What are indulgences for?

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Hello everybody, I’m a convert and I had never heard about indulgences during my conversion. To be fair, many practicing Catholics who have been Catholics I’m sure also find the Catholic doctrine on indulgences confusing.

Now I’ve done some reading on the side, and I understand that indulgences remit partially or fully the temporal punishment due to sin once you have already been forgiven for those sins in the confessional and communion.

This interests me on a more than theoretical level as I strive for holiness. I had many grave sins to confess when I joined the church, and I still have many sins to confess. What has changed is my understanding of confession. Thanks to a very holy priest who is my spiritual director, I was able to overcome both spiritual sloth and scruples. I now cannot stop praising the Lord for his infinite mercy.

While I’m happy my sins are forgiven, I feel the need for indulgences, for three reasons:
  • Remission of venial sins (not sure indulgences do that)
  • So that I can forgive others more easily (I still have trouble doing that)
  • To become a saint (I’m audacious but isn’t that why I was born?)
So my question is do indulgences help us become saints? Is that what remission of temporal punishment means? If not, what is the purpose of having indulgences?

Thanks
 
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Indulgences are supposed to reduce or eliminate purgatory time or severity of purgatory punishment for either ourselves or another deceased soul in purgatory if we choose to give our indulgence away, and also to bring us closer to God by encouraging us to pray, receive frequent Communion and go to Confession, give to charity, and develop other good habits.

Many of us get indulgences primarily or only for deceased souls in purgatory, and not for ourselves.
 
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There are three parts to repentance: contrition, confession, and satisfaction (aka bringing forth fruits worthy of repentance). Indulgences are the remission of some or all of the need to do the last part.

The Roman Catechism (aka Catechism of the Council of Trent) has a nice in depth explanation of satisfaction. Scroll down to the section titled “The Third Part of Penance” here:

http://www.catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/catechism/Holy7Sacraments-Penance.shtml
 
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My brain didn’t even think of Fr. Mike (which is sad, because I love the man), he can explain it!
 
Thank you everybody for your replies.

I think I understand the theology behind it, somewhat.

I still have a tough time understanding the ‘satisfaction’ part of repentance. I can understand why this caused so much trouble for the church back in the 1500s.

Nevertheless, I believe that in offering up my troubles and asking for partial indulgences, I ‘make up’ for some of many sins.

Regarding obtaining indulgences for the departed souls, I do it rarely because I only know a few people close to me who have died and in those rare cases, I’ve tried to obtain an indulgence for them.

But I mostly ask for myself. Perhaps, because I feel like I need it. I was worried about being scrupulous but in consultation with my spiritual director, I only go to confession once a month, unless I commit a sin of grave matter (which I do every now and then).

Is it selfish of my part to ask indulgences for myself?

And my original question was, if all my sins are forgiven in the confessional, what’s the point of indulgences?

Thank for your sources. I realize that it’s primarily to pass more quickly through purgatory after my death.
 
The common indulgence analogy is a kid who is careless throwing his baseball near the house, and breaks a window, which upsets his father.
The kid goes to his father, confesses he broke the window, says he is sincerely sorry, and his father forgives him and isn’t mad at him.
However, there is still a broken window to be replaced, so the kid has to do some work in order to pay his father back for the window replacement.

When we sin, we do damage, not only to ourselves but to others and to the world. Earning indulgences is a way to “repair” that damage after we have repented and been forgiven.

Regarding “is it selfish to earn indulgences for yourself”, I would say “no” because saying prayers, talking to God, going to Adoration, donating to charity etc can never be viewed as a selfish act. We have had people on the forum who feel they need those indulgences for themselves. I note that there are a few indulgences in the Manual, such as certain indulgences in November, that cannot be kept for oneself and must be given to the Holy Souls in Purgatory (you can specify a person or just give it generally to the Holy Souls and God will choose).

(Continued next post due to length limits)
 
I myself see keeping my indulgences as pointless for the following reasons. St. Therese and many other saints have said, no matter how many indulgences you earn, it’s not going to be enough to cover all the wrongs you have done. Even if you achieved a perfect plenary today that covered every sin you committed up to today, you’re still going to sin again tomorrow; Scripture points out that a just man still sins seven times a day. You’re going to be playing a never-ending game of catch-up. For anyone who even tends a little bit towards the scrupulous, as St. Therese did, this is going to be an unwinnable situation. In the worst cases it could even feel like God has put an impossible burden on you. I don’t want to live that way, keeping accounts “here’s my sins, and here’s how many indulgences I racked up for myself today, and do the columns balance…” They never could balance. My sin will always outweigh the merits.

However, if you give away all your indulgences to holy souls, a few things happen. First, the holy souls benefit. I have a lot of deceased people to pray for, but I like to pray for strangers too. All these deceased people will pray for me in return. Second, I benefit through saying the prayers and doing the acts. Third, by praying throughout my life and generally staying in a state of grace to earn indulgences, I set myself up for the personal plenary indulgence at the point of death, which is given to all who are properly disposed and have been in the habit of saying some prayers throughout their life. You can get it even if the priest doesn’t make it in time to give you the last rites (although other devotions I do promise me that I won’t die without the last rites so I assume if the priest doesn’t make it, then Jesus our High Priest will take care of that). Obviously if you get a plenary on the point of death then you’re good because you are going to die and you won’t be committing any more sins on earth.

There is also the Divine Mercy devotion once a year, which consists of the mercy granted by Christ and the separate indulgence granted by the Church. I take advantage of the part granted by Christ for myself, since that can’t be given away. So once a year I’m getting all the temporal punishment for my sins wiped away by Christ anyway.

This is just my reasoning, others may reason differently. I like to follow the teaching of St. Therese, she is a favorite old family saint (mother’s patron) and has been very helpful to me. She and St. Faustina have good and simple theology for getting to Heaven and not worrying about Purgatory.
 
This is one of the best answers I’ve ever got for this question.

Just as an aside, St. Therese and St. Faustina are my favorite saints too and I had the extraordinary privilege of making a pilgrimage to Lisieux last week, thanks be to God.

I see why somebody might want to obtain an indulgence for a soul in purgatory than keep it for oneself, except at the hour of death. I will start praying more for holy souls. I don’t know many people in my entourage who have died but there are many people who die everyday and I don’t if there are enough people to pray for their soul so I will happily do so.

I must admit I do get a kick out of asking for plenary indulgence even if I know that I may not be entirely detached from sin to receive it and that I will sin the very next day. I do have scruples from time to time and the plenary indulgence gives me some assurance that I’m doing well. Although as you say this is not true, as my sins will sooner or later catch up and all the good I’ve done are not enough to cover my sins.

I take great pleasure in knowing that as St Therese put it, God has one weakness-he’s bad at arithmetic. He doesn’t count our sin one by one even if we do. But I believe that he wants to be truly detached from sin so that we can love him better and in doing so be happy.

Thank you so much. You have given me a very good reason to pray for souls in purgatory and to save up the personal indulgence for the last day. Although, I always think that the last moment of my life might be round the corner (even though I’m only 26 and in perfect health) and I’d rather get my plenary indulgence now than wait till it’s too late.

I still think in worldly terms. St. Therese, intercede for me, so that I may starting loving Love himself, not for the glories of heaven but for Him who makes heaven glorious.
 
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The abuses the Church used with indulgences tells me that this was never what Jesus intended.

Pope Urban II, gave a plenary indulgence to those who volunteered for the 1st Crusade to go to the Holy Land and kill Muslim Men. Really ?

Then of course, Martin Luther witnessed the abuse of indulgences as Bishops were seeking to fill their coffers by offering indulgences for payment and of course acts of penance

Jim
 
The Church has not practiced any such abuses for hundreds of years. A number of the Reformation-era abuses were also propagated by individual clergy, not by “The Church”.

The current Manual of Indulgences contains basically the prayer and daily life practices we should be doing anyway: donating to charity, going to Adoration, praying for the souls of the deceased etc. There is no purchasing of indulgences, no killing or opposing other religions. Indulgence practice has actually been extremely helpful to the development of good spiritual life habits for me, such as frequent Communion and confession, regular Rosary, weekly Adoration, and frequent reading of scripture.

It would be good if you would update your thinking on indulgences to the present time. You don’t have to do indulgence practice yourself, it’s an optional devotion. But posts like yours give an incorrect idea of indulgence practice to those unfamiliar with how we do things today. Surely you can’t be saying that Jesus never intended us to go to Adoration or pray a Rosary or meditate on his Passion or give to the poor.
 
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The Church has not practiced any such abuses for hundreds of years. A number of the Reformation-era abuses were also propagated by individual clergy, not by “The Church”.
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But they did practice them and the Pope approved of charging people for the indulgence and permission to climb the Scala Sancta. This is one of the things Martin Luther witness on his first visit to Rome, which made him disgusted. The other was seeing the Pope with his papal army, riding upon a white horse while clad in gold plated armor.

Yeah, after the Reformation, the Church turned away from such abuses, but is there any wonder why ?

Jim
 
We have new and better Popes now and I climbed the Scala Sancta for free a couple months ago. (I did pay them for the optional meditations book to read on the steps.)

The Church learns from its past and grows in holiness with God’s help.
 
I have a book on indulgences and if I’m not mistaken, the Holy Father is only person to issue indulgences. And he does because of the authority given to him by Christ himself as the successor of St. Peter, who has the keys to heaven entrusted to him. I’m sure some popes in history have abused it for their personal gain. But let us thank God has given such holy popes since Saint Pope Pius X (St. John XXIII, St. Paul VI, St. John Paul II) who encouraged the faithful to give more, pray more and have more confidence in God.

Martin Luther did the worst possible thing in response to abuses, run away from it and start his own church without reforming it from within.

I however do agree that indulgences has a very complex theological explanation. I think God has given sufficient reason to us so that we can do those acts that are good (give alms) and refrain from those that are obviously evil (kill people). We don’t need to start a new church for that.
 
The point is that the Church hierarchy abused indulgences in history.

Jesus didn’t come and die on the cross in order that people could pay to have their days in purgatory reduced.

Jim
 
Tis_Bearself said:
You don’t have to do indulgence practice yourself, it’s an optional devotion.
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I didn’t know that. I didn’t think it was optional devotion like the rosary or stations of the cross. I always thought if you wanted to go to heaven you need to do indulgenced acts or at least have the desire for them. Otherwise you end up in purgatory because of all the temporal punishment for your sins.
 
Indulgences are granted by the Church under its power to bind and loose, given to St Peter.

Yes, they have been criticized as complicated and technical. Some of us respond well to that, though. I hate to use a buzzword but it’s a form of gamification, which humans have been shown to enjoy.
 
newconvertcatholic said:
Otherwise you end up in purgatory because of all the temporal punishment for your sins.
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Isn’t it more accurate to say that you go to Purgatory, then you end up in Heaven when the temporal punishment is finished? Assuming that your final destination was not Hell instead, in which case you would just go straight there.
 
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newconvertcatholic said:
I always thought if you wanted to go to heaven you need to do indulgenced acts or at least have the desire for them. Otherwise you end up in purgatory because of all the temporal punishment for your sins.
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Most of us will end up in purgatory regardless if we receive indulgences or not. That’s not really a bad thing since purgatory is where we are purged from final attachments to venial sins in the earthly life so that we may enter heaven unblemished. It’s important to remember that those in purgatory are still destined for heaven, but their entry is just delayed while they are prepared for God’s presence.

Many pray for the poor souls in purgatory that have no one else to pray for them. Think of it as helping your neighbor that is down on their luck and has no one that can help them. Christian charity would lead them to help them on Earth and asking for indulgences for the poor souls is helping them prepare to enter the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
 
I think the other posters have explained indulgences pretty well. Thank you all for helping the OP out. As for Luther and his “ reformation “, I agree that selling indulgences was wrong and the Council of Trent corrected those abuses. Luther did wrong when he went outside the Church and called upon the lay nobility of Germany to back him up against the Church after his ideas were refuted by Church authorities and his excommunication.

His “ reformation “ wasn’t a reformation; but a revolt.

As for the supposed abuse of Pope Urban II: The Crusades were essentially an armed pilgrimage to reclaim lost Christian lands from Muslims who were abusing Christians who simply wanted to visit the Holy Land; as well as helping the Christian Byzantine Empire defend against Muslim aggression. I see no reason why the Holy Father wouldn’t grant an indulgence to those who would take up the crusader cross.
 
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