Once upon a time there was a monk named San José del Inmaculado Corazón de María. (To be precise, he wasn't technically a saint at the time. That's what he went by after canonization.)
During his lifetime, San José was already renown for his supererogatory merit. According to the celestial bank manager at the Thesaurus Meritorum, San José had the highest credit rating of any monk in the past 700 years.
However, San José had one peccadillo: he was a cannibal. His ancestors were Amazonian headhunters, and despite his fervent conversion to the One True Church®, he could never kick the habit. Tofu failed to sate his appetite for something more exotic.
Although his Father Confessor had reservations about San José's culinary proclivities, his unrivaled merit score made him far too valuable for the monastery to discharge. Besides, so long as his supererogatory merits offset his dietary transgressions, he was still so holy that he could bypass Purgatory with merit to spare. Like a rechargeable phone card, his get-out-of-Purgatory-free card was always topped up with pulsating ergs of merit. On birthdays, he'd indulge (pardon the pun) in a sampler platter from multiple victims, then charge it to his get-out-of-Purgatory-free card.
He even loaned it out to his bishop in exchange for a daily supply of fresh meat. What his bishop did with it I will leave to your sordid imagination.
If I'm not mistaken, no amount of self merit (or indulgences hijacked from someone else's account) can offset a mortal sin. Perfect contrition might, but it's kind of difficult to be both fabulously contrite for and continuously dabbling in one's favorite heinous trespass.
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