Indulgence question

[Redratfish]

I know that in the present day and indulgence is a full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven.

However, when Luther split with the Church, much of it was because of indulgences. Was the Churches teaching on indulgences different back then, or was it just a abuse by priests to get money?

 

[JM3]

I know that in the present day and indulgence is a full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven.

However, when Luther split with the Church, much of it was because of indulgences. Was the Churches teaching on indulgences different back then, or was it just a abuse by priests to get money?

“Luther insisted that an indulgence can only remove canonical penalties, not the temporal punishment due to sin…This assertion, of course, questions the power of the keys - the power of the Church to bind and loose.” Dissent from the Creed by Richard M. Hogan

Yes, there were abuses by priests that triggered Luther’s objection.

The Church’s teaching on indulgences was not different, it was not fully understood at that time.

 

[manualman]

The average catholic and even the average priest in the time of Luther had a LOT less access to reliable sources of authentically catholic teaching than we do today. There was no readily available CCC and the Vatican hadn’t yet set up their website you see…

So the actual teaching has changed very little. But the abuses and distortions of the teaching that were rampant in Luther’s day have been all but stamped out since then. Errors and heresies generally have a shelf life before being widely and thoroughly discredited.

But Luther’s reaction againts abuses of Indulgences went far beyond the abuse and rejected the idea altogether. I believe many of his most vitriolic criticisms were for an itinerant priest who may actually have been innocent of genuine abuses.

 

[stuart12]

The only difference back then was that indulgences were given ‘days’ (100 days or 230 days etc) instead of partial and plenary. These ‘days’ were not time off purgatory, but a remission of the days spent in penance in the early Church.