Lea, Henry Charles, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 1896, Lea Bros., Philadelphia, Online at archive.org Peters, Edward (2008). A Modern Guide to Indulgences: Rediscovering This Often Misinterpreted Teaching. LiturgyTrainingPublications. p. 13. ISBN 9781595250247. As a scholar of religious thought and author of a book of constructive theology focused on ideas of God, I am aware that the practice of indulgences is ancient, evolving and controversial within Catholic circles and beyond. The doctrine of original sin Plenary Indulgence". World Youth Day 2008. 2008. Archived from the original on 2 September 2007 . Retrieved 2 November 2019. David Michael D'Andrea (2007). Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–1530. University Rochester Press. pp. 15–. ISBN 978-1-58046-239-6.

An indulgence does not forgive the guilt of sin, nor does it provide release from the eternal punishment associated with unforgiven mortal sins. The Catholic Church teaches that indulgences relieve only the temporal punishment resulting from the effect of sin (the effect of rejecting God the source of good), and that a person is still required to have their grave sins absolved, ordinarily through the sacrament of Confession, to receive salvation. Similarly, an indulgence is not a permit to commit sin, a pardon of future sin, nor a guarantee of salvation for oneself or for another. [13] Ordinarily, forgiveness of mortal sins is obtained through Confession (also known as the sacrament of penance or reconciliation). That is precisely what happened in the early 16th century. In northern Germany a Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel, was credited with hawking indulgences for the dead by saying, “When a penny in the coffer rings, / A soul from Purgatory springs.” The system was finally killed by a young Augustinian friar in a neighbouring territory, Martin Luther. He was not (as is widely thought) moved originally to a critique of the system by these abuses but rather by his own terrible spiritual suffering. In any case, he drew up a devastating document, the Ninety-five Theses of October 1517. In number 82 he blew the lid off the system. Cleverly reporting the “keen criticisms of the laity,” he vitiated papal control of the Treasury of Merit by writing that the laity By the 10th century, some penances were not replaced but merely reduced in connection with pious donations, pilgrimages, and similar meritorious works. Then, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the recognition of the value of these works began to become associated not so much with canonical penance but with remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. A particular form of the commutation of penance was practiced at the time of the Crusades when the confessor required the penitent to go on a Crusade in place of some other penance. [40] The earliest record of a plenary indulgence was Pope Urban II's declaration at the Council of Clermont (1095) that he remitted all penance incurred by crusaders who had confessed their sins in the Sacrament of Penance, considering participation in the crusade equivalent to a complete penance. [41] This set the pattern for all crusade indulgences going forward.The Eastern Orthodox Churches believe one can be absolved from sins by the Sacred Mystery of Confession. Because of differences in the theology of salvation, indulgences for the remission of temporal punishment of sin currently do not exist in Eastern Orthodoxy, but until the twentieth century there existed in some places a practice of absolution certificates ( Greek: συγχωροχάρτια – synchorochartia) which was essentially identical to indulgences, and in many cases much more extravagant. reciting the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, Lauds or Vespers of the Office of the Dead, Psalm 50, Psalm 129, Magnificat, or Memorare (Remember O Most gracious Virgin Mary) The conditions must be satisfied ‘several days before or after’ visiting the Holy Door. This period is generally taken to mean around a week before or after the visit. If possible, it is appropriate to receive Holy Communion and to pray the prayers on the same day as visiting the Holy Door. Confession might be at another time, and need not be at the Cathedral or church at which we visit the Holy Door.

Indulgences remind us that mercy is pure gift from God, unmerited on our part. Nevertheless, the Church is concerned to demonstrate that indulgences are not something mechanical or superstitious. For Pope Paul VI, they were the means of cultivating a ‘spirit of prayer and penance’ and the practice of the theological virtues. Indulgences are connected to some act of piety or devotion which are a sign of our willingness to receive forgiveness. They are always connected to faith, which is why the Church asks those gaining indulgences to be properly disposed, to pray and to receive the sacraments. Parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church sold their own version of certificates of indulgences well into the 20th century. Believed to be a Catholic corruption of its own theology, the Eastern Orthodox Church eradicated this practice throughout its ranks. Kent, William Henry (1910). "Indulgences" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Schiller, G (1972). Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. II (English trans from German). London: Lund Humphries. pp. 199–200. ISBN 0853313245. After a person confesses their sins, the priest, through whom God is believed to speak, ritually grants forgiveness, saying “I absolve you.” The sacrament of reconciliation, according to the church, allows sinners to restore their friendship with God and releases them from the burden of guilt and the penalty of infinite punishment in hell.He also taught, in accordance with the opinion then held, that an indulgence could be applied to any given soul with unfailing effect. Starting from this assumption, there is no doubt that his doctrine was virtually that of the drastic proverb:

Receiving, even by radio or television, the blessing given by the Pope Urbi et Orbi ('to the city [of Rome] and to the world') or that which a bishop is authorized to give three times a year to the faithful of his diocese. [17] The first indulgence was for victims of COVID-19 and those helping them. The actions that the indulgence was attached to included praying the rosary, the Stations of the Cross, or at least praying the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and a Marian prayer. Separation from God, which is the consequence of sin, is dealt with by the absolution granted in sacramental Confession. Yet other consequences can still remain. Traditionally, the Church has spoken of ‘the temporal punishment due to sin’, which we may encounter either in this world or in Purgatory. It is not a question of God inflicting punishment, but rather the natural consequences flowing from sin. People also wondered whether they could gain an indulgence for someone who had died and was presumed to be in purgatory. If so, in acting out of charity for someone else, were they then obliged to confess their own sins, as they would if they sought to obtain an indulgence for themselves? Although these concerns were surfacing as early as the 13th century, it was only in 1476 that Pope Sixtus IV declared that one could indeed gain an indulgence for someone in purgatory. Sixtus, however, left unanswered the problem of the necessity of personal confession. This profound uncertainty surrounding penance threatened to sever completely the nexus between the confession of sin and the achievement of salvation. a b c d e f g Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005, article indulgencesBefore the Montini's reformation, stating that an indulgence of 40 days, 300 days or 7 years has been gained did not mean that a soul in Purgatory avoided a temporal punishment of 40 days, 300 days or 7 years; it meant, instead, that a soul in Purgatory avoided a temporal punishment of the same duration as that which it would have served with a traditional canonical penance of 40 days, 300 days or 7 years. Pope Leo XIII abolished all indulgences of a thousand years. [15] Dispositions necessary to gain an indulgence edit A few years later, in 1567, Pope Pius V canceled all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions. [62] [63] This meant that indulgences would continue to be attached to virtuous acts of prayer, piety and pilgrimages, but no longer would they be attached to almsgiving, because the potential for abuse of such indulgences was deemed too great. Pardoner" redirects here. For the character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, see The Pardoner's Tale. A Question to a Mintmaker, woodcut by Jörg Breu the Elder of Augsburg, c. 1530, presenting the Pope and indulgences as one of three causes of inflation, the others being minting of debased coinage and cheating by merchants. From the early church onward, bishops could reduce or dispense with the rigours of penances, but indulgences emerged in only the 11th and 12th centuries when the idea of purgatory took widespread hold and when the popes became the activist leaders of the reforming church. In their zeal, they promoted the militant reclamation of once-Christian lands—first of Iberia in the Reconquista, then of the Holy Land in the Crusades—offering “full remission of sins,” the first indulgences, as inducements to participation.