On Indulgences

What an Indulgence Is

An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. To understand this, one must recall the distinction made in Section I above: when a sin is forgiven (whether in the Sacrament of Penance or by an act of perfect contrition), the eternal punishment — damnation — is remitted, but a debt of temporal punishment ordinarily remains. This temporal punishment must be satisfied either in this life (through penance, suffering, and good works) or in Purgatory after death.

The Church, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing given to her by Christ (S. Matthew 16:19, 18:18), can draw upon the infinite merits of Christ and the superabundant merits of the Blessed Virgin and the saints — together called the "Treasury of the Church" — and apply them to the remission of temporal punishment for the faithful. This is what an indulgence does. It is not the forgiveness of sin itself (which requires the Sacrament of Penance or perfect contrition) but the remission of the punishment that remains after forgiveness.

Indulgences are either partial or plenary. A partial indulgence remits part of the temporal punishment due to sin. A plenary indulgence remits all of it. To gain a plenary indulgence, the faithful must perform the prescribed work, be in the state of grace, receive sacramental Communion, pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, and have complete detachment from all sin, including venial sin. If this last condition is not fully met, the indulgence is partial rather than plenary.

The Historical Abuses — and Their Correction

It is no secret that the practice of indulgences was subject to grave abuses in the later Middle Ages, and it is right to speak of them plainly.

In its origin, the practice of indulgences grew from the early Church's discipline of public penance. The bishop, as shepherd of the community, could shorten or remit the canonical penances imposed on penitents — a legitimate exercise of the power of the keys. Over the centuries, this power was extended and formalised: indulgences were attached to pilgrimages, to prayers, to acts of charity, and to almsgiving.

The trouble came when the connection between indulgences and genuine spiritual renewal was obscured, and when the offering of money came to be treated, in popular understanding and sometimes in practice, as the primary condition for obtaining an indulgence. The most notorious case was the preaching of the indulgence for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in the early sixteenth century. Certain preachers — most infamously Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar — employed exaggerated language that suggested one could "buy" release from Purgatory for oneself or for the dead, as though the grace of God were a commodity to be purchased. The crude saying attributed to Tetzel — "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs" — captures the popular perception of the abuse.

It is important to be clear: the Church never taught that indulgences could be "sold," that money alone sufficed for an indulgence, or that sin itself could be forgiven by payment. But the line between the doctrine and the practice had become dangerously blurred. The abuses were real, the scandal was great, and the faithful were confused. It was partly these abuses that provoked Martin Luther's protest in 1517 and contributed to the fracture of Western Christendom.

The Council of Trent addressed the problem directly. In its final session, Trent affirmed the doctrine of indulgences as sound and beneficial but ordered that "all evil gains for the obtaining of them be wholly abolished" and that abuses connected with them "be amended and corrected." The Council further decreed that the practice of indulgences be reformed and that superstition, scandal, and irreverence be rooted out. In 1567, Pope St. Pius V abolished the granting of indulgences in exchange for any financial payment whatsoever.

The reforms continued in the twentieth century. In 1967, Pope Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, which thoroughly revised the norms governing indulgences, eliminated the old system of counting indulgences in "days" and "years" (which had caused much misunderstanding), and clarified the theology of indulgences for the modern faithful. Today, the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum (Manual of Indulgences), published by the Apostolic Penitentiary, provides the authoritative list of indulgenced works and the conditions for gaining them.

The doctrine of indulgences is neither a medieval invention nor a discarded relic. It is a living part of the Church's pastoral care, rooted in the power of the keys, the Treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, and the Communion of Saints. The abuses of the past were abuses of a genuine doctrine — and they were corrected by the Church herself.