Indulgences

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Father Joe

When we comment on a compassionate parent’s correction and punishment of a child, we often say the parent is too indulgent. That phrase may give us an insight into the Church’s teaching about indulgences. Indulgences correctly understood and piously obtained are a vital moment in our continual conversion. When our sins are forgiven there remains penance for them. All of us must admit that when we are assigned a penance in confession, it hardly compensates for the offense against our good and loving God. We make up for that disparity in purgatory or by our good deeds to which the Church grants an indulgence from the “Treasury of Merit” stored up by Christ, Mary and the saints. These merits are applied to our debts of penance when what we perform in our prayers and by our good deeds (under proper dispositions on our part) are added to their merits to make reparation. It might be thought of as “matching funds.” Indulgences are gained with the sincere reception of the Sacrament of Penance and Eucharist, prayer for our Holy Father’s intentions (usually some need in the Church), and faithful fulfillment of prayers and actions to which indulgences are attached. The indulgences are either plenary or partial and only God knows what we are receiving. The Church is simply telling us what the potential is in the good work or prayer performed since only God knows our disposition. When our sins are forgiven, the eternal punishment attached to them is remitted. However, the temporal punishment attached to them remains. The modern world has de-emphasized or eliminated sin. The world certainly has a superficial attitude toward penance. The Handbook of Indulgences (1999), put out by Cardinal Baum, contains what is to be done: “participation in day or week of prayer dedicated to specific religious ends, the cult of the Eucharist, and group recitation of the rosary.” Indulgences fit in with the Pope’s call for revitalization of our faith, evangelization and the renewal of our prayer life and charity.