Can you help me understand what are indulgences?

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fabio_rocha

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for what I understand, sin has two consequences, which one can be eliminated by confession. the ‘attachement’/temporal punishment of sin remains. indulgences are remissions of that, which in my understanding means that once I obtain, let say a plenary and I ‘dedicate’ to myself, means that all my T.P. is eliminated, which means I don’t need to go to purgatory if I die. but I also read somewhere that indulgences aren’t a ‘‘jail out’’ free card. this looks contradictory… help!

God bless you all
 
fabio_rocha said:
for what I understand, sin has two consequences, which one can be eliminated by confession. the ‘attachement’/temporal punishment of sin remains. indulgences are remissions of that, which in my understanding means that once I obtain, let say a plenary and I ‘dedicate’ to myself, means that all my T.P. is eliminated, which means I don’t need to go to purgatory if I die. but I also read somewhere that indulgences aren’t a ‘‘jail out’’ free card. this looks contradictory… help!

God bless you all
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When you receive a plenary indulgence, it remits all temporal punishment up until that point in your life. If you sin after that (and provided you live for more than a day afterwards, you most likely will) you will begin to accrue more temporal punishment.

So when people say it’s not a “get out of hell free” card, it means you cannot expect to perform an indulgenced act, and then go on doing whatever it is you care to do for the rest of your life and assume that your salvation is locked in. Even after gaining a plenary indulgence, one may still commit a mortal sin and, if unrepentant, fail to make it to heaven.

Further, there are conditions that need to be met in order to gain a plenary indulgence. One must go to Confession, receive the Eucharist, pray for the Pope, and be free from all attachment to sin. We can unmistakably know that we have fulfilled the first three criteria. But it’s difficult to know with certainty if we are truly free from all attachment to sin. If we are not free from such attachments, we will gain a partial indulgence, not a plenary one.
 
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