A plenary indulgence removes it all, but if you are not totally detatched from sin…then I believe that it remits a percentage of your total punishment based on how detatched from your sin you are (if you are 100% detatched it remits 100%, if you are 90% detatched, it remits 90% etc)
However, partial indulgences, I believe…are not based on a percent of sin and temporal punishment…but on an absolute amount. If you have “100 temperal punishment points” one day, and “900 temporal punishment points” on another, and do the same indulgenced act with the same fervor and dedication…I believe it will not remit a percentage…but a number of “points”, like “50”…so if you had 100, it would be down to 50, and if you had 900, it would be down to 850…
This must be the case, because if partial indulgences were done by percent…the same act at the same level of devotion would remit MORE punishment for someone who has acquired MORE temporal punishment…the same prayer would remit only 1 point for someone who only has 3 points acquired…but 10000 for someone who has 30000 acquired…which hardly seems fair.
So, in summary, I believe plenary indulgences remit a percent based on how detatched from sin you are…but partial remit an absolute amount.
This is why the Church no longer speaks of indulgence times in terms of specific numbers of years, but merely as partial or plenary
Yes and no.
The Church used to say what absolute amount a partial indulgence remitted by having a scale of “days and years”. But this was never meant to be a number of years in purgatory, which is outside time, but rather a comparison to how many days of Ancient Public Canonical Penance the act was equivalent too, at that same level of devotion. Something worth 3 years was not 3 years out of purgatory…but whatever absolute amount 3 years of ancient public penance would remit if preformed at the same level of devotion as the current indulged act.
However, the Church still does need to set what absolute amount a partial indulgence is worth and it still does. Because a partial indulgence is an absolute amount, while a plenary, I believe, is a percent proportionally based on how much you are detatched from sin.
The Enchiridion of Indulgences says:
“The faithful, who at least with contrite heart perform an action to which a partial indulgence is attached, obtain, in addition to the remission of temporal punishment acquired by the action itself, an equal remission of punishment through the intervention of the Church.”
That is the statement of how much, absolutely, a Partial Indulgence is worth these days.
Every act has an intrinsic moral value which remits temporal punishment whether it is indulged or not. ie, “works of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving which remit a multitude of sins”…
An indulged act used to remit the following:
The intrinsic worth of the act at that level of devotion PLUS the intrinsic worth of the number of days of ancient public penance at that level of devotion.
Nowadays, for better or worse, the Church merely remits:
The intrinsic worth of the act at that level of devotion PLUS “an equal remission of punishment through the intervention of the Church”
So nowadays, when you preform a partially indulged work…you recieve double the absolute amount it would be worth if it were not indulged. The Church “matches your grant” as it were, giving an “equal remission of punishment through the intervention of the Church”
This has pros and cons. The pros include a less confusing way of giving indulgences, not having to attatch a certain number of days, not having people think these were “days in purgatory”, and encouraging people to get more Plenary indulgences. The con is that you can only ever recieve twice the intrinsic worth of the act. One prayer is only worth 2 prayers, whereas in the old days and years system…the Church might make 1 prayer worth as much as thousands of prayers. But this is all the more incentive to get Plenary indulgences and detatch yourself from sin, instead of just trying to hoard as many days and years as possible, which people used to do.