Just curious if someone could briefly explain what an indulgence is in Catholicism and provide a real life situation or scenario in which one would be appropriate to be requested.
Many thanks.
Through the action of the Church, a remission of temporal punishment which results from sin, may be applied to the living or the dead. Temporal punishment is “unhealthy attachment to creatures” – creatures in the sense of what is created. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
1473 states thatWhile patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace. He should strive by works of mercy and charity, as well as by prayer and the various practices of penance, to put off completely the “old man” and to put on the “new man.”
Also from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Obtaining indulgence from God through the Church
**1478 **An indulgence is obtained through the Church who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus, intervenes in favor of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins. Thus the Church does not want simply to come to the aid of these Christians, but also to spur them to works of devotion, penance, and charity.89
**1479 **Since the faithful departed now being purified are also members of the same communion of saints, one way we can help them is to obtain indulgences for them, so that the temporal punishments due for their sins may be remitted.
The Baltimore Catechism No. 3 has for answer 220: "God requires a temporal punishment as a satisfaction for sin, to teach us the great evil of sin and to prevent us from falling again."The sacrament of penance, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1448 Beneath the changes in discipline and celebration that this sacrament has undergone over the centuries, the same
fundamental structure is to be discerned. It comprises two equally essential elements: on the one hand, the acts of the man who undergoes conversion through the action of the Holy Spirit: namely, contrition, confession, and satisfaction; on the other, God’s action through the intervention of the Church. The Church, who through the bishop and his priests forgives sins in the name of Jesus Christ and determines the manner of satisfaction, also prays for the sinner and does penance with him. Thus the sinner is healed and re-established in ecclesial communion.
1460 states that:
Such penances help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all. They allow us to become co-heirs with the risen Christ, “provided we suffer with him.”
