Indulgences
An Indulgence, in Roman Catholic theology, is the full or partial remission of punishment for sins. The indulgence is granted by the Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution. Indulgences occur when the Church applies existing merit from the Church’s spiritual treasury to an individual, who may be at that point be assigned to purgatory. The sinner gains the indulgence by participating in certain activities, most often the recitation of prayers, or by a payment of a sum of money. Indulgences have also been granted to shorten the time in purgatory of a deceased loved one, and even to protect against sins that one might commit in the future.
Indulgences were a major point of contention when Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation, due to what he termed the purchase and sale of salvation over the aggressive marketing of indulgences to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The practice of the clergy accepting money for the removal of the sins of the dead can be traced back to the deuterocanonical book 2 Maccabees (ca. 100 B.C.E.). In Eastern Orthodoxy, indulgences do not exist since its underlying doctrine of salvation differs from the Roman Catholic model.
Theology of Indulgences
Sin
Indulgences are granted for personal sins—specific sins committed by a person—as opposed to the inherited Original Sin or the evil that results from personal sin. Such sins are either mortal or venial ("light").
Punishments for sin can be temporal or eternal. Temporal punishments are temporary punishments—those that affect us in this life or in Purgatory. The more temporal punishments one incurs, the more punishment/suffering one must endure on earth or in Purgatory. Eternal punishment, on the other hand, is everlasting. Even though one may be forgiven of a mortal sin (through the sacrament of Reconciliation)—and relieved of any eternal punishment (hell)—temporal punishments may still remain.
An Indulgence is granted for the remission of the remaining temporal punishments due to sins that have already been forgiven.
Penance
Plenary (full) indulgences are gained after the individual earning the indulgence completes the required tasks, which always includes the reception of the sacrament of Penance. Because the sacrament of reconciliation removes the culpable element of sin, the penitent is restored by reconciliation to the state of grace. However, while the individual’s guilt and any eternal punishment is removed by reconciliation, temporal punishments may still remain. God has mercy upon sinners who repent their sins, but His justice still requires that the sinner be punished for the wrongdoing.
In addition, even though the separation caused by sin is removed, the repercussions for the sin have not been removed and still require punishment. For example, if one steals a loaf of bread, the baker still is missing and suffers the loss of the bread even if the thief makes amends. This punishment is called "temporal punishment," both because it is a punishment of time, as opposed to eternal punishment, and because it relates to the temporary world (Earth or purgatory), rather than to the “final destination” (heaven or hell).
Temporal punishment in purgatory
Church teachings explain that individuals who experience trials and tribulations in this world by God's grace may have them serve as their temporal punishment for forgiven sins (Catechism 1473); other individuals die without having served the full temporal punishment for their sins. These individuals do not have guilt for sin, because it has been forgiven either through reconciliation or perfect contrition before death, and therefore they will attain Heaven. However, they are not yet ready to enter Heaven, as their punishment has yet to be served. Therefore, these individuals “enter” Purgatory, and the punishment they owe is "purged."
The Church teaches that the souls in purgatory desire to be there because they have realized that they are not yet ready to attain heaven. Purgatory may be illustrated as a place of preparation for the deceased; they know they will enter heaven, and purgatory is a place in which the deceased are cleansed for God.
The indulgence
In Catholic theology, the salvation made possible by Jesus allows the faithful sinner eventual admittance to heaven. Baptism forgives all of the baptized person's existing sins; any sin committed after baptism incurs both guilt and a penalty that must be addressed. These are the sins addressed in reconciliation. With the act of penance after reconciliation, the temporal punishment for the confessed sins is canceled. However, human beings by nature commit many venial sins daily which are unconfessed and, though they don't break communion with God, do damage one spiritually, and temporal punishment remains for these. This punishment may be remitted in purgatory, or by indulgence. The granting of an indulgence is the spiritual reassignment, as it were, of existing merit to an individual requiring that merit.
Indulgences occur when the Church, acting by virtue of its authority, applies existing merit from the Church’s treasury to an individual. The individual gains the indulgence by participating in certain activities, most often the recitation of prayers. By decree of Pope Pius V in 1567, following the Council of Trent, it is forbidden to attach the receipt of an indulgence to any financial act, including the giving of alms. In addition, the only punishment remitted by an indulgence is existing punishment, that is, for sins already committed. Indulgences do not remit punishment for future sins, as those sins have yet to be committed. Thus, indulgences are not a “license to sin” or a “get-out-of-hell-free” card; they are a means for the sinner to “pay” the “wages” of sin.
Indulgences are "plenary" or "partial”: "plenary" indulgences remit all of the existing temporal punishment due for the individual’s sins. An individual can only earn one plenary indulgence per day.
- "partial" indulgences remit only a part of the existing punishment.
Before the Second Vatican Council, partial indulgences were stated as a term of days, weeks, months, or years. This has resulted in Catholics and non-Catholics alike believing that indulgences remit a specific period of time equal to the length of the soul's stay in purgatory. This was not true, rather the stated length of time actually indicated that the indulgence was equal to the amount of remission the individual would have earned by performing a canonical penance for that period of time. For example, the amount of punishment remitted by a “40-day” indulgence would be equal to the amount of punishment remitted by the individual performing 40 days of penance.
The original reasoning for the "days" notation was, in the early days of the Church, a person's only means of returning to the state of grace was performing penances equal to the actions he had committed. Because a person may not receive Eucharist while not in a state of grace, he must perform these penances if he wished to be Catholic. However, because some people had been professional thieves, prostitutes, or some other sinful individual, he would have to undergo hundreds of years of penance to get remission for his sins. To alleviate this, the Church instituted certain actions or prayers which would cleanse him for the amount of time noted.
In addition to remitting punishment for the individual's own existing sins, an individual may perform the actions necessary to gain an indulgence with the intention of gaining the indulgence for a specific individual in purgatory. In doing so, the individual both gains the indulgence for the soul in purgatory, and performs a spiritual act of mercy.
To gain an indulgence the individual must be “in communion” with the Church, and have the intention of performing the work for which the indulgence is granted. To be “in communion,” the individual must be a baptized Catholic without any un-reconciled mortal sins (if there are any un-reconciled mortal sins, the individual has cut himself/herself off from God and cannot receive the indulgence) and must not be dissenting from the Church’s teaching. The individual must also intend to receive the indulgence.
Generally, a plenary indulgence requires the following conditions in order to be valid (in addition to the acts performed to earn the indulgence).
- reconciliation, which is required for all indulgences
- receiving the Eucharist
- All attachment to sin must be absent.
- pray for the intentions of the Holy Father. An Our Father and a Hail Mary said for the intentions of the Pontiff is sufficient, although you are free to substitute other prayers of your own choice.
It is recommended that the Communion be received at Mass on the same day that the indulgence is earned. Reconciliation may be within a prudent period before or after the act (typically, one week, though during the Great Jubilee, the Vatican specifically allowed confession within three weeks of the act). Several indulgences may be earned under the same confession (reconciliation). If any of these additional conditions is missing, the plenary indulgence will instead be partial.
Penitential redemptions were a milder form of indulgence that cut down the time of penance.
Indulgenced acts
The following acts are examples of those which result in the award of an indulgence:
- An act of spiritual communion, expressed in any devout formula whatsoever, is endowed with a partial indulgence.
- A partial indulgence is granted the Christian faithful who devoutly spend time in mental prayer.
- A partial indulgence is granted to Christian faithful who on day of the liturgical feast of any saint recite in that Saint's honor a prayer taken from the Missal or other prayer approved by legimate authority.
- A partial indulgence is granted for reading the Holy Scripture at least 15 minutes per day.
Controversy
The doctrine of indulgences has historically been a controversial teaching in Western Christianity soteriology. The abuse of this doctrine, in part, led to the start of the Protestant Reformation.
The ability to grant full or partial pardons from the punishment of sins has been used by members of the Western Church's hierarchy throughout history. These indulgences were related to the removal of the temporal punishment of forgiven sinners.
In 1294, Pope Celestine V issued a bull of pardon in L'Aquila, Italy, offering plenary indulgence to everybody sincerely contrite and confessed entering the basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.
In 1517, Pope Leo X offered indulgences for those who gave alms to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The aggressive marketing practices of Johann Tetzel in promoting this cause provoked Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses, protesting what he saw as the purchase and sale of salvation.
In thesis 28, Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel:
- As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.
In thesis 82, he questioned the spiritual value of indulgences.
- Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.
The 95 Theses not only denounced such transactions as worldly but denied the pope's right to grant pardons on God's behalf in the first place: the only thing indulgences guaranteed, Luther said, was an increase in profit and greed, because the pardon of the Church was in God's power alone.[1]
While Luther did not deny the pope’s right to grant pardons for penance imposed by the Church, he made it clear that preachers who claimed indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error.[2] From this controversy the Protestant Reformation was launched.
It is hard to determine the reaction to the 95 Theses because so much was happening at the time and because historical information on the subject is not very indepth. Yet Luther's act had a tremendous impact on his world. The 95 Theses gained enormous popularity over a very short period of time. His ideas spoke to people from many different walks of life, transcending class, status, and wealth—at a time when such things were integral to social order. However, his supporters that were noble did not always follow because of his doctrine. The seizure of monasteries and their lands was enticing to princes who were plagued with financial problems.
Pope Leo X wished for Martin Luther to recant 41 purported errors, some from the 95 Theses and others from other writings and sayings attributed to Luther, which he famously refused to do before the Diet of Worms in 1521, thus symbolically initiating the ]]Protestant Reformation]].
Other traditions
Orthodox Church
Because the underlying doctrine of salvation differs from the Latin Catholic model, indulgences do not exist in Eastern Orthodoxy or Eastern Catholicism. Although the former had, in some places, a similar practice of Absolution Certificates until the twentieth century, known as aphesis. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Dositheos Notaras (1641-1707), Patriarch of Jerusalem, writes about indulgences as something known to everyone in the ancient tradition: "This practice was confirmed by ancient Tradition that was known to all, that the Most Holy Patriarchs would grant certificates ("synchorochartion") for the remission of sins to the faithful people."
Those traditions which reject a Latin Catholic concept of purgatory (or alternatively, a “condition of waiting”) also reject indulgences, as there is no need for remission of temporal punishment where no temporal punishment exists.
The practice of the clergy accepting money for the expiation of the sins of the dead appears in the deuterocanonical book 2 Maccabees (ca. 100 B.C.E.). This practice is seen nowhere else in the Roman Catholic Bible. The author praises the practice of donating money to the temple as a way of improving the standing of dead sinners on Judgment Day. These "indulgences" are associated with the Pharisees. The Sadducees did not believe in Judgment Day and the Essenes were not part of the Temple power structure.
Protestantism
The Reformation, from which most Protestant denominations derived, arguably began with the posting of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, which was a harsh critique of the practice. Thus, Protestant denominations today frequently cite indulgences as a prime Roman-Catholic error. They reject the distinction between temporal and eternal debt and argued that Christ paid all debts of all sinners in full by his sacrifice. Any need of the sinner to merit remission of divinely imposed penalties, argued Luther, obscured the glory and merit of Christ and overthrew the Gospel of unmerited salvation for Christ's sake.
In contrast the papal understanding of the Office of the Keys as a legislative power given to the pope for creating conditions and means for salvation, the Protestant understanding was that the Keys were to bestowed on the whole Church, administered publicly by all the clergy equally, and consisting in the command of Christ to forgive the sins of the penitent and retain the sins of the impenitent. Under the right use of the Keys as commanded by God, no bishop or pope could possibly have the authority to set up additional means of obtaining forgiveness, whether canonical satisfactions or indulgences. While Protestants continue to express a sense of a completed atonement similar to Luther's, the doctrine of the Keys is found almost exclusively among Lutherans today.
Notes
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Corvin, Otto von. Scandals in the Roman Ctaholic Church, Merkur Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-1885928160
- Lea, Henry Charles. A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, Kessenger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-1417922321
- Paulus, Nikolaus. Indulgences As a Social Factor in the Middle Ages, University Press of the Pacific, 2001. ISBN 978-0898753332
- The Handbook of Indulgences, Catholic Book Publishing, 1992. ISBN 978-0899425856
- U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Apostolic Penetentiary of the Vatican. Manual of Indulgences, USCCB Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-1574554748
External links
Retrieved October 24, 2007.
- Pope John Paul II's General Audience on Indulgences - 29 September 1999. www.vatican.va.
- The Apostolic Penitentiary publication on 'The Gift of the Indulgence'.
- "Indulgences". www.vatican.va.
- "A Primer on Indulgences" by James Akin. www.catholic.com.
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