Plenary Indulgence for Poor Souls

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PatK63

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Indulgences are not talked about these days. But Indulgences are a dogma of the church. There are many ways to earn a plenary indulgence (PI) and one way is to say the rosary in church in a group!
A plenary indulgence removes all the punishment, there is probable a better word, due for sins that have been forgiven. You can gain one for yourself or a soul in purgatory.
The standard requirements are to receive Eucharist, go to confession, pray for the Pope and his intentions. And, end all attachment to even venial sin.
The last one is a tough one. I ask my confessor and he said to pray and put your trust in God to end any attachment.
So I go to daily mass and there is a group who say the rosary after mass. On Tuesdays there is confession after mass.
So I have been trying to gain a PI each week with the hope of freeing my relatives from purgatory. Then I ash them to pray for people on my prayer list.
As far as ending my attachment to sin I pray to do that and with weekly confession I feel I am getting there.
I don’t know for sure if I have gained even one PI but I know it has helped me.
You can look this all up with Google. I put things in my own words so go by official church documents.
I encourage you to take advantage of this great gift!
 
PatK63 said:
Indulgences are not talked about these days.
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Actually, they are talked about not only all over this forum, but pretty widely in a lot of Catholic prayer groups.

Fr. Richard Heilman has promoted them very heavily, especially during November which is traditionally the month to pray for the Poor Souls.

Author Susan Tassone has written several recent books on praying for souls in purgatory and on earning indulgences for them. She is a popular speaker and people often post about her writings on Catholic social media.

It’s great that you are getting indulgences for your loved ones. I agree with Peonies, it’s a lovely spiritual work of mercy!
Many people on this forum including myself have been involved in indulgence practice and there are lots of threads about it here.

Just to repost a couple of popular links that have been in other past threads:

The latest Manual of Indulgences is available for free here for anybody looking for indulgences to get.
https://d2wldr9tsuuj1b.cloudfront.net/3189/documents/2018/4/Indulgences_v2.pdf

An easy “how to gain a plenary indulgence” method by Father Heilman is here. Note that his Holy Alliance, Stealth Evangelization/ Divine mercy chaplet are an extra devotion for living people and NOT part of the indulgence practice, in other words optional.

 
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Tis,
Thanks. In the very involved Catholic circles indulgences are talked about, but to 90% of Catholics they have little knowledge.
Do you have any insights on how we eliminate all attachments to even venial sin?
 
I think your confessor gave good advice. I just pray at every Communion, something like, “Lord, I reject sin, I don’t want to sin, help me not sin.”

From what I have read, getting rid of “attachment to sin” just means that we should have no wish to sin, no desire to commit sin, no plans to commit sin, etc. Like we’re not thinking about how great it would be if we could just go commit sin X, or thinking “well next Saturday I’ll probably be committing sin X”.
 
Thanks that helps and I think I do that. I read the Roman Catholic man link. Excellent! I think he said what I said only better. I had not thought of adding a saint.
🙏❤️🙏
 
I definitely worry about attachment to venial sin when I am hoping for a plenary indulgence, but I do take comfort in the knowledge that even if I miss the bar for a plenary, the Holy Souls will still be helped with a partial indulgence.
 
We are blessed because it is in God’s hands! He bends down to hear our request! I think he gives us all the benefit of the doubt because He loves us so much.
He wants us in heaven more that we want to go their.
 
Just to elaborate on what Tis_Bearself said, about the condition of being free from the attachment to sin, I think some make this out to be more difficult than it is (not to say it’s easy). Like she said, it basically means you don’t have a sin that you refuse to give up. We all fall into venial sins (the just man falls seven times a day). It’s another thing to say “I like falling into these sins and refuse to even try and avoid them, even though I know God wants me too.” That shouldn’t be that hard.

In response to those who “teach in a dogmatical tone that exceedingly few are those who can gain [a plenary indulgence], and fewer still those who actually do gain it — perhaps a holy nun in some remote corner of the world, or some saintly hermit dead to this life and its concupiscences,” Cardinal Alexeus Lepicier responded (after noting the ease of all the other conditions):

Cardinal Lepicier, Indulgences: Their Origin, Nature, and Development
The only real difficulty, then, will lie in being detached from every affection to venial sin. But, we should observe that it is one thing to fall into venial sin, and another to have an affection for it. The first means an act, the other a state of the soul. The first is often the result of weakness, of inadvertence, of a habit not yet eradicated, but for the rooting out of which we have already manfully striven. The other implies something more — that is, a certain amount of wickedness on the part of the will, excessive attachment to creatures, with the offence of the Creator.

From the first no man, however holy, excepting Christ, and His Blessed Mother, can call himself
free ; but many should be, and in reality are, free from the second. How can we imagine faithful
souls, that are anxious to please God, and daily seal this desire with the Bread of Life — and their generation, thank God, is not extinct — how can we imagine such as these to be wilfully attached to that which, though not causing eternal death, yet is infinitely injurious to the Divine Majesty?

In conclusion, it would be better, rather than spread such ill-grounded and unauthorised opinions [that it is excessively difficult to obtain a plenary indulgence], to go back by examination and reflection to the heart, and work up the will to be ready to walk in the path of God’s justice and judgment. Thus shall we gain either for ourselves or for the souls in Purgatory, those heavenly riches which Holy Church offers us from her spiritual treasury.
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PatK63 said:
Indulgences are not talked about these days. But Indulgences are a dogma of the church. There are many ways to earn a plenary indulgence (PI) and one way is to say the rosary in church in a group!
A plenary indulgence removes all the punishment, there is probable a better word, due for sins that have been forgiven. You can gain one for yourself or a soul in purgatory.
The standard requirements are to receive Eucharist, go to confession, pray for the Pope and his intentions. And, end all attachment to even venial sin.
The last one is a tough one. I ask my confessor and he said to pray and put your trust in God to end any attachment.
So I go to daily mass and there is a group who say the rosary after mass. On Tuesdays there is confession after mass.
So I have been trying to gain a PI each week with the hope of freeing my relatives from purgatory. Then I ash them to pray for people on my prayer list.
As far as ending my attachment to sin I pray to do that and with weekly confession I feel I am getting there.
I don’t know for sure if I have gained even one PI but I know it has helped me.
You can look this all up with Google. I put things in my own words so go by official church documents.
I encourage you to take advantage of this great gift!
Click to expand...
Half hour of scriptural study is also an Plenary Indulgence as well as the Stations of the Cross in a Church or Oratory, with the usual conditions of course. Make sure that if you are capable of it (not deaf or dumb) that you use vocal prayer as required.
 
Hi, PatK63. I am another seeker of Indulgences for the holy souls. Is it possible you can say a daily rosary with a family member? Provided you can get to communion often enough, this is a great way to increase your opportunities for gaining plenary indulgences. I too worried about the detachment from all sin including venial. I read this page and it gave me hope.


Also opened my mind to the Heroic Act of Charity.
 
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If you do Stations in the church, make sure your church has a cross for each station. Usually on older stations, the cross is built into the frame of the station or it’s inscribed with the caption, etc. On newer stations, I’ve noticed a LOT of them don’t have a built-in cross. If the station has a cross in the picture (for example Jesus is carrying one or being crucified) then that one counts, but the beginning and end stations often don’t have the cross as part of the scene. The Manual states that you have to have a cross installed for each station to get the plenary.
 
Thanks Bear, I never caught that. Lucky the one that I’ve done it with has.
 
There’s a strange stations I saw recently where there was only a facial profile per station, not a full scene. Very odd to me.

As in a half face a Jesus with a cross, than a half face of Simon, Veronica, Mary etc on theirs.
 
My wife and I live alone. My wife is not catholic. I could say a rosary every morning after mass. But can’t get to confession more often. Will one confession serve for more than one PI?
 
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