For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened

[Dale_M]

This is about the return of indulgences.

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.

The indulgences, experts said, tend to be advertised more openly in dioceses where the bishop is more traditionalist, or in places with fewer tensions between liberal and conservative Catholics.

nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html

 

[LilyM]

They were never in the slightest done away with of course, but certainly people are taking more note of them these days, after decades of de-emphasis, as they are rediscovering the Rosary and many other things traditional.

 

[Another_Mary]

Last week I was given my grandmother’s BLESSED BE GOD A Complete Catholic Prayer Book ©1925. I remember seeing her with it often when I was young.

It lists the indulgences for saying certain prayers.

 

[LilyM]

Last week I was given my grandmother’s BLESSED BE GOD A Complete Catholic Prayer Book ©1925. I remember seeing her with it often when I was young.

It lists the indulgences for saying certain prayers.

The system of indulgences was greatly revised in the 1960s, so the information in that book might well be out of date. You can have a look at the most recent Enchiridon of Indulgences online, which is THE guide as to ordinary indulgences.