There are two things I’d like you to appreciate before we discuss indulgences, namely:
- First, any sin is never just between a person and God. Sin damages our relationship with our family, friends and others. One cannot say that my sin is only between my God and myself. Any sin has consequences and eventually affects our relationship with others. For example, stealing is a sin because you deprive someone of something and it hurts the relationship. Lying hurts our relationship because you mislead me.
- Secondly, there are two consequences of sin. If your sin is mortal, and here I regard mortal sin as not only one act but as a position you have taken to completely reject God’s love in your life, then the consequence is complete and eternal separation from God. This should come as no surprise to such a person since that person has already taken the position that he or she does not want God in his or life. This is referred to as “eternal punishment.”
The other consequence of sin is the harm to our community and social relationship that I referred to earlier. This is referred to as “temporal punishment.”
These two punishments should not be thought of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God, but as following from the very nature of sin (CCC 1472).
When we convert, i.e. when we once again accept God’s love in our life (and we are forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation), then “eternal punishment” is removed. But “temporal punishment” remains, i.e. the harm brought to our community and social relationships is still there. This is obvious, isn’t it? When I hurt you through unkind words, the hurt is still there even after I go to confession.
We therefore need to repair these hurts in our relationships to ensure that I stop hurting other people, or at least hurt less people or hurt people less. I need to change. But I cannot just will or intend these changes. I must practice patience, kindness, forgiveness and so on. In other words, I need to “pay for” these punishments. We also believe this change process is actually facilitated by the problems, trials and sufferings that we encounter in our life because these make us turn to God as the source of all life and the One who is in control of our life. In a manner of speaking these “punishments” help us reform and change.
Ok, let's now turn to your question. The church defines indulgence as the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven, which persons who are duly disposed gains under certain conditions (CCC 1471). What that means is this.
The burden to change our self is never an individual effort! We are members of Christ’s body, the Church. The Church helps its members by granting indulgences, that is, by assigning to a penitent person a portion of the “treasury of merits Christ and the saints” to help the person “pay for” the temporal punishments. In the case of plenary indulgence, ALL the temporal punishment is “paid for.”
I hope you do not look at “treasury of merits of Christ and the saints” as the sum total of material goods accumulated by the Church through the centuries. Rather, look at it as our Church’s “assets of goodness in the world” (my phrase). Just as there is evil in the world, there is also so much goodness and, as
This is why indulgences are not just doled out. Certain conditions are required. For example, in the granting of a plenary indulgence, the following are the requirements: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, prayer for the intention of the Pope, and that all attachment to sin be absent. The objective of these requirements are to promote and help facilitate the change in the person.
The last condition ("all attachment to sin is absent") is admittedly a tough one, but it is the Church’s way of saying that a profound and personal change must begin to happen in one’s self so that the person will now do less harm to relationships in the community.
Where does purgatory fit into all of this?
We believe in a “purgatory,” that is, a transition between a person’s death and final judgment. We certainly express this in our practice of praying for the dead. Contemporary theology prefers to speak of purgatory as a process rather than as a place, and therefore theologians use the term purification rather than purgatory. Indeed, that is the language commonly used by the early church and the Eastern Churches.[1]
Our own Pope Benedict XVI views purgatory as “the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.” [2]
Pope John Paul II explained purgatory as part of the “process of purification” for the sinner when the repentant sinner is prepared to receive “the fullness of love.” (CWNews.com, Sept. 29, 1999)
In this context, our Church also believes that we can share our indulgences with those in purgatory so that temporal punishments due for their sins may also be “paid for.” Again, don’t look at this as like a bank book wherein we withdraw from our account and deposit to your grandfather’s account in purgatory. Rather, look at this as our way of saying that there is a “perennial link of love between those who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are being purified in purgatory, and those who are still pilgrims on earth; between them there is an abundant exchange of all good things.” (CCC 1475)
As a final word on indulgence, John Paul II reminds us that the process of earning indulgences cannot be a matter of “external gestures, done superficially,” but must be “a process of interior growth toward actual detachment from sin.” (CWNews.com, Sept. 29, 1999)
Sources (in addition to those cited in the footnotes):
-CCC or Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1471-1479
-CFC or Catechism of Filipino Catholics, 1820 – 1821
-www.catholic.org/clife/prayers/indulgc.php
[1] Peter C. Phan, Responses to 101 Questions o Death and Eternal Life (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997), 70.
[2] Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 230; as cited by Phan, 71.
