Further, how does praying the rosary grant indulgences? Why are indulgences necessary?
My final question involves confession. I have an Orthodox friend who thinks it is odd that Catholics are sometimes required to do something beyond confessing and making whatever amends one can for their offense. The example he gave was the priest requiring the penitent to say three hail Marys. I wasn’t able to give him a decent answer as to why this is required since I am not quite sure about it either.
OK. Believe it or not, these three questions all go together.
Let’s look at what the Church teaches about sacramental reconciliation. I’ll reference passages from the catechism as I go along, ok?
The sacrament of reconciliation consists of a number of parts: contrition (being sorry, hating the fact that we committed sin, and resolving not to do it again (1451), the physical act of confessing the sin to a priest (1456), and satisfaction (doing something to “fix” things).
Satisfaction is what your questions about penance and indulgences are all about.
First off, when we sin, we harm not only others but also ourselves. Penance is a means of “making satisfaction for” or “expiating” our sins: that is, it’s not a condition of forgiveness, but a means of making amends for our sins.
The catechism tells us that penance can take many forms: “it can consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear” (1460). Penance isn’t about
forgiveness, it’s about doing something to help fix us. When a confessor says, “say three Hail Marys”, he’s not adding a condition for forgiveness, or trying to have us make amends to someone else – he’s giving us something to do that will help us heal.
OK – that’s “penance”. What about “indulgences”? These two are somewhat linked. When we go to confession, the guilt of our sins is forgiven, but there is still the “temporal punishment due to sins”. We go to confession and are forgiven; we also make amends. Yet, we are still weakened by our experience of sin. Like Mom used to tell me, committing little sins leads to committing big sins – the act of sinning turns me away from God and toward more sin. When someone forgives me, I’m still compromised by the fact that I sinned; even when I make amends, there’s still part of me that’s been ‘damaged’ by my experience. (Does that make sense?)
My goal, of course, is to get to heaven. If I’m in a state of grace when I die (i.e., my sins are forgiven), then I’ll make it to heaven. But… there’s a problem. In heaven, I’ll be perfect (after all, in heaven – in the presence of God – all is perfect). But, like I’ve just said, the experience of sin damages me. So, something has to happen between the time of my death (at which point I hope that I’ll have been forgiven of sin, but yet I’ll probably still be ‘damaged’) and the time I’m in heaven (at which point I’m ‘perfected’). That ‘something’ is Purgation – the process of purification in which I’m perfected.
There are two ways of being perfected: purgation after death (which folks call ‘Purgatory’) and removal of this damage here on earth. This ‘damage’ is also called “the temporal punishment due to sins”; an indulgence “is a remission before God” (1471) of that damage. How can we express the extent of the damage and the amount of “fixing” that we’ll need? Well, back in the day, they used the idea of time: indulgences were expressed in terms of “days”, “months”, or “years”. That was helpful, but folks took it too literally. These days, the Church talks about partial or plenary (full) indulgences – that is, indulgences that remove part or all of the damage.
You asked whether indulgences are necessary. No, strictly speaking, they’re not. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they’re not good…
Maybe I should pause to give you an opportunity to ask questions to clarify anything I’ve said…?
