299. Indulgences
299. INDULGENCE
Protestantism began with Luther’s attack on the sale of indulgences. Protestants continue to protest the very existence of indulgences, even after the Church clamped down on the obvious perversion of selling them. What are indulgences and why are they right?
The universal Church approves and grants indulgences. Therefore indulgences have some value . . . for it would be blasphemy to say that the Church does anything in vain. . . .
Indulgences hold good both in the Church’s court and in the judgment of God, for the remission of the punishment which remains after contrition, absolution and Confession. . . .
The reason why they so avail is the oneness of the mystical body in which many have performed works of satisfaction exceeding the requirements of their debts. . . . So great is the quantity of such merits that it exceeds the entire debt of punishment due to those who are living at this moment; and this is especially due to the merits of Christ; for though He acts through the sacraments, yet His efficacy is nowise restricted to them, but infinitely surpasses their power.
Now one man can satisfy for another, as we have examined above (13,2). And the saints in whom this superabundance of satisfactions is found did not perform their good works for this or that particular person who needs the remission of punishment . . . but they performed them for the whole Church in general, even as the Apostle declared that he fills up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ . . . for His body, which is the Church (Col 1:24).
These merits, then, are the common property of the whole Church. Now those things which are the common property of a number, are distributed to the various individuals according to the judgment of Him Who rules them all. . . (S25,1).
Some maintain that indulgences have not the efficacy claimed for them, but that they simply avail each individual in proportion to his faith and devotion. And consequently those who maintain this say that the Church publishes her indulgences in such a way as, by a kind of pious fraud, to induce men to do well, just as a mother entices her child to walk by holding out an apple. But this seems a very dangerous assertion to make. For as Augustine says, if any error were discovered in Holy Writ, the authority of Holy Writ would perish. In like manner, if any error were to be found in the Church’s teaching, her doctrine would have no authority in settling questions of faith (S25,2).
An “indulgence” sounds like a permission to sin or a surrender to the appetite to sin (e.g., “indulging” in too much alcohol or sweets, or something worse). That is not what the term means at all. It means simply “a remission of punishment due to sin”. It is almost a synonym for “forgiveness”.
Every Christian is saved by a “plenary (total) indulgence” from Christ. His merits effect our forgiveness. In His Passion He took all the punishments we deserved upon Himself and gave us all the rewards He deserved; that was the holy exchange that was the purpose of the Incarnation itself.
Since the Church is not His organization but His organism, His Body, she does the same. She extends the Incarnation, acts on His authority. The principle behind indulgences—that one person’s merits can avail for the forgiveness of the punishments due to another person’s sins—is not an alien addition to, but the very central principle of, Christian salvation itself.
And the Church, i.e., Christ’s people, Christ’s body, the saints (not just canonized saints but all who share in Christ’s work) share not just passively in receiving the results of Christ’s work, but also actively in doing these works for others. This is part of “the communion (common union) of saints”, one of the Church’s essential dogmas and one of the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed.
As Augustine argues, if this teaching of the Church is in error, the Church has not the divine authority she (and Scripture and Christ) claims for herself; she is “a pious fraud”. If you jettison any one part of the divinely commissioned cargo, you claim the authority to jettison any other as well.