St. Augustine and Mass for the Dead

St. Augustine believed in celebrating the Mass for the sake of those who have died. He writes, concerning the funeral rites for St. Monica his mother:

So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth unto You when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up unto You for her—the dead body being now placed by the side of the grave, as the custom there is, prior to its being laid therein—neither in their prayers did I shed tears; yet was I most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind entreated You, as I was able, to heal my sorrow, but You did not; fixing, I believe, in my memory by this one lesson the power of the bonds of all habit, even upon a mind which now feeds not upon a fallacious word. [Confessions IX.12; emphasis added]

Really, people ought to be embarrassed even to attempt to pretend that St. Augustine was not Catholic in his views.

The Eucharist as Re-Presentation

There are folks who misunderstand what the Church teaches about the Eucharist, falsely supposing (possibly because they follow the erroneous opinion of Calvin or some other Reformer) that Catholics are to view the Sacrament as a re-sacrifice of Christ. This notion is false.

Therefore the identity between the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrifice of Calvary could seem to be obvious, since 'our altar is the altar of Christ, on which we celebrate his sacrifice, in fact, on which we offer him up to the Father in the Sacrament of his very own body and blood.' For if the daily sacrifice of the church were other than the sacrifice offered once and for all on the cross, 'it would not be true but superfluous,' since the only sacrifice that truly availed was that offered on Calvary and an effective sacrifice in the Mass had to be identical with it. The two sacrifices were one sacrifice... Yet there remained the statement of the New Testament that the sacrifice of the cross had been 'once and for all.' From it there appeared to follow the thesis that the crucifixion of Christ could not be repeated 'as a punishment,' but only as a re-presentation of the mystery. [Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology, 190; emphasis added]

How then did Calvin (for example) get this wrong, so that he apparently believed otherwise about what the Church taught? I suppose he must have looked at the common language used with regard to the sacrifice of the Mass, and simply missed the fact that it is not intended as a literal re-sacrifice at all. I don't know.