Temporal punishment for sin Part 2

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marthaferretti

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I was reading a post from yesterday about the Catholic concept in the subject line.

Now I consider myself fairly intelligent but one of my pet peeves is when explanations get wordy.

For example, when I was trying to understand the Catholic concept of salvation vs Luther’s false doctrine of Sola Fide, my eyes would glaze over when reading some of the explanations.

The best explanation I came across was stated in a adult catechism class I took years ago in which the instructor said the Catholic Church teaches that there’s nothing we can do to earn Heaven (it’s a free gift through God’s grace), but there’s plenty we can do to deserve Hell.

This one sentence for me clearly explained away the protestant objection that the Catholic Church teaches we can earn our way to Heaven .

I need a similar simple explanation about Temporal punishment of sin and indulgences.

Is it that we continue to suffer consequences for our sins in this world even after we are forgiven of our sins through confession and completing our penance? A plenary indulgence would remove all the temporal punishment accumulated to that point in ones life and a partial indulgence would remove a portion of the temporal punishment?

Obviously a plenary indulgence can’t remove the physical consequences of alcoholism (cirrhosis of the liver). So what would an indulgence remove in this sort of case. Some other consequence of the sinners alcoholism?

Any feedback would be appreciated.
 
I’m watching this for answers too. I was trying to explain this to my young adult children and they looked at me like I had two heads. According to them ,once it is forgiven in confession, end of story. They even asked the priest who acted like he never heard of this term. English is his second language so im wondering if maybe this is one of the “old” concepts that are no longer taught in the church or maybe we weren’t using the correct words.
 
I think maybe you’re referencing the thread that I responded to, so I apologize if I made things more confusing with my explanation. :o

Indulgences and temporal punishment are very much still part of Catholic teaching. For the full explanation, you can see the section in the Catechism on indulgences: CCC 1471-1479. Paragraph 1472 defines what is meant by temporal punishment:

1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.

I was trying to be simple with my explanation in the other thread, but I think it came at the risk of painting the process in too mechanical of a way. It’s not that we can receive a plenary indulgence and magically every negative consequence will be undone in exactly the same way (e.g. our marriage will be healed from sins against our spouse, our neighbor won’t remember the time we said something rude to him, that pack of baseball cards we stole in fifth grade will magically be returned to the store from whence it came, etc.).

At the risk of painting it even more mechanically (:o) we might view it as like a bank account. When we sin, money gets debited from the account and we are overdrawn. When we receive an indulgence, it gets put back in. It’s not necessarily the same exact physical dollars that are replacing what was taken. But the end result is that we are no longer overdrawn. Everything has evened out.

Hopefully I am making things less confusing rather than more confusing. :o If I am making things more confusing, feel free to ignore me.
 
This one sentence for me clearly explained away the protestant objection that the Catholic Church teaches we can earn our way to Heaven .

With the above being said, how do we explain Paragraph 2027 of the Catechism where it states: we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life

Sounds a bit accomplished by actions/works.
 
SJacob7 said:
This one sentence for me clearly explained away the protestant objection that the Catholic Church teaches we can earn our way to Heaven .

With the above being said, how do we explain Paragraph 2027 of the Catechism where it states: we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life

Sounds a bit accomplished by actions/works.
Click to expand...
We can “merit” these graces by asking for them and by uniting our sufferings to those of Christ. For example, we can offer up sufferings for the conversion of sinners. It’s not like you have to get so many “divine brownie points” and then you can “earn” your way into heaven. However, it IS a requirement that you be receptive to God’s graces. Also, there are varying degrees of glory in heaven - Our Lord and Our Lady have said so. Every soul that goes there will have the maximum amount of grace it can hold - but there are ways of preparing your soul to be able to hold more grace. Prayers and sacrifices are examples.
 
After we have been absolved from our sins by God through a priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, those sins are forgiven and can be forgotten in the sense that they are not valid for you anymore. However, when we sin, although the sins themselves are gone, there is still a stain on our souls that must be purged. This is what penance is for: to remove these stains. But, if they are not all removed by the time of death, and of course the person is savrd, they must be purged before one can attain the Beatific Vision of God in Heaven. This is what Purgatory is for.

Also, I heard that penances while on earth are much more potent than the purgation in Purgatory and remove more temporal punishments in a certain amount of time than the cleansing fires of Purgatory do (although there is no time in Purgatory).
 
SJacob7 said:
This one sentence for me clearly explained away the protestant objection that the Catholic Church teaches we can earn our way to Heaven .

With the above being said, how do we explain Paragraph 2027 of the Catechism where it states: we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life

Sounds a bit accomplished by actions/works.
Click to expand...
This is off topic, but I would recommend reading CCC 2006-2011 on what “merit” is. CCC 2027 is from the “In Brief” section which summarizes the previous content and needs to be understood in the fuller context of what it is summarizing. The Church is using the term “merit” in a technical theological sense. It does not imply that we earn our way into heaven.
 
Temporal punishment is more about sanctification than justice. It is the disciplinary action by which we are healed of our attraction to sin and learn to be repelled by it instead. Indulgences tend to be alternate opportunities for the Holy Spirit to work in a soul towards sanctification.

That’s absurdly short and simplified, but that’s what you asked for.
 
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