The doctrine of "indulgences" is one that is made possible as a result of the teaching of "Purgatory" previously discussed. If Purgatory were a true place, then a system would need to be constructed to determine how one gets released from Purgatory, so that the soul can move forward onto heaven. An indulgence is one of the ways the Roman Catholic Church has come up with to answer this.
One means of attaining salvation from the punishment of one's sins is what the Roman Church calls indulgences. These may be purchased with money or through acts of penitence, acts of charity, or other pietistic means. The concept of indulgences is based on the idea that one's good works merit God's grace. Since Christ's sacrifice was insufficient for the full payment of the penalty of sin, acts of piety and gifts to the Roman Church may be used as partial payment for one's sins. The efficacy of an indulgence depends upon the merit attributed to it by the church. For example, one may pay to have a Mass said for a relative believed to be in purgatory. The Mass will then account for a certain number of days deleted from his purgatorial sentence. [60]
Many Catholics believe that the church has reversed her position on indulgences, particularly at Vatican II. However, it is the case that the Roman Catholic Church most assuredly teaches indulgences today.
Vatican II stated definitively:
[The Roman Catholic Church] teaches and commands that the usage 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 [cursing by ecclesiastical authority] those who say that indulgences are useless or that the Church does not have the power to grant them. [61]
Furthermore, the same council also stated:
For God's only-begotten Son... has won a treasure for the militant Church ... he has entrusted it to blessed Peter, the key-bearer of heaven, and to his successors who are Christ's vicars on earth, so that they may distribute it to the faithful for their salvation. They may apply it with mercy for reasonable causes to all who have repented for and have confessed their sins. At times they may remit completely, and at other times only partially, the temporal punishment due to sin in a general as well as in special ways (insofar as they judge to be fitting in the sight of the Lord). The merits of the Blessed Mother of God and of the elect... are known to add further to this treasure. [62]
The Roman Catholic Church considers indulgences "a treasure" that is used for "salvation." The Church has made it clear that it has the power to completely remit one's sins, or partially, as the Church decides. And please note the phrase "the merits of the Blessed Mother of God and of the elect... are known to add further to this treasure." Here the Church is saying that it was not only Jesus who made indulgences possible, but Mary and other saints as well.
Pope Paul VI expounded on this in his Indulgentiarum Doctrina, in 1967 (relatively recently):
This treasury also includes the truly immense, unfathomable and ever pristine value before God of the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, who following in the footsteps of Christ the Lord and by His grace have sanctified their lives and fulfilled the mission entrusted to them by the Father. Thus while attaining their own salvation, they have also cooperated in the salvation of their brothers in the unity of the Mystical Body. [63]
James White rightly explains the conclusion of indulgences:
The "treasure of merit" is a concept that developed long after the time of the Apostles and eventually became a source of great corruption in the Roman Catholic Church. The concept is that Christ had "excess merit" - beyond that required to bring about the salvation of humankind. Consequently, this excess merit goes into the treasury and is available through the Church to be given to those in need of it. It is important to realize that it is not only Christ's merit that is in the treasury. Mary, likewise, had more "merit" than was required for her salvation; therefore her excess merit goes into the same treasury, adding to the superabundance of Christ's merit. But this is not all. The saints also had more merit than they personally needed to enter into heaven, so their excess merit is placed in the treasury along with that of Christ and Mary.
The treasury of merit presents a mixture of the merit of Christ, that of the Virgin Mary, and of the saints. As the document puts it, "The merits of the Blessed Mother of God and of all the elect... are known to add further to this treasure."
An indulgence, then, could be likened to a "withdrawal" of a portion of this merit and the application of it to the "account" of the person obtaining the indulgence. Indulgentiarum Doctrina, quoting from the Papal bull of Boniface VIII, says,
For "God's only-begotten son... has won a treasure for the militant Church... he has entrusted it to blessed Peter, the key-bearer of heaven, and to his successors who are Christ's vicars on earth, so that they may distribute it to the faithful for their salvation. [64]
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that grace sufficient for salvation is tantamount to a bank account. If you have enough "merit," you can get in. If you don't have enough "merit," then the Church can provide that to you in the form of an indulgence, thanks to Mary and others who had more "merit" than they needed.
The question that must be asked is this: did Christ or did He not make propitiation for the sins of the people of God? And if in fact He did, why do I need to add to that work such concepts as indulgences, merits, or the "Suffering of atonement"? [65]
On October 31, 1517, German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Castle's Church.
Luther did not intend to break from Rome. Luther witnessed the abuses of "indulgence preachers," who were men sent by Rome to travel throughout Europe and sell indulgences to the people. Luther was ashamed of this practice, for he saw no Biblical precedent for it, and he knew that many of the people couldn't even afford food for their families, never mind paying for indulgences.
Luther was originally convinced that the Pope was shielded from such abuses, and didn't know this was happening. This is evident in Thesis #50, when Luther wrote, "if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers." Clearly Luther believed that the Pope didn't know what was going on. In time, Luther would come to learn the truth that the Pope was behind the abuses of the "pardon preachers," or "indulgence preachers," and that the Church benefited financially from such widespread abuses.
Reading Luther's 95 Thesis is a worthwhile endeavor. A selection of them is as follows:
- This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.
- Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;
- It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.
- They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.
- Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;
- Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.
- Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on pardons.
- Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.
- The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ.
- We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.
- What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?
- Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers? [66]
When Luther posed these questions, he touched the nerve of the Roman Catholic Church, because indulgences represented the manner by which Rome built her empire financially. Luther was correct when he wrote in Thesis #50 that indulgences represented "the skin, flesh and bones" of the people.
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