: send the message to a number of people.
  4. If you don’t send the message out (i.e. break the chain): you lose your chance to receive the good thing, you become cursed, or both.

The good thing can be anything. God answering a prayer or intention through the intercession of a Catholic Saint, a chance to get money (usually US Dollars) through the generosity of some billionaire (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) or partnership of two or more big IT Companies (Microsoft, Apple, AOL), a chance to help someone in need (person suffering from cancer or rare disease, a victim of war, etc.), or something simple as “receiving a surprise”.

Then, comes the part of trying to convince you, that receiving such a blessing is true. Testimonies are given out (this happen to this famous person, this unknown humble person). Newspaper or magazine articles are mentioned (it was on Time Magazine, the New York Times reported it) or TV Shows are cited (it was on CNN last night, Good Morning America had a feature on it).

Next comes the catch. There is of course one thing you need to do for this good thing to happen to you. You are required to send the message out the same way you received lest the chain be broken. Sometimes, you are instructed that you cannot send the message back to the same person who sent it to you. When it was being done through the postal system, you were asked to select ten (or twenty) friends or family to send it to. It was the same in the early days of email when bandwidth was quite expensive. Today, with the cheaper bandwidth,  you are simply asked to send it to as much people as you can (i.e everyone in your addressbook, all of your friends, etc).  Texts/SMS, of course, will still be expensive even if each SMS is just Php1.00 for each 160-character message, unless you use Internet-based messaging message like Viber, iMessage, WeChat, etc.

Finally, although optionally, comes a warning. If you do not pass on the message or break the chain, you will be doomed to suffer some consequence like the exact opposite of your prayer intention. This is often attached to religious-themed (more specifically Catholic-themed) chain mail.

Before the Internet, it was certainly difficult to crosscheck the claims made in the chain mail with other sources. Now, however, there is no reason why you cannot verify if there is any truth to what is being said in the chain letter. One particular example which started in the early days of email is that Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, has done a deal with AOL so that everyone who forwards the email gets the chance to win money, depending on how many people receives and forwards the email. The email chain has since evolved into a status post chain. A quick Google search will actually show that this is an urban legend that has been debunked long ago. A more recent status post chain mentions that if you post about Mark Zuckerberg donating millions of his Facebook shares, you will receive a portion of the money and that it must be true because it was featured on Good Morning America. Well, the part of Mark giving away millions of his shares is true of course, since he himself mentioned it. However, the part of him sharing it with those who share a post about it, is not. And no, it was never in Good Morning America or any other TV or radio broadcast.

For such chain mails, I simply break the chain. It does not really make sense to me to share information that I have found to be false. The mantra “Think before you click” should be kept in mind.

Catholic-themed chain mail are quite a different story. While the intentions may be good, like for example, receiving an answer to prayers or receiving a special blessing, the actions needed to receive the blessing as well as the consequences by not performing the needed actions are bordering on superstition if not superstitious already.

The chain mail could say for example that a certain woman was cured of her cancer, a family with a sick child received money for treatment, or a childless couple was blessed with a baby after years of waiting. All these happened because they forwarded the prayer embeded within the chain mail. However, people who did not do anything (i.e. those who broke the chain), suffered tragedies as punishment: they went into financial ruin, contracted a deadly disease, or worse, died.

Such things are incompatible with Catholic beliefs. It distracts people from total trust in God’s love and mercy. It is true that we are encouraged to pray for each other (sharing prayers), but it is wrong to attach conditions in order for us to receive answers to prayers. God does not have any conditions. He showers everyone with the blessings that they need most. Similarly, causing fear in someone because they fail to do an act, misrepresents God. He does not punish people for not doing something. He sometimes allows bad things to happen to better allow the person to understand His purpose for them.

Hence, if I do receive such chain mails, I do not hesitate to break the chain. Since it is superstitious or at least bordering on superstition, as a Catholic, I cannot in good conscience share it.

I guess what I am trying to say is, although chain mails may have a good intentions of giving some people hope of good fortune particularly during desperate times, they could give them a false sense of hope. If that is the case, then I do not want to give them that. I would rather pray for them or even better, pray with them.