Some Doors of Opportunity Close at the Vatican

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from New York Times.com January 5, 2001, with a headline:  “Romans Jostle Their Way to Indulgences,” dateline Rome.  “Today was the last day worshipers could pass through the bronze holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s square was mobbed with thousands of last chance seekers of a holy year indulgence.  The door will not be opened again until the next jubilee year, a celebration that traditionally occurs every twenty-five years.  For the holy year 2000, this Pope has broadened the way Catholics can earn an indulgence, a remittance of punishment for sins that traditionally was awarded after a pilgrimage to Rome.  But the ritual of passing through the holy door still has a special resonance for believers and many Romans who had all year to do it, waited until the last minute.  At times it got ugly.  Shortly after the Pope appeared at his window to recite a prayer and bless the huge crowd, an unscheduled appearance that he has made every noon since January 1st, a group of people who had been waiting for more than three hours removed the bolt from a metal barricade and stormed out of line toward the Basilica.  Italian police raced over and forcibly shoved them back behind the barrier.  There were no serious injuries but the police were really quite rough.  Christopher Ward Jones, a news photographer who captured the scene on film commented:  ‘It looked more like crowd control for a football game than a line at St. Peter’s.’  The holy doors at three other Basilicas in Rome were closed at 5 p.m.  At St. Peter’s they were kept open late into the night to accommodate the huge crowds eager to get in.  Many said today that they were moved by the sight of so many faithful waiting patiently in long lines that zigzagged across St. Peter’s Square.  Others complained about other pilgrims’ lack of piety.  They are here on a holy pilgrimage and they cannot even be correct with other people.  ‘I am really getting angry,’ Nicola Espizeto, 23, an economic student from Caserta, near Naples, said, as she watched less scrupulous believers cut ahead of her in line.  She then laughed and said she would have to forgive, explaining that she and her friends had decided on Thursday night to make the three-hour car trip this morning.  The holy door is the symbol of Christianity.  ‘It’s something we feel deeply, a chance to purify the soul,’ she said.

T. A. McMahon:

Dave, this is from the New York Times, so this isn’t somebody who, some Protestant or somebody just writing something to be negative.  But I don’t even think it is a negative article in the sense that they are explaining what’s on the hearts and minds of Roman Catholics, particularly in Europe, and what they are doing.  But what they are doing, if somebody didn’t pick it up from the article is, they are trying to get plenary indulgence, which would really cut down their time in purgatory.  In other words, they are storming the gates of heaven right here going through this door so that they can get into heaven quicker.

Dave Hunt:

A plenary indulgence is forgiveness of sins, all sins up to that point.  Of course, if you sin five minutes later you are back where you started because James says you offend in one point you are guilty of all and it only takes one sin to condemn the sinner to hell.  So Tom, it really troubles me and saddens me to hear something like this and we have seen a lot of it in the papers.  These dear people think that this door is holy because the Pope opened it and that walking through it will give them forgiveness of sins.  The lady says this is a symbol of Christianity.  Jesus said, “I AM THE DOOR, by me, if any man enter and he shall be saved.”  He said, “…straight is the gate, narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it.”  It is not a door in a Basilica that mobs of people can storm their way through.  This is so destructive of Christianity; it is so contrary to the Word of God.  It turns people from Christ, who is the door, it turns people from confident trust in Him, the One who paid for our sins and who said, it is finished.  The debt is paid in full.  Now, anybody who believes that, doesn’t walk through some door.  If you walk through a door and the fact that the Catholic Church offers this and that the Pope himself opened is proof that they do not believe what Christ did on the cross.  It is a rejection of the finished work of Christ on the cross and to have people from all over this world spending all this money and time to make a pilgrimage thinking that this is going to gain points with God—what kind of a God does that?  Well, He already did it.  He already paid the full penalty.  So, the scripture says, “If we confess our sins…” to whom? To Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.  So, the Christian has been saved.  The sin question is dealt with.  We are forgiven our sins.  We have eternal life as a free gift and we are on our way to heaven.  Now, on our way to heaven, if we sin it can break our fellowship with our heavenly Father who is not pleased with us—

T. A. McMahon:

John tells us about that in his epistles.

Dave Hunt:

Right.  It can cost us a reward we might otherwise have; it does not cost us our salvation.  So, the forgiveness of sins for the Christian is getting back in fellowship with God and showing the grieving of our heart that we would fail Him, that we would disobey Him and then continuing on.

T. A. McMahon:

Dave, even among Roman Catholics that I know and discuss these things with, some of them tell me pointblank that, Hey, we don’t believe in indulgences and the church after Vatican II, no, that is no longer something that we do, that we support.

Dave Hunt:

There is, in fact, Tom, an anathema in Vatican II.

T. A. McMahon:

Right, a curse, you are cursed, condemned, cut off, excommunicated.

?

Dave Hunt:

Right, whoever denies the efficacy of indulgences and that they should be kept in the church’s treasury to provide forgiveness of sins, they are anathematized, anathema, it says.  So, I would just say to Roman Catholics, if you don’t believe in indulgences you have been anathematized by the highest authority of your church.  You can go to Mass, you can go to Confession, you have been excommunicated and you are on your way to hell according to your church unless that and repent of it, so you might want to think about that carefully.