PPP = Purgatory: Purification or Punishment

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opusAquinas

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Purgatory is the temporal punishment due to sin.
  1. In Martin Luther’s time you could buy an indulgence - can you buy one today? (pm me)
  2. If you can buy an indulgence then how do you get purified?
    2a) When you buy an indulgence as Catholics once did or do now- are you automatically purified???
    2b) How do you get less punished by doing an act on earth like praying the rosary or by buying with money out of punishment?
  3. Why does the Pope not just free everyone from purgatory? I think Martin Luther asked this in his 95 Theses. :confused:
🤷
 
All your questions rest on the false idea that the Church authorized the selling of indulgences. She didn’t. Some nefarious persons sold indulgences, but it was never the teaching or practice of the Church. The Church put the kibosh on those doing that, but that little factoid is never mentioned in the anti-Catholic material you apparently take as truth. Be careful what you read, who puts it out, and why. 😉

As to how prayer helps with purgatory, why wouldn’t it? Why do you think it shouldn’t? I think those are the questions you should ask yourself.

And to answer the questions in your thread title, purgatory is both purification and punishment. Catholics do not hold to a Protestantized idea of either/or in such things. We very much believe that a thing can have more than one goal/property–which is how reality works, not man-made ideas about how things “ought to work” or how they want things to work.
 
Della said:
All your questions rest on the false idea that the Church authorized the selling of indulgences. She didn’t. Some nefarious persons sold indulgences, but it was never the teaching or practice of the Church. The Church put the kibosh on those doing that, but that little factoid is never mentioned in the anti-Catholic material you apparently take as truth. Be careful what you read, who puts it out, and why. 😉

As to how prayer helps with purgatory, why wouldn’t it? Why do you think it shouldn’t? I think those are the questions you should ask yourself.

And to answer the questions in your thread title, purgatory is both purification and punishment. Catholics do not hold to a Protestantized idea of either/or in such things. We very much believe that a thing can have more than one goal/property–which is how reality works, not man-made ideas about how things “ought to work” or how they want things to work.
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I don’t think you didn’t really answered the questions but more like talked around it.
  1. Yes the Church sold indulgences. You deny this? Exactly what sources are you using? The Church may still be doing so but I do not know. What document purports this “kabosh”? There are ridiculous rumors this is why some religious mafia support the Church secretly of course… but it would make sense if they are still being sold.
  2. The Church permits the indulgences through works. So you can receive an indulgence for praying the rosary in a church as long as you do the other requirements. But the Pope could just set them free.
And yes of course you can pray for the souls in purgatory…that your prayers lighten their punishment?
  1. Finally, the standard Catholic position is purification and temporal punishment is purgatory. I know this but I am asking with an indulgence you endure “no punishment”
    and are “suddenly” purified?
 
I don’t think the Church sells them now but if you give a “donation” maybe? :confused:
 
NO! the Church DID NOT ever sell Indulgences. PERIOD!

Any one pretending to sell OR buying Indulgences is GUILTY of the sin of SIMONY. A MORTAL sin.

The indulgence needs some very specific actions in order to be valid.

One of them the person seeking the indulgence has to be in a state of grace and needs perfect contrition for any sins he/she committed.
From the CCC
X. INDULGENCES
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1471 The doctrine and practice of indulgences in the Church are closely linked to the effects of the sacrament of Penance.
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What is an indulgence?
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"An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints."81
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"An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin."82 The faithful can gain indulgences for themselves or apply them to the dead.83
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No one can obtain an indulgence IF in state of separation from GOD (Mortal Sin)
SIMONY IS a Mortal Sin.

THEREFORE buying or selling Indulgence ===== MORTAL SIN

Hope this clears this for you!
 
opusAquinas said:
I don’t think you didn’t really answered the questions but more like talked around it.
  1. Yes the Church sold indulgences. You deny this? Exactly what sources are you using? The Church may still be doing so but I do not know. What document purports this “kabosh”? There are ridiculous rumors this is why some religious mafia support the Church secretly of course… but it would make sense if they are still being sold.
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You are the one making the claim that the Church sold indulgences, as such the burden of proof rests on you. Please cite your sources verifying that the selling of indulgences was authorized by the Church.
  1. The Church permits the indulgences through works. So you can receive an indulgence for praying the rosary in a church as long as you do the other requirements. But the Pope could just set them free.
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All indulgences are “free,” in the sense that they are open to anyone willing to obtain them. That said, it is impossible to make them “free” in teh sense that we don’t have to do anything to obtain them. That would entirely defeat both the purpose of Purgatory and Indulgences. Purgatory is the state / place / experience through which our wills are purified and brought into complete alignment with the will of God. This cannot be a passive process, and requires work on our part. The reason an indulgence requires some action on our part is because aligning our wills with God’s requires some action on our part.
And yes of course you can pray for the souls in purgatory…that your prayers lighten their punishment?
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To my knowledge, we are not aware of the quantified manner in which our prayers aide those in Purgatory, we only know that they do. Part of this stems from the fact that Purgatory is a mystery, we do not know it’s exact form. There are several theories about the exact form Purgatory takes, but not definitive declaration on the subject. As such, we can’t know how prayers help because we don’t know the specific form of help that can be offered.
  1. Finally, the standard Catholic position is purification and temporal punishment is purgatory. I know this but I am asking with an indulgence you endure “no punishment”
    and are “suddenly” purified?
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It’s not “sudden,” and it’s not punishment free. A punishment is a consequence of an action intended to prevent an individual from repeating that action. In the instance of praying the Rosary to receive an indulgence, the Rosary itself would be considered our punishment because it is the action by which we are trying to align ourselves with God (the ultimate purpose of any temporal punishment). It’s not much of a punishment, which is an indication of God’s love for us and desire to show us his mercy.
 
opusAquinas said:
Purgatory is the temporal punishment due to sin.
  1. In Martin Luther’s time you could buy an indulgence - can you buy one today? (pm me)
  2. If you can buy an indulgence then how do you get purified?
    2a) When you buy an indulgence as Catholics once did or do now- are you automatically purified???
    2b) How do you get less punished by doing an act on earth like praying the rosary or by buying with money out of punishment?
  3. Why does the Pope not just free everyone from purgatory? I think Martin Luther asked this in his 95 Theses. :confused:
🤷
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  1. no, indulgences come from prayer and receiving the sacraments and sometimes an extra act like a pilgrimage
  2. You cannot buy an indulgence
    2a) to be completely ridden of temporal punishment you have to receive a plenary indulgence. You must do the act (for example publicly saying the rosary) intending to get an indulgence, receive holy communion the same day as the act, go to confession 7-8 days before or after the act, be in the state of grace while doing the act, and pray a couple prayers for the Holy Father, and have complete detachment (no affection) for all sins including venial sin
    2b) it remits temporal punishment through the merits of Christ and the saints
  3. you can only perform one plenary indulgence a day and one must be completely detached from sin which is quite difficult. There is way too many people in purgatory for the pope to completely set free
 
The Council of Trent, session 25, even during Luther’s age, specifically condemned granting indulgences for “gain,” which shows the Church did not approve of these and condemned those who tried to abuse indulgences.
 
As far as I’m aware you could make a payment to repair a breach of canon law kind of like paying a fine for a parking ticket but that payment didn’t affect your status with God with respect to purgatory, only your status with the church.
 
Flopfoot said:
As far as I’m aware you could make a payment to repair a breach of canon law kind of like paying a fine for a parking ticket but that payment didn’t affect your status with God with respect to purgatory, only your status with the church.
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Ok, every has told you are wrong, yet you continue to say this is so.
It is not.
 
Obviously you can’t buy a blessing. You can’t buy a blessed rosary without getting it blessed again. But you can donate money for it. The word “selling” is pejorative.

You work really hard to make money. And that “effort” is the penance you donate to the Church for the indulgence?

Everyone here seems to be in a tizzy trying to defend the Church as though it is being attacked. I understand that it might be a sore sensitive topic however it was mended: newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm “After deploring the fact that, in spite of the remedies prescribed by earlier councils, the traders (quaestores) in indulgences continued their nefarious practice to the great scandal of the faithful, the council ordained that the name and method of these quaestores should be entirely abolished, and that indulgences and other spiritual favors of which the faithful ought not to be deprived should be published by the bishops and bestowed gratuitously, so that all might at length understand that these heavenly treasures were dispensed for the sake of piety and not of lucre (Sess. XXI, c. ix). In 1567 St. Pius V canceled all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions.” :o:confused:😊🤷
 
JerryZ said:
NO! the Church DID NOT ever sell Indulgences. PERIOD!

Any one pretending to sell OR buying Indulgences is GUILTY of the sin of SIMONY. A MORTAL sin.

The indulgence needs some very specific actions in order to be valid.

One of them the person seeking the indulgence has to be in a state of grace and needs perfect contrition for any sins he/she committed.

No one can obtain an indulgence IF in state of separation from GOD (Mortal Sin)
SIMONY IS a Mortal Sin.

THEREFORE buying or selling Indulgence ===== MORTAL SIN

Hope this clears this for you!
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There is a bad incentive to grant indulgences: people would sin more knowing there are no consequences that’s why:
“Finally, Sixtus IV in 1478, lest the idea of gaining indulgences should prove an incentive to sin, reserved for the judgment of the Holy See a large number of cases in which faculties had formerly been granted to confessors (Extrav. Com., tit. de poen. et remiss.).”
newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm

Were there good incentives?
 
Myths about Indulgences
One never could “buy” indulgences. The financial scandal surrounding indulgences, the scandal that gave Martin Luther an excuse for his heterodoxy, involved alms—indulgences in which the giving of alms to some charitable fund or foundation was used as the occasion to grant the indulgence. There was no outright selling of indulgences. The Catholic Encyclopedia states: “*t is easy to see how abuses crept in. Among the good works which might be encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, almsgiving would naturally hold a conspicuous place. . . . It is well to observe that in these purposes there is nothing essentially evil. To give money to God or to the poor is a praiseworthy act, and, when it is done from right motives, it will surely not go unrewarded.” *
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Purgatory is the temporal punishment due to sin.
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  1. In Martin Luther’s time you could buy an indulgence - can you buy one today? (pm me)
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You can’t buy an indulgence. I still don’t fully understand the concept, so I asked a local priest last Wednesday about the term.

He replied that he himself didn’t put much faith in them, and in all his time as a priest hadn’t seen or had a request for an indulgence. I’ve been Catholic for the better part of 20 years now, and I’ve never heard or seen an indulgence request in that time.

He did say that there was a current (Papal?) indulgence available in relation to the Jubilee Gate or Door in the Vatican, but no doubt this would be subject to confession beforehand, or I should think it would. And possibly some other conditions as well.

Wikipedia had a bit to say about late Medieval abuses of indulgences.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence
*The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) suppressed some abuses connected with indulgences, spelling out, for example, that only a one-year indulgence would be granted for the consecration of churches and no more than a 40-days indulgence for other occasions. The Council also stated that “Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.”[46]
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Very soon these limits were widely exceeded. False documents were circulated with indulgences surpassing all bounds: indulgences of hundreds or even thousands of years.[42] In 1392, more than a century before Martin Luther published the 95 Theses, Pope Boniface IX wrote to the Bishop of Ferrara condemning the practice of certain members of religious orders who falsely claimed that they were authorized by the pope to forgive all sorts of sins, and obtained money from the simple-minded faithfuls by promising them perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next.[47] The “Butter Tower” of Rouen Cathedral earned its nickname because the money to build it was raised by the sale of indulgences allowing the use of butter during Lent.[48]
*
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  1. If you can buy an indulgence then how do you get purified?
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As above, you can’t buy an indulgence, although I’m curious as to who the Lentian Butter Eaters paid their money to - the church in general, or a local religious ourder?

Frankly you get purified in pretty much the same way you usually do - reconciliation, penance, and maybe some prayers, and whatever other conditions are stipulated as part of the indulgence.
2a) When you buy an indulgence as Catholics once did or do now- are you automatically purified???
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Again, you can’t buy an indulgence. The purchase of indulgences was a late medieval abuse of what was meant to be a way of depending more heavily on God’s grace.
2b) How do you get less punished by doing an act on earth like praying the rosary or by buying with money out of punishment?
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Again, you can’t buy an indulgence.
  1. Why does the Pope not just free everyone from purgatory? I think Martin Luther asked this in his 95 Theses. :confused:
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I can’t see the relevance of this question in relation to indulgences, but maybe you didn’t mean this question to have any bearing on indulgences.

The Pope is the CEO of the Church, but It’s not his business to be responsible for the sins of every Catholic. We die as we are, and we answer for our own thoughts, words, actions and lack of action (things we failed to do, and should have done).

Whether Martin Luther asked this in his 95 Theses or not I wouldn’t know. But I have no doubt whatsoever Purgatory exists, unlike most Protestants. I think most Protestants are in for an unpleasant surprise when they find that in most cases they are not just going to waltz into heaven. The thief who went to “Paradise” that very day stayed right where he was - in agony on the cross - until he died, despite his confession sometime earlier in the day. And he was a special case - he was literally crucified with Christ.

To repeat, I still don’t fully understand the business of an “indulgence”, but I know you can’t buy them. Those that were bought were actually a distortion and abuse of a church teaching, a bit like Popes having mistresses.

See the chapter on
“Popes accused of being sexually active during pontificate”
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in

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes

That’s not a church teaching either, but it went on.

That’s why in every mass, the priest says -
Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever.
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If all he had to fear was a bunch of sinful Catholics, the devil would be laughing as he took them with him all the way to the lake of fire. But the invisible church militant, “marching down all through time and history, terrible as an army with banners” (to paraphrase Screwtape) is a different matter.
 
Bob_Crowley said:
You can’t buy an indulgence. I still don’t fully understand the concept, so I asked a local priest last Wednesday about the term.

He replied that he himself didn’t put much faith in them, and in all his time as a priest hadn’t seen or had a request for an indulgence. I’ve been Catholic for the better part of 20 years now, and I’ve never heard or seen an indulgence request in that time.

He did say that there was a current (Papal?) indulgence available in relation to the Jubilee Gate or Door in the Vatican, but no doubt this would be subject to confession beforehand, or I should think it would. And possibly some other conditions as well.

Wikipedia had a bit to say about late Medieval abuses of indulgences.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

As above, you can’t buy an indulgence, although I’m curious as to who the Lentian Butter Eaters paid their money to - the church in general, or a local religious ourder?

Frankly you get purified in pretty much the same way you usually do - reconciliation, penance, and maybe some prayers, and whatever other conditions are stipulated as part of the indulgence.

Again, you can’t buy an indulgence. The purchase of indulgences was a late medieval abuse of what was meant to be a way of depending more heavily on God’s grace.

Again, you can’t buy an indulgence.

I can’t see the relevance of this question in relation to indulgences, but maybe you didn’t mean this question to have any bearing on indulgences.

The Pope is the CEO of the Church, but It’s not his business to be responsible for the sins of every Catholic. We die as we are, and we answer for our own thoughts, words, actions and lack of action (things we failed to do, and should have done).

Whether Martin Luther asked this in his 95 Theses or not I wouldn’t know. But I have no doubt whatsoever Purgatory exists, unlike most Protestants. I think most Protestants are in for an unpleasant surprise when they find that in most cases they are not just going to waltz into heaven. The thief who went to “Paradise” that very day stayed right where he was - in agony on the cross - until he died, despite his confession sometime earlier in the day. And he was a special case - he was literally crucified with Christ.

To repeat, I still don’t fully understand the business of an “indulgence”, but I know you can’t buy them. Those that were bought were actually a distortion and abuse of a church teaching, a bit like Popes having mistresses.

.
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If you read my earlier posts there was a donation - that is probably the better word to describe it - much like a stipend given for a mass.

In any case - there were valid indulgences given for donations in the past.
Purgatory is the temporal punishment of sin. It is not purification per se on its own but by being punished you are being purified. But by receiving an indulgence you are relieved of the punishment and you go straight to heaven.

The question is how does an indulgence suddenly “purify” you. You don’t need purification but punishment for sins. The soul goes straight to heaven with an indulgence. I think there are still indulgences given out by those that knowsa ntiobviosly if it was easy to everyone would run to get one.

I think our Lord gives us the possibility of gaining such an indulgences on Divine Mercy for those that don’t know.
 
Indulgences are announced, normally by the Pope and the Bishops on down the hierarchy.

Donations are NOT a requirement for the indulgence to be effective.

True contrition (sorrow for the sins we have committed) IS required.

Being in a state of grace by participating in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Doing what the particular indulgence requires us to do.

Some indulgences are plenary others are partial (describing in human language how much punishment would normally be required to attain purification).

You can obtain an indulgence on behalf of a departed soul.

If that person no longer is in Purgatory, the Church teaches that GOD will use it and apply to whom HE chooses. Perhaps a poor soul who has no one who can pray for him/her.

Go to this site, you can still “earn” one on behalf of yourself or a relative.

vatican.va/roman_curia/tribunals/apost_penit/index.htm
 
Indulgences are still granted… most recently, in the last year or two, the pope declared that IF you visited a particular shrine (at various locations) and perform the requisite acts for an indulgence you would receive either a full or partial indulgence or could offer up for some one else.

The requisite acts are going to the shrine in the time period designated, going to mass, receive the EUcharist, going to confession within a week and saying a prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father,

You must of course be in the state of grace and be free from attachment to all sins even venial sins. The difference between the full and partial was how inclined/attached (I forget the actual terms used) you were/are to commit venial sins.

NO money involved whatsoever…
 
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