The oldest Manual for Indulgences that I have access to is
The New Raccolta that was published in 1898 by order of His Holiness, Pope Leo
XIII. A printed paper copy would be great but what I have is a pdf file
downloaded to my computer.
Read the weighty words of Pope Leo XIII in the introductory
part of the Raccolta.
“Now, it is very important that the faithful should know
what indulgences have been granted, to what practices they have been attached,
and on what conditions they can be gained; since our Lord Jesus Christ
entrusted to his Church the dispensation of the heavenly treasure of
indulgences, in order that the faithful might profit by them to pay, in this
life, the debt of temporal punishment due to their own sins, or to relieve the
suffering souls in purgatory.”
Further, and equally as weighty, we read in the Raccolta
that “after the guilt of mortal sin and its eternal punishment have been
forgiven the repentant sinner, the obligation of satisfying Divine Justice
by some temporal punishment, to be undergone in this life or in the next,
generally remains. A temporal punishment is, likewise, the sad heritage of
every venial sin, and must, in like manner, be borne here or hereafter.”[1]
We need to define and understand what an indulgence is.
“An indulgence is the remission before God of the
temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is
concerned. This remission the faithful, with the proper dispositions and
under certain determined conditions, acquire through the intervention of the
Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and
applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the Saints.”[2]
Vatican II has definitely brought about changes in the
Church. Some liberals say the changes are not far sweeping enough. Some
conservatives say the changes are nothing but heresy.
Regardless of which side of the proverbial yea-nay fence one
chooses to stand on, the Council did not change what the Church has always
believed and taught in regard to the necessity of satisfying Divine Justice
where sin is concerned. The means for alleviating the eternal consequences of
mortal [and venial] sin has not changed as a result of that Council. Nor has
the means of alleviating the debt of temporal punishment been changed by
Vatican II.
“The infinitely precious merits of Jesus, Divine Redeemer
of the human race, and their abundant progeny, the merits of the Blessed Virgin
Mary and all the saints, have been entrusted to Christ’s Church as an unfailing
treasury, that they may be applied to the remission of sins and of the
consequences of sin, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing which the
Founder of the Church himself conferred on Peter and the other Apostles, and
through them on their successors, the Supreme Pontiffs and Bishops. This
remission is given primarily, and in the case of mortal sins necessarily,
through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. However, even after mortal sin has
been forgiven and, as a necessary consequence, the eternal punishment it
deserves has been remitted, and even if slight or venial sin has been remitted,
the forgiven sinner can need further purification, that is, be deserving of
temporal punishment to be expiated in this life or in the life to come, namely,
in Purgatory. An indulgence, whose purpose is to remit this punishment, is
drawn from the Church’s wonderful treasury mentioned above. The doctrine of
faith regarding indulgences and the praiseworthy practice of gaining them
confirm and apply, with special efficacy for attaining holiness, the deeply
consoling mysteries of the Mystical Body of Christ and the Communion of Saints.”[3]
In regard to indulgences, it is important to note that an
indulgence is either partial or plenary according as it removes either part or
all of the temporal punishment due to sin. The faithful can obtain indulgences
for themselves or apply them to the holy souls in purgatory.[4]
The Church has always believed that the process of Christian
holiness, a process that involves progressive purification, is not
always completed in this life. In his love for us, the Lord offers a final
cleansing. Those who die in God’s grace and friendship imperfectly purified
undergo a purification after death, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to
enter the joy of God.[5]
Here, in this process of progressive purification, we can
easily see the unfolding of what Benedictines acknowledge and commit to as
Conversatio Morum [Conversion of Life]. A window is opened that allows us to
see an elemental reason for the vow taken by Benedictine Religious and the
promise made by Oblates of the Order of Saint Benedict. It takes no stretch of
the imagination to see how a positive and conscious pursuit of this process of
holiness centrally figures into the scheme of monasticism as presented by
Benedict in the Rule of Saint Benedict. Bear in mind, too, that for many
Centuries men and women entered into monastic life as the presumed surest means
to avoid the torments of hell and secure admittance to the joys of heaven in
the afterlife.
Without this ongoing process of progressive purification,
whether within a monastic context or without, there is only stagnation
and putrefaction along an ever-increasing debt to be paid in regard to
the temporal punishment that satisfies Divine Justice … a debt that must be
paid either in this life or in the afterlife.
Back during my sojourn as a pastor in the realm of
Protestantism, I began to wonder how certain mean and crusty old “professors
of the faith” would fare when they finally met the Lord Jesus face to face.
It was then that I began to see that crustiness and holiness are
not in the least related. The extent of their likeness is that both are borne
interiorly and manifested outwardly. Crustiness is borne of human egotism. Holiness, on the other hand, is borne of the
Holy Spirit. Human ego and the Holy Spirit will always dwell in opposition to
one another.
It was then, too, that I began to wonder how I, even with my
own profession of faith, could possibly enter into and dwell in the
presence of the Pure and Absolute Holiness of God when, even though I was
trying to serve the Lord, my own bent toward and willingness to sin … as well
as both its inward and outward effects … continued to be a daily affair.
I once heard a Protestant colleague say that we spend so
much time in our lives sowing bad seed that sprouts and grows weeds that we
have to invest a lot of time in sowing good seed that will sprout, grow, and
overtake the effects of the bad seed that we’ve sown.
She did not know it
but what she said is an accurate description of what takes place when we seek
and acquire indulgences from the Church. We are overcoming the effects
of the bad seeds that we have sown both in time and in eternity.
[1]
Raccolta, p. 14
[2]The
Enchiridion Of Indulgences, The Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, 1968
[3] Manual
of Indulgences, Apostolic Penitentiary, Translated into English from the fourth
edition (1999) of Enchiridion Indulgentiarum:Normae et Concessiones, USCCB
[4] See
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraphs 1471 – 1479, on the doctrine
and practice of indulgences and how they are closely linked to the effects of
the Sacrament of Penance.
No comments:
Post a Comment