What Are Indulgences?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call, here’s this week’s question:Dear Dave and Tom:I recently got into a discussion with a Roman Catholic friend about indulgences, because I saw a story regarding that subject on NBC cable.Evidently, the Pope gave an indulgence to anyone who went on a pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes in France.My friend didn’t believe the Catholic Church promoted indulgences anymore.What we both discovered was that neither of us knew that much about indulgences.Can you fill me in on some of the details?

Tom:

Well Dave, the Catholics complain that the fundamentalists, I guess that would be the two of us and others, have it all wrong, and they said and even many Catholics don’t understand indulgences.But let me see, as a former Catholic, now fundamentalist sort of, let’s see if I can explain it.First of all, when a Catholic sins, the sins need to be confessed and forgiven by a priest.If it’s a mortal sin, if you die with a mortal sin on you soul in that condition you go straight to hell, there is no other way you can get out of that.However, there are sins, once they are confessed that when the priest absolves you the guilt is taken away, but the Church says that you still have to pay the punishment for that.And the punishment can be paid either on earth, it’s called temporal punishment, or you can’t suffer enough or do good works enough to remove the punishment, then you go to purgatory.How long you are in purgatory nobody knows, but purgatory is a place in which you are punished for those sins, whatever remains in terms of temporal punishment, that’s supposedly taken care of in purgatory.

Dave:

Where you suffer in the fire.

Tom:

Right, and some saints have said that the fires of purgatory are actually hotter and more purging, have a more purging value than in hell, which you can’t escape from.Now, what’s an indulgence then?An indulgence is a good work, there are two types of indulgences, probably more, but the basic types are partial indulgence and plenary indulgence.A partial indulgence, you’re doing good acts, good works, and these will diminish the penalty that you have to pay, or the punishment that you have to receive in part.A plenary indulgence is an indulgence that wipes the slate clean.

Dave:

Up to that moment, but then if you sin again, then you are back where you started.

Tom:

Exactly.So if you could time it, if you died right after gaining a plenary indulgence, theoretically you would go straight to heaven, you wouldn’t have to go to purgatory.

Dave:

A plenary indulgence then, pays the penalty.Somehow, Christ didn’t pay it on the cross—

Tom:

Well, no, He paid the penalty for your sins, but not for the punishments of your sins.

Tom:

You need to be a lawyer, Dave.

Dave:

No, I know it pretty well.I’ve read the Code of Canon Law and all of this kind of stuff.But, I’m just pointing out, there’s a problem because you must suffer in purgatory, right?

Tom:

Or here on earth.

Dave:

Or here on earth, but you never suffer enough here, so you must suffer in purgatory.And the flames, you don’t get flames here on earth, okay.Now, Christ’s suffering on the cross did not pay for, or however you want to explain it, temporal punishment that is left over.There’s something that you personally have to suffer in purgatory that Christ didn’t pay for, but Jesus said, It’s finished!Okay.On the other hand, you don’t really have to suffer, because although Christ’s suffering didn’t pay for it, people on earth, your aunts and uncles can suffer for you.This is what an indulgence is!And you’ve got a Mass card, Tom, remember, and you put in the name of the deceased, then you sign your name, and so forth, and you hand that with an offering to the priest and he puts that on the altar when he says Mass, and that will reduce the suffering a certain amount.Now, when we are talking about Vatican 2, the Section is called, “Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences.”And this is Pope Paul the 6^th, Indulgentiarum Doctrina (my Latin is not very good), January 1, 1967, in which they say, Well, we need to revise this, this is a revision of indulgences.So, of course it doesn’t help those people who are in purgatory already, unless, I don’t know somehow it does.But anyway, they acknowledge that they made some mistakes.You know your Catholicism, Tom, you’ve got an old Catholic Bible, you read a chapter a day you get 200 days knocked off, or whatever.No, you can’t do that anymore, you can’t specify the time because we don’t know the time the Church says.

Tom:

And people were trying to build up credit.

Dave:

Right.So now it’s partial or plenary indulgence.Okay.And you’ve got 17 pages of Vatican 2 on that.Included, Tom, and included is an anathema.You deny that the church has a right to give indulgences, or that indulgences are necessary, anathema to you!

Tom:

Dave, read that, because many Catholics I know say, Oh, we don’t believe in indulgences anymore, we don’t go there, we don’t do those sorts of things.I think it’s on Page 71.

Dave:

Okay, very good.The church deplored and corrected these improper usages as it teaches and commands that the uses of indulgences, a usage most beneficial to Christians and approved by the authority of the sacred councils, should be kept in the church, and it condemns with anathema those who say that indulgences are useless or that the church does not have the power to grant them.

Tom:

So, that’s Vatican 2, in the early 1960’s, so it’s still in effect.

Dave:

And Tom, I say to people who say, I’m not going to go by that, Okay, you’re a good Catholic, you’re not going to go by it, you don’t care.If you do not fear your church’s anathemas, why do you believe their promise of eternal life?!!