Continue to pray for deceased person after plenary indulgence?

[michael1984]

Hello,

The title sums it up: should we continue to pray, offer sacrifices and indulgences, etc, for a deceased person after offering up a plenary indulgence for them?

It would seem that there’s no point: assuming they were in purgatory, we believe that the plenary indulgence frees them from all bondage to their sin, and gains their entry into heaven. Thus they would no longer benefit from our prayers or sacrifices - instead we can pray TO them as saints.

Is this reasoning sound Catholic theology or am I missing something?

Many thanks!

 

[Genesis315]

There’s a couple issues here. First, one condition of the plenary indulgence is being free from the attachment to sin–we can’t judge ourselves to know with absolute certainty that we are free of any said attachment.

Furthermore, the dead are not subject to the Church’s jurisdiction and so indulgences offered for them are offered to God “by way of suffrage” as the Code of Canon Law puts it (meaning as a petitionary prayer). We have a confident hope that God accepts them, but not an absolute promise like with His promise related to the Church’s jurisdiction.

Cardinal Lepicier explains in his treatise: "Indulgences, their origin, nature, and development”

12.Yet, we should observe with St. Bonaventure, that the souls in Purgatory are united to the Militant Church by the bonds of charity, not by the chains of true subjection. As soon as a soul departs this life, it ceases to be subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, and is submitted immediately to God’s tribunal. Hence, the Church can pronounce on the faithful departed no juridical sentence, no formal judgment, no direct absolution : this God alone can now do. Yet, she can help them by way of suffrage, offering, or impetration ; that is, she can draw from off her own treasury the merits of Christ, and offer them to God, praying Him to accept these suffrages in their behalf And in this indirect manner, the Church helps the souls of her children that are detained in the flames of Purgatory.

As regards the power of the Keys of the Church, the intention of the donor, and the abundance of the merits of Christ and of His saints, an Indulgence applied to the souls in Purgatory should have the same effect as if it were applied to the faithful on earth. But with God’s intention, on whom the application entirely depends, it is not so.

For, although we may have a confident trust that God will take into account our good wishes and supplications, yet He has not pledged Himself irrevocably to do so, at least in the measure which we ask ; so that we cannot infallibly be certain that such a soul, for which we have, by fulfilling all the conditions, gained, for instance, a plenary Indulgence, is at once on equal terms with the Justice of God and ushered into Paradise. In fact, that should be said of Indulgences which the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences declared about the privilege annexed to some altars, viz., that “in its real application it is a pardon, the measure of which corresponds to the good pleasure of Divine Mercy, and to His acceptance of the satisfaction which is offered to Him.”

For all these reasons, it is still a good idea to pray for the person, etc.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

You can continue to pray for them from time to time if you wish, and the Lord will either apply the prayers to them as needed (like if your plenary wasn’t truly plenary for some reason), or if they don’t need it, the prayers will go to help someone else. But at some point you can have confidence that you’ve done all you could.

I have great confidence in the Lord that my closest loved ones are now in heaven. I have done plenaries and Gregorian Masses for my mother and dad and husband and grandma etc. I did something like 5 or 6 plenaries for my husband, had Gregorian Masses said for him, had multiple individual Masses said for him, put his name in for several other Masses for the deceased, and asked three bishops and two Archbishops to pray for his soul, as well as asking people on here. My husband was Protestant and would not convert so I tried to do as much as I could because it was primarily my job as a Catholic wife to help him get to Heaven. I am pretty sure he is in Heaven now (I had one of those “unapproved private revelations”) but I still say a prayer or have a Mass said from time to time. However, having confidence he got where he was supposed to be frees me up to use my prayer time and Mass budget to help other souls, as people are dying all the time including other people I know.

A priest I know told me he had been praying for his own father’s soul for something like 50 years. My first thought was that his father must have been a mass murderer, but then I remembered the idea of backdated prayers that can help a person when they are alive, and God applying the prayers to other souls.

 

[michael1984]

Thank you very much for this write up! My one concern is that you base the answer on Cardinal Lepicier’s writings. I have to say I’m rather disinclined to trust the judgment of someone who said

as soon as anyone makes a public profession [of heresy], not only should he suffer the greater excommunication, but also he should be justly put to death

Without wanting to go too much into it, I think I have a very different idea of God than the Cardinal.

Is there perhaps some other authoritative source which speaks on this issue?

 

[Anesti33]

I think it is unfair of you to poison the well, especially when you do it unjustly.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Yeah I know I put my family members in for some of those perpetual enrollments, but I kind of lost track so I need to put them all in for a few more.

Aside from monthly collections, I always try to have a Mass said or a prayer enrollment done for any donation I make to a church or shrine. They are going to be saying the Mass or prayers anyway and I might as well help somebody with my donation.

 

[Genesis315]

Yep, here’s the canon law currently in force: “Can. 994 Any member of the faithful can gain partial or plenary indulgences for oneself or apply them to the dead by way of suffrage.” Lepicier provided a good explanation of why those for the dead are “by way of suffrage” rather than a jurisdictional act by the Church.

St. Thomas and St. Robert Bellarmine (whose memorial we celebrate today) among many others taught the thing you object to so that doesn’t seem like reason in itself to reject everything–although it is surprising Lepicier would be arguing for its use in his time. I would be interested in seeing the context (wikipedia mentions it briefly, but they cite a Chick tract for the footnote…).