A headline from Vatican News today declares “Vatican extends opportunities to gain indulgences for the dead,” and you have a sense of deja vu… haven’t we been here before? After all, it was the whole matter of indulgences that led to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, the spark for the Protestant Reformation, back on Halloween of 1517.
While many of us remember Luther as being “opposed to indulgences,” that’s not quite right. Luther argued for a narrow conception of what an indulgence did: that “the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man.” In other words, Luther believed that the Church could relax her own penalties, but that’s as far as this binding and loosening went. Nevertheless, he insisted: “Let him who speaks against the truth concerning papal indulgences be anathema and accursed.” As I’ve mentioned before, this is the great irony of the 95 Theses being celebrated by Protestants: Luther damns those who deny indulgences.
Rather, Luther’s problem was with the selling of indulgences. If indulgences really confer a spiritual benefit, it’s horrific to try to sell that benefit. Indeed, it’s the sin of simony, so named because of the Simon mentioned in Acts 8:18-20:
Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!”
On this score, the Council of Trent actually agreed with Luther. While reaffirming that “the power of conferring Indulgences was granted by Christ to the Church,” the Council nevertheless lamented “the abuses which have crept therein, and by occasion of which this honourable name of Indulgences is blasphemed by heretics.” To combat this, the Council “wholly abolished” the “evil gains” made through the sale of indulgences, and commanded all bishops to be on guard against “the other abuses which have proceeded from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or from whatsoever other source.”
Given that both Catholics and Protestants recognize that the sale of indulgences was a grave evil, how could such an abuse have happened in the first place? That’s what I want to explore today, because I think we (Catholics and Protestants alike!) may be more prone to this danger than we realize. The challenge is to hold together two Christian ideas: (1) God really does reward generosity; and (2) it’s impossible to bribe God, and evil to try.
This paradox is captured neatly in Sirach 35. In verses 10-11, the goodness of giving back to God is proclaimed: “Give to the Most High as he has given, and as generously as your hand has found. For the Lord is the one who repays, and he will repay you sevenfold.” But in the next verse, there’s immediately a warning against transactional spirituality: “Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it; and do not trust to an unrighteous sacrifice; for the Lord is the judge, and with him is no partiality.” In other words, give generously to God, who will reward your generosity, but don’t think that you bribe Him or buy Heaven.
Now, Sirach isn’t found in Protestant Bibles, but the ideas that it’s expressing are. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians to give generously since “God loves a cheerful giver” and “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6-7). He continues by reminding them in 2 Cor. 9:10-12:
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God; for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God.
As St. Ignatius of Loyola would later put it, “God is never outdone in generosity.” Those who give generously really are rewarded. St. Paul seems to hint at generosity being rewarded in this life, reminding the Corinthians that “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). But his message is more obviously true of the next life. Jesus says to the rich young man in Matthew 19:21, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Tobit 12:8-9 (also not in Protestant Bibles) says that “prayer is good when accompanied by fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness. A little with righteousness is better than much with wrongdoing. It is better to give alms than to treasure up gold. For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin.” Jesus describes this as a sort of spiritual fortune-building in Luke 12:33-34: “Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” And in Luke 6:38, “give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
All of that is to say that the idea that giving generously ensures spiritual riches in heaven isn’t some Medieval corruption of the Gospel: it’s what the Bible actually teaches. And yet we have, alongside this message, warnings like Sirach 35:12 and Acts 8:18-20. So how do we make sense of this?
It may help to notice that we find a similar paradox in many other areas of life. People are encouraged to participate politically, including by financially supporting candidates who they think will implement good policies. But if you were to tell a candidate, “support this plan, and I’ll write you a check,” you’ve crossed that thin-but-important line from political support to criminal bribery. Likewise, there’s an important line between wooing a woman with gifts and expensive dates, and trying to “buy“ her.
In all of these areas, doing a good thing carries with a reward, but trying to “buy” the reward, treating things in a transactional way, is the wrong approach. That’s an important lesson for us. Most of us have never been tempted to buy an indulgence: simple enough, since no one is selling. But we there are many other ways that we can be tempted to approach the spiritual life “transactionally.” Some of those are obvious enough (give to this preacher, and God will make you rich!), but some are more subtle (pray this prayer each day, and God will have to give you what you want!). Worse, we can easily treat our whole lives transactionally: I can strive to do good and avoid evil so God will give me Heaven, but without actually loving Him.
So how do we avoid falling into this trap? The easy (and hard) answer is to love God for His own sake, and before all else. Those rewards aren’t bad: it’s good that God blesses generous givers, and that He answers prayers, and that He treats our meager almsgiving seriously. But the spiritual life was never about the rewards, and must never become about the rewards. The good gifts God gives are to draw us to Him, and to reveal something about His generous and loving nature, not to replace Him. After all, God wants to give us, not merely some reward, but Himself.
We can easily look back in judgment on the Catholics of the 16th century: how could they think giving a donation to an indulgence salesman would please God or secure their place in Heaven? But before we do that, I think it’s worth asking… are we so different today?
The real problem with indulgences is that those in purgatory who have many friends and relatives still among the living have the benefit of a big “fan base” working on their behalf, while those who were introverted or lonely during their lifetimes have no such support. And as far as I can tell, that aspect is still very much with us.
I don’t have any objection to the idea of purgatory itself. In fact I think it makes a great deal of sense. But I think it should be a matter of the individual soul working out its sins entire – no outside help.
If -that- had been the Church’s doctrine from the beginning, there would have been no simony (at least from that direction), no selling of indulgences, no endowments of chantries.
It’s been my experience, and my own practice, that a LOT of people are in the habit of praying for souls who don’t have a “fan base” alive on earth. We pray for souls who, for example, aren’t prayed for by name, have been in purgatory the longest, are most on need of mercy, or are buried in the random graves we pass while visiting a cemetery.
Vicq:
I get where you’re coming from re: simony and selling of indulgences.
But, let’s be careful to distinguish between…
(a.) what is actually true; and,
(b.) what use (or misuse) we make of that truth.
I point that out because you’re saying that, “IF -that- had been the Church’s doctrine from the beginning, THEN….” But the doctrine is a matter of what’s true, not a matter of how that truth might be misunderstood or abused.
So: Is it TRUE that the individual soul cannot be helped by the prayers of the living?
Nope. It’s not true. They can be helped in that way…or else, the prayers for the dead which started as early as Second Temple Judaism, persisted throughout the Apostolic and Patristic eras, and continued consistently among all Christians until the Protestant innovators rejecting them, would have been heretical all along.
But if that were true, then heresy would have been ensconced, in the very liturgy, by the very persons whose orthodoxy we trust whenever we trust them for information about the Biblical canon.
If those folks were all heretics, then your Biblical canon is utterly untrustworthy, and the content of the Christian religion is unknowable, and you might as well stay home on Sundays.
But that’s bollocks, obviously.
We can trust the early Fathers not to have Christianity bass-ackwards. And in that case, we can trust both their knowledge of which books the apostles wrote and used, and their testimony about prayers for the dead being part of the practice and liturgy of the Early Church.
And in that case, we know that prayers for the dead are efficacious…which means the individual soul does NOT “work out its sins entirely without outside help.”
That’s the deal. You either accept that Christianity involves non-meaningless prayers for the dead — which, in accord with other Scriptural principles, results in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory — or else, you deny that, and are stuck with no reliable testimony as to the what the content of the Christian religion ever was.
So, as a matter of TRUTH, it appears we’re stuck with purgatory, or something very like it (some of the separated Orthodox churches would say “tollhouses” at this point; but the specific form or terminology isn’t relevant).
The follow-up question is: Now that we know what’s true, how can we best adopt our habits of living in accord with that truth, to avoid abusing it?
Well, we want to avoid simony; we want to avoid the selling of indulgences, etc., etc. So: Somebody needs to outlaw those. And if certain practices in the Church tend to lead towards such corruptions, the Church ought to outlaw those ill-advised practices.
This is where the Church needs authority from Christ to promulgate positive law governing the observance of the faith by Christians. If you don’t have that authority from Christ, then there’s no authority on earth to modify Christian practice (for good or ill).
Or, if that authority only exists in the bishop (at the diocesan level) then you’ll have one diocese selling indulgences, and the diocese next-door will forbid it.
Or, if that authority only exists in the local-church level (as in some Congregationalist models of church polity, e.g. the Baptist ecclesiology) then you’ll have First Baptist Church practicing indulgences, and half their members will leave and form Second Baptist Church two blocks down Main Street, where indulgences are forbidden.
If the Catholic model of ecclesial authority is correct (and I think it is), then such corruptions and abuses can either be invited at the universal level, or dissuaded at that same level, according to how the Church uses her authority to craft positive law governing prayers for the dead.
If another (Russian Orthodox, or Coptic, or Anglican, or Presbyterian, or Baptist) model is correct, then the same problem would exist, but in a more scattershot way: Corruption in THIS location, but not in THAT, according to who was making the rules, and at what level.
P.S. Of course I’m aware that Presbyterians and Baptists don’t pray for the dead (officially, although Christians whose loved ones have died often do such things when their elders or deacons aren’t lookin’). My point was to abstract away from their specific soteriology — which, if true, would render absurd all their claims to know what Christian doctrine was — and ask, “Does ANY model of ecclesial authority, if true, make corruption of prayers for the dead impossible? Or do they all allow it, at different levels of organization?” It turns out that the latter option is correct.
P.P.S. But, AGAIN, one shouldn’t adopt a model of ecclesial polity because it does or doesn’t promote corruption of prayers for the dead! One should adopt it because it’s TRUE, full-stop. I only bothered to spell out the consequences of different ecclesiologies because, in this case, none of the ecclesiologies which differ between churches make a hill ‘o’ beans’ difference in their ability to be abused. We’re just stuck with a doctrinal truth (efficacious prayers for the dead) which, when coupled to an unwise use-of-authority (at any level) will result in corruption. But, that corruption is avoidable through wiser use-of-authority. Therefore, let’s be wise!
Francis gave Biden an indulgence to keep supporting baby murder so long as he pushes the 666 vaxxines made of murdered baby cells.
The real problem is with Plenary Indulgences, which can only exist with a certain concept of purgatory.
I belong to a denomination that teaches tithing as compulsory and offerings as voluntary but I have never seen any teaching from my church that there is a connection between your financial giving and any remission from the penalty of sin.
There doesn’t seem to be an obvious distinction between Plenary Indulgences and Partial Indulgences, with respect to your objections to the Catholic “concept of purgatory.”
And, it doesn’t seem that the “concept of purgatory” is directly at-issue, although it’s impacted indirectly.
Unless I’m mistaken about your view, what is at issue is either…
(a.) the concept of the Church’s authority over the “treasury of merits,” such that the Church can make positive law (with the authority delegated to her by Christ) with respect to the ORDINARY distribution of benefits (setting aside, as always, any EXTRAORDINARY distribution which God, in His sovereignty, may opt to make);
or,
(b.) the concept that God’s tutelage of the individual soul as a moral agent may involve forgiving a soul of all the eternal consequences of sin (separation from God and hellfire) while imposing upon that soul a finite duty of reparation for the temporal consequences; and/or, the concept that God’s sanctification of the individual soul may involve a purification of that soul from disordered attachments to creatures, either in this life or the next.
Obviously “…or the next” is the point-of-contact with purgatory.
But the way you express what you believe to be “the real problem” seems disconnected from what Catholics actually teach. No Catholic ever said that (in God’s soteriology, apart from positive law) any kind of financial giving results in remission from penalty of sin. And when a bad implementation/application of positive law resulted in people getting the wrong idea about that, the law was then changed to avoid giving people that impression. The very fact of the change, and the reason behind it, reveals the distinction between what the Church teaches, and the misunderstandings that can result from bad positive law.
In the same way, when a bad phrasing of the positive law on indulgences gave the appearance of suggesting that there were “days” in purgatory (which the Catholic Church never actually taught), the law was changed so as to avoid being misunderstood. Now that the verbiage “Partial” and “Plenary” is used, there’s no longer any concern that people imagine their relatives being “in purgatory” for a specific number of 24-hour days.
So I think you need to rethink your objection, get to what’s really at issue, and make sure you’re not shooting at a straw-man.
“the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man.” In other words, Luther believed that the Church could relax her own penalties, but that’s as far as this binding and loosening went. Nevertheless, he insisted: “Let him who speaks against the truth concerning papal indulgences be anathema and accursed.” As I’ve mentioned before, this is the great irony of the 95 Theses being celebrated by Protestants: Luther damns those who deny indulgences.”
“…established by man” means not established by Father, Son or Holy Spirit. As you admit in the next sentence.
“Let him who speaks against the truth…” Luther is choosing his words very carefully, and who he is cursing and anathematizing, rhetorically at least, depends on what “the truth” is, obviously!
“Luther damns those who deny indulgences.” Depends how you read it. Such are the standards of debate when the Unholy Inquisition is waiting off stage for the non-conformist to slip up.
Regardless, the whole idea is blasphemous and ridiculous from a scriptural and spiritual perspective; like so many of these other legalistic clap-trap, so obviously at odds with Christ’s Spirit and Word that only the kept-ingorant laity or latter-day pharisees could accept it.
Of course for those who think they have the keys and that their doctrines and traditions are of equal weight to Scripture, anything is possible. The Papal cult of personality: whatever the Dear Leader says becomes absolute truth instantly etc. etc.
The same for purgatory of course: based on Scriptural abstractions and no doubt elaborated and constructed into a doctrine the better to put the squeeze on the laity and grab some more supposed spiritual power.
So much singing in the wind; at best utterly irrelevant to what Christ told us to do in this world. For His sake and your own souls, forget this rubbish and focus on what He told us to do. This whole site is saturated with this sort of legalistic hair-splitting and abstractualization as though you are going to find “truth” in such stuff. For goodness sake, go and read the Gospels until you get a sense of Christ’s, that is to say God’s, contempt for whitened sepulchres.
No one wishes to dance further on the head of this pin? 🙂