Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 2:
You can be quite sure that many other non-Catholics have no idea what is the meaning of an indulgence according to the Catholic teaching. It is the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin after the sin itself has been forgiven. For example, let us suppose that a child disobeyed his father and was to be put in a dark room without supper. But he showed such remorse that his father forgave him the offense but insisted on his going to bed supperless as a punishment. The child accepted his punishment so submissively and said his prayers so fervently that his mother was permitted by the father to give him a cookie in bed. Now apply that to any soul. By our sins we both offend God, and deserve punishment. Even after the offense against God is forgiven, we still have to expiate our sins, either in this world or in the next. But the Church grants us a remission of the expiation we should undergo, provided we do certain good works such as prayer, fasting, or almsgiving. Scripture itself warns us to redeem our sins by almsgiving. That is, even after being forgiven, we should remember our past sins, and try to compensate for them by works of charity. An indulgence, therefore, is a remission by the Church of the penalties due to our sins even after they have been forgiven.
No. No such indulgences are available in the Catholic Church. The only people who ever granted indulgences of that nature were the early Protestant reformers. For they said that people are saved by faith only. And they declared themselves saved, and unable to be lost whatever they might do. Such a doctrine, denying the necessity of good works, was logically an indulgence to do as one pleased. In the Catholic Church, however, sin is held to be essentially evil. At all costs it must be avoided. Never can any permission be granted to sin. And no matter how holy a person may be, if he does sin gravely and dies without repentance and conversion to God, he will lose his soul. Moreover, one who is in a state of grave sin can never gain an indulgence whilst in that state. One must be in God's grace and friendship before an indulgence can be gained. So, far from being an inducement to sin, an indulgence is an inducement not to sin, but to keep in a state of grace.
On the grounds that a mutual communication of spiritual goods exists between Christ and the Christian, as also between the Saints, together with all others in heaven, and the Church militant on earth. This is simply an application of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints in which all who recite the Apostles' Creed profess to believe. And that the Church has the power to apply the satisfactory value of our Lord's sufferings, and of those of the Saints and Martyrs, to her children on earth, is evident from the fact that Christ gave her the power both to bind and loose in His Name. He said to her, not only, "Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven," but also, "Whatsoever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." Matt. XVIII, 18. By an indulgence the Church remits to us a certain amount of the expiation we must offer for our sins either in this life or in purgatory.
In the first place, Christ left to His Church the power of forgiving sin. Now if it is not absurd that the Church can forgive by the power of Christ, the greater evil, the very guilt of sin, why is it absurd to say that she can remit the lesser evil, the temporal punishment due to sin? If there be any absurdity, it is your comparison between the remission of punishment in purgatory, and the offering of a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. You would suggest that there is no proportion between the two things. But there is no need that there should be a proportion. If the conditions prescribed had to equal the benefit conferred, there would be no real indulgence at all. We would merely have an exchange of one form of expiation for another. The prayers required by the Church are but a condition she demands for the obtaining of a remission of expiation out of all proportion to what we do. An indulgence is an act of leniency and mercy, sharing out to us the satisfactory value of others, those others being Christ, and the Saints and Martyrs whose merits constitute the spiritual treasury of the whole Church.