Indulgences for Mortal Sin

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Are there any indulgences that are specifically for mortal sin? When you perform indulgences should you tell God that you are performing that indulgence for a specific sin? How many indulgences should you do for a specific sin?
 
Go for the gold. You can make a plenary indulgence every day of your life if you want. It removes all sin and penalty for sin from your soul. Or, you can choose to apply it to a soul in Purgatory.
 
MeInMississippi said:
Are there any indulgences that are specifically for mortal sin? When you perform indulgences should you tell God that you are performing that indulgence for a specific sin? How many indulgences should you do for a specific sin?
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Since “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven” (Catechism 1471) it is not specific, unless there is only temporal punishment for one sin that remains.
 
A plenary is a plenary. It’s supposed to cover any and all levels of sin. But since you do not know for sure whether you will achieve the “no attachment to sin” condition for the plenary, you do not know how much percent of your temporal punishment will actually get remitted. Nor do you know how much temporal punishment each of your partial indulgences will remit.

This is why it’s better to just give your indulgences to souls in Purgatory and trust in God’s mercy.
 
MeInMississippi said:
Are there any indulgences that are specifically for mortal sin?
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No. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go straight to Hell, and no amount of indulgences will ever get you out.

Indulgences are for when you die in a state of venial sin, to shorten your stay in purgatory.
 
AndrewAxland said:
No. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go straight to Hell, and no amount of indulgences will ever get you out.

Indulgences are for when you die in a state of venial sin, to shorten your stay in purgatory.
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Um, I believe the OP, since they are still alive and walking around, is talking about shortening the stay in purgatory for a mortal sin that has been confessed and absolved, but for which there is still temporal punishment in purgatory owing.

You also may very well owe purgatory time for your venial sins that have been confessed and absolved. You don’t get purgatory time only for sins not confessed on the point of death.

Also, not to split hairs but it’s only an UNREPENTED mortal sin that sends you straight to hell at the end. If you were to repent right at the moment of death, God would take that into account, even if you didn’t have a chance to confess (or perhaps were not a Catholic so you didn’t have confession).
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
A plenary is a plenary. It’s supposed to cover any and all levels of sin. But since you do not know for sure whether you will achieve the “no attachment to sin” condition for the plenary, you do not know how much percent of your temporal punishment will actually get remitted. Nor do you know how much temporal punishment each of your partial indulgences will remit.

This is why it’s better to just give your indulgences to souls in Purgatory and trust in God’s mercy.
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Father Edward McIlmail, LC wrote:
The requirement for someone to be totally detached from sin needs some explanation. No doubt it is the most difficult condition for obtaining the indulgence. Notably, however, the requirement is not freedom from all sin. Rather, it is freedom from attachment to sin; that is, that there is no sin which the soul is unwilling to renounce. A person should be able to tell if he is fulfilling this condition. An attachment involves a refusal to amend a situation, and a person should be able to tell if he has such an attachment. Sometimes, deep down, we really don’t want to let go of certain sins, be it gossiping or overeating or loafing on the job. This differs from the case of normal human weakness or where a person falls into the same sin many times before overcoming it. To souls such as these the Church is ready to open her treasury of aid.
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Yes, but we still have no way of knowing if we meet the criteria of being sufficiently free from attachment to sin.

People always like to cite the old story of St. Philip Neri preaching a jubilee indulgence to a huge crowd who’d showed up for the plenary indulgence, and him having a vision that out of all those people, the only two persons getting the indulgence were himself and one old charwoman standing in the back.

Now having said that, we don’t know if we achieve 100% plenary or if we achieve 99.99% or 50% or 1%.
There’s no grade we get back on a paper, and no little LED light that comes on showing our progress.
All we know is that God is always pleased with our sincere effort.
So we need to think of it in those terms, and not think about "did I get 100% on this “test” ".
Because if we’re humble, we’ll be thinking of ourselves as poor lousy sinners anyway. When we have great saints of the Church calling themselves terrible sinners, then from a logical perspective, I must be so very much worse.

St. Therese of Lisieux grew up in the time of the Jansenists when you were supposed to try to rack up a sufficient amount of prayers and sacrifices that you might possibly have some little hope of maybe, possibly, getting to Heaven, and it was presumed everybody was going to Purgatory.
She’s the one who came up with the idea of giving up everything you could for others, not “keeping score”, and trusting in God’s mercy. Her teaching on this caused a lot of controversy at her convent at the time, but she’s a Doctor of the Church today.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Yes, but we still have no way of knowing if we meet the criteria of being sufficiently free from attachment to sin.

People always like to cite the old story of St. Philip Neri preaching a jubilee indulgence to a huge crowd who’d showed up for the plenary indulgence, and him having a vision that out of all those people, the only two persons getting the indulgence were himself and one old charwoman standing in the back.

Now having said that, we don’t know if we achieve 100% plenary or if we achieve 99.99% or 50% or 1%.
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Note that there is the merit of the act and then the additional indulgence added by the Church.

Excerpt from Chapter 5, Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina
Since by their acts the faithful can obtain, in addition to the merit which is the principal fruit of the act, a further remission of temporal punishment in proportion to the degree to which the charity of the one performing the act is greater, and in proportion to the degree to which the act itself is performed in a more perfect way, it has been considered fitting that this remission of temporal punishment which the Christian faithful acquire through an action should serve as the measurement for the remission of punishment which the ecclesiastical authority bountifully adds by way of partial indulgence.
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https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-...-vi_apc_01011967_indulgentiarum-doctrina.html

Inordinate attachment to venial sins hinder the plenary.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae > Third Part > Question 87. The remission of venial sin
Article 2. Whether infusion of grace is necessary for the remission of venial sins?

Reply to Objection 3. Just as there are two kinds of bodily stain, one consisting in the privation of something required for beauty, e.g. the right color or the due proportion of members, and another by the introduction of some hindrance to beauty, e.g. mud or dust; so too, a stain is put on the soul, in one way, by the privation of the beauty of grace through mortal sin, in another, by the inordinate inclination of the affections to some temporal thing, and this is the result of venial sin. Consequently, an infusion of grace is necessary for the removal of mortal sin, but in order to remove venial sin, it is necessary to have a movement proceeding from grace, removing the inordinate attachment to the temporal thing.
 
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