THE PROFIT OF INDULGENCES
The
question of Indulgences — their meaning, their value — suffers from a two-fold
disadvantage. To those outside the Church probably no Catholic dogma is
responsible for so much misunderstanding, the fruitful source of a theological
hatred that it would be hard to equal. The very name “indulgence” conjures up
to the Protestant imagination dark spectres of the past — Tetzel selling
barefaced licenses to commit, absolutions to pardon, every sin; the wealthy
salving their consciences by strips of parchment purchased by their gold; the
poor handing over their little all, with the credulity of superstition, to the
greedy vendors of spiritual wares, in the fond hope that Heaven’s gates will
open to their happy possessors; Luther, in “words that are half-battles,” denouncing
this hellish traffic in pardons that drowned men’s souls in perdition, as he
nailed to the church door at Wittenberg his thesis of defiance against a power
that professed to forgive sins without repentance of the sinner or amendment of
his life, and damned men’s souls while it promised to save them.
But even among Catholics, who know
better than to be led astray by such distorted phantoms of the imagination,
there is a tendency to put in the background, at least of thought, if not of devotional
life, the whole subject of indulgences as an abstruse and almost esoteric part
of the Christian belief, with little practical bearing on the everyday life of
the soul. We have before now come across converts who told us that their
instructors had assured them that, provided they gave their assent to the
teaching of the Church of God on that particular point, they need not trouble
their heads further about it. To all intents and purposes, it was relegated to
an academic atmosphere, remote from the living circle of the great dogmas that
mould the Catholic life from the cradle to the grave. This lack of true
perspective can only arise from a want of consideration of what the Church
actually teaches as regards indulgences. The difficulties that at first sight
seem to enshroud the dogma with an impenetrable gloom, disappear almost imperceptibly
when its real meaning and spiritual importance become apparent. For, in truth,
no doctrine perhaps is more luminous in its bearing upon Catholic belief and
conduct than that which links the Church of the twentieth century with the
Church of the third and fourth centuries by an identical formula.
If it is the proud boast of the Catholic and Roman Church
that she is semper eadem — teaching today what she taught at the
beginning — an identity of type characterizing her doctrine (all development
being from within, like the increase in stature of a growing child); this note of
sameness is nowhere more prominent than in the doctrine, so much misunderstood
and withal so fiercely attacked, of indulgences. The name itself should be
sufficient to prove this; it brings us back to the early days of the Church’s
history, when persecution tried the faith of her children, and discipline in
reconciling the lapsed was correspondingly severe. Here is a confessor in
prison, awaiting death for the love he bore to Christ — a love stronger than
the ties of life; here is a poor sinner, perchance one who had been regarded as
a light for his holiness, perchance a priest of the altar, who through
cowardice had burnt a few grains of incense before a statue of the Emperor, and
thereby perjured his soul. Remorse seizes him; he can have no peace until he
has been reconciled to God and restored to the communion of the Church, which
he had forfeited by his sin. What, then, does he do? He knows that he will have
to undergo a lengthy penance before the Church will receive him, and he dreads
the probation and the disgrace. So he goes to the holy confessor bound with chains
in his dreary dungeon, and prays him to intercede in his stead, giving him a
letter to present to the bishop in which to ask him, for the sake of his
imprisonment and approaching death — in other words, through the application of
his merits — to remove in whole or in part the canonical penalty which was the
Church’s equivalent for the temporal punishment due to his sin of apostasy. And
the bishop recognized the confessor’s plea, and, as the representative of the
whole Christian Society, readmitted the penitent to the privileges of
communion, without making him undergo the long months or years of penitential
humiliation.
There
we have in a nutshell the full doctrine of indulgences. The Communion of Saints;
the belief that what one member of the body does is shared by all the other
members, or, as St. Paul expresses it, “If one member glory, all the members
rejoice with it;” the application, by
virtue of that vital fellowship, of the merits, whether of the Head, Christ
Jesus, or of His saints (for the confessor in his dungeon, or the martyr
burning in the cruel flame, could have no merit apart from the Lord, to whom
they were united by the joints and bands of divine grace), to the penitent
sinner for the remission of the temporal punishment due to his sin, represented
by the canonical penance, whose only raison d’etre was the Church’s
conviction that by it the temporal penalty could be expiated; these three
elements of an indulgence were as much present in the days of Tertullian and
St. Cyprian in the third century, as in those of Leo XIII in the twentieth. For
by an indulgence the Church teaches to-day the identical doctrine that she
taught then. She claims now, as in the days of persecution, the power of
remitting, in whole or in part, the debt of temporal punishment for sin (or its
substitute in the canonical penalty imposed by the Church in satisfaction to
God), that survives after its guilt and eternal punishment have been forgiven;
— and this by the application of the merits of Christ and His saints. Even at the
present day, after some 1600 years, the Catholic Church uses the same language
in her indulgences. When we read of 100 days’, 200 days’, 300 days’ indulgence,
our memory is perforce recalled to the time when canonical penance, lasting for
various lengths of time, was wont to be exacted from the excommunicated seeking
reconciliation. The indulgence corresponds to the canonical penance, being
substituted for it even in the amount of the temporal chastisement which is
remitted by it.
But the doctrine of indulgences is not only a support to
faith, in that it is a striking witness to the purity of the Catholic faith, which
remains unchanged, in spite of all the fluctuations of time; it has also a
distinct place of importance in the spiritual life of conflict against
temptation and sin. As defined by theologians, an indulgence is declared to be “the
remission of temporal punishment still due from the sinner after the guilt of
his sin has been washed away, — which remission is binding at the tribunal of God
in heaven, since its force lies in the application of the treasure of the
Church made by a lawful superior.” To understand fully the spiritual benefits
conferred by an indulgence it is necessary to consider the precise meaning of
that “temporal,” or non-eternal, “punishment” which is cancelled by the
application of the merits stored in the treasure-house of the Catholic Church.
Every
sin committed has a two-fold effect: it stains the soul with guilt, and it
leaves behind it a severe penalty of pain. It need scarcely be said that an
indulgence is only concerned with the latter consequence. The stain of crime
cannot be washed away by anything short of the Blood of Jesus Christ: it needed
the death of God to destroy the mark of sin stamped on the sinner’s soul. No
indulgence can purge the foulness of the smallest sin. The sinner must find
peace through the way of penitence, by the strength of an abiding contrition.
An indulgence is valueless unless its recipient is united by grace to Christ,
from whom the merits on which it rests flow to every member of His Body. It is
only granted to those who are already reconciled to God — the stain of their
sin washed away, their souls purified, by the cleansing waters of Baptism, by
the fire of perfect contrition, or by the application of the Precious Blood in
the Sacrament of Penance.
It is true that sometimes in ancient
forms of indulgences we find reference made to the forgiveness of sins, e.g., “Concedimus
indulgentiam omnium peccatorum;” “Relaxamus tertiam partem peccatorum;”
“Absolvimus a culpa et a poena,” etc. But in the first place, it must be
remembered that we have Scriptural authority for including the punishment due
to sin under the general term “sin,” as, e. g., in I Peter 2 : 24, “Who
(Himself) bore our sins in His body upon the tree;” — so that the true meaning
of the words in question is, “We relax or grant indulgence for the whole
temporal punishment still to be expiated for sins committed and pardoned ... or
for its third part.” In the second place, if, as we have seen, sacramental
confession is the usual prerequisite condition for an indulgence to be gained,
it is plain that both the culpa and the poena — the guilt and the
pain of sin — are remitted by indulgences: the one indirectly by previous
confession and absolution (or by an act of contrition), the other directly by
the bestowal of the indulgence.
But apart altogether from the blot of
guilt that stains the immaculate purity of the soul, each sin entails a
penalty, rivets a fetter of pain upon the sinner, which he has to bear in order
to satisfy the just demands of the outraged majesty of God. The guilt, the
crime, the culpa of sin is not touched by the grant of any indulgence, however
great; but the punishment, the temporal effect of sin still remaining to be
expiated, after the sin itself has been forgiven and its eternal punishment
escaped, — this secondary consequence can be remitted wholly or partially by
the officers of Christ’s Church — the Supreme Pontiff (the successor of him to whom
the promise was made, “Whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed
also in heaven”) and the bishops throughout the world in communion with him who
can echo the words of St. Paul, “What we have pardoned for your sakes we have done
it in the person of Christ.”
This temporal punishment which
survives the forgiveness of the actual sin is manifold. It comprises such
effects of transgression as loss of money, of friends, of one’s good name;
disease of body, failure of mental power, remorse of soul, destroying, like a canker
worm, all happiness and peace. It enters even into the sphere of the
after-life. Punishment unexpiated here has to be undergone in purgatory, where
the “penal waters” finally obliterate the last traces of sinful rebellion. But
more terrible, because spiritual in their consequences, than these obvious
results of sin, are the evil habits contracted, the links of the long chain of
evil influences, that weigh down and hold back the penitent, as he tries
painfully to rise after his sad and disgraceful fall. Each separate act of sin
tends to make resistance to the temptation more difficult. The habit formed
does not vanish with the forgiven sin; it abides with us as a reminder of our
ingratitude, a mute witness to the awful sanctity of God whose law we have so
lightly set at naught.
This branch of temporal punishment is often lost sight of,
although its bearing on the spiritual profit of indulgences makes it of the
utmost importance. An indulgence is too often regarded as a mechanical
balancing of the books, so that the credit side of the soul's account with God
may equal the debit, whereas it positively aids us in our struggle against sin.
It only needs for us to look into ourselves to realize the fact of the
advantage to be gained by a greater or less freedom from the thralldom of evil memories,
evil propensities, which sinful actions inevitably bear in their train as by a
natural law. The guilt of our sin has been destroyed; the absolving words said
over us, and we have felt to the centre of our being that we have been truly
forgiven by God. And yet in spite of this, we are sadly conscious that our life
is different from what it was before we sinned. Sin has thrown its bewitching
glamor around us, and once having yielded to its fatal charm we find it hard to
resist when it allures us a second time.
Experience
corroborates this truth. Can the sensualist who has for years given over his
body to every lustful disordered passion, turn over a new leaf at once in spite
of his weakened body, enfeebled mind, perverted will, and live in innocent
purity as in the far-off days of his happy childhood? Can the besotted
drunkard, who has tasted the delights of wild confused pleasure, be the same man
after he has signed the pledge as he was before he first yielded to the
temptation, and drank to his ruin the fruit of the grape?
We know that such is not the case. As
we have sown, so do we reap. Each sin bears its fruit as surely as the tree its
blossoms. The evil habits contracted in youth, of carelessness, sloth, self-indulgence,
undisciplined speech, unbridled desire — habits that increase in our riper
years — are hardly broken. Our sins may be blotted out, but their chastisement remains.
We carry ever about with us a diseased imagination, a knowledge of evil, penetrating
our every thought, from which we cannot shake ourselves free. The weight of the
heavy chains of evil habit and inclination, forged by us so tightly when we
sinned, bows us down to this lower earth, keeping us back from spiritual
progress.
It is to destroy this secondary effect
of sin, this accumulation of evil habits, this temporal penalty in its many
ramifications, that indulgences are granted us by the Church. The sinner must
pay the debt of punishment, or another must pay it in his stead. In the
Catholic Church, as in some palace of kings, there is a treasury wherein is
contained wealth, infinite, inexhaustible — even the satisfactions of Christ
and the super-abounding merits of His saints. This boundless sea of
satisfaction can be applied to individual members of the Body of Christ,
because they are His members — bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh —
and the power and virtue flowing from the Head reaches to each least part of
the organism vitally united to Him. And this application of indulgences cancels
the debt, unloosens the bands of the sinner’s pain, and sets him free from the
captivity of evil. The evil habit that cloaks the soul, driving out the air and
sunshine of every holy impulse; the heavy chain that clanks drearily as the
sinner tries to enter the house of peace; the searching punishment that falls with
heavy weight upon his shoulders; the temporal misfortunes that God’s sanctity
demands in reparation for repeated acts of rebellion — all are set aside by the
gracious act of the Redeemer Who from the Cross granted the first indulgence to
the penitent thief: “Today shalt thou, freed by My royal word from every bond
of sin, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”
Thus, an indulgence is of real advantage to the soul. If it
is no relic of a far-distant past, possessing only an antiquarian interest, but
an important witness to the identity of the Catholic Faith of the twentieth
century with that of the primitive age, it is doubly true that besides its
evidential value, it is of solid profit to us in the spiritual life of toil and
battle. Each indulgence that we gain releases us from the effects of sin —
effects that hinder us in our struggles against evil —, strengthens our
resolutions, and brings us nearer to God. We cannot see here the full extent of
the benefits thereby conferred upon us. We can only know from inward experience
how the seductions of sin become less powerful, the influence of evil habit
decreases, the sad memories of past falls fade away, presaging the glad day
when, through the virtue of indulgences powerful even beyond the veil, we enter
the gates of the City of everlasting peace.
W.
R. Carson.
Shefford, England
Taken from The Dolphin, Vol. 1, 1902
