How of Indulgences?
Q-89 - 4th December 21 - Indulgences
Rev dear Rev: When and how did Indulgences start in the history of the Catholic Church?
Funnily enough today, the 4th December is the anniversary of the decree concerning Indulgences from the Council of Trent in 1563. This Question comes from the Midlands. Indulgence is a word we are used to hearing in the present age of excess and sedentary aggravated obesity, and we might sometimes begin to think we know its meaning when the above word is heard in a religious context, but it comes from the word INDULGEO, to permit. Just to explain:
Early Christians of the first five centuries of persecution of an official Jewish and then Roman kind from the First to the Fifth Centuries were not allowed to own property or even buy property with solid hard earned money, and so monies collected went to parishes named after saints as treasuries of merit and grace, so thence from this, there developed a concept of Treasury of Merit won by Christ and Mary and the Martyrs, and especially in persecution by the martyrs who were thrown to the beasts, OBICERE AD BESTIAS, or usually driven either to the beasts or the gladiators, from which we have the expression, between a rock and a hard place, so their sufferings and their bravery produced a Treasury of Merit in the early theologies of the martyrs' church par excellence, the eglise supernaturelle.
And also an Economy of Grace, based on the concept in 2 Sam 12 where God still punishes King David for his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah her husband despite his repentance for the sin and reminds David that the sword will never be far from his door in the future for this sin, repented of but not atoned for, so anyway, so that in return for certain unambiguously good works, plus confession and communion and prayers for the pope, this Economy produced a return or an application of the Economy to an individual for the remission of some temperal punishment due to serious sins which then could be applied to the individual self or passed on to a dead person in purgatory.
So there developed by the early Bishops of Alexandria and Rome and Antioch and Constantinople from the most ancient dogmas of the Communion of Saints this Treasury of Merit and Grace Concept, through which the life of the individual Christian could be joined to Christ and the Saints and thus forming one single mystical person united, as we read in the explication of St Paul VI in his document Indulgentiarum Doctrina, to be found at Enchiridion Vaticanum II, 787, no 925.
In the High Middle Ages, Indulgences came to be applied to the building of good works such as the construction of hospitals, and even cathedrals to some extent as per the famous Grande Minister of Indulgences Johann Tetzel, but due to excess use, the practice quickly lumbered into some German controversy and then the arising rebelling and revolting reformers threw out the baby with the bath water, defunding hospitals and churches and cathedrals in their haste for retribution. By 1517 all of this had come to a head, when Luther nailed 95 theses to a church door. Trent bishops met in 1549-1563 to reform the doctrine and the praxis of them as per Denzinger 1835. Then canons 921, 926, and 928 of the later 1917 Codex restated the ancient dogmas surrounding them and still schematised them.
The doctrine that was retained in the 1965 Era after the Vatican II General Council included the overall concept arising from the power of the keys given to Peter in Mt 16:19, or the potestas clavium, and also the distinction between a plenary or full indulgence and a partial or particular indulgence, plus the idea that one can apply this award to oneself or to a deceased person in purgatory. It meant the removal of a penalty, the removal of a temporal penalty, and this before God. Not everybody does accept the institute of the early Christians called Indulgences since some Christians have a Pre-Samuel 12 kind of account of forgiveness and repentance preferring a simplex lutheran model of the experience, but an economy of merit also presupposes an economy of hurt too, and most of us since Covid now accept that our decisions can affect others long after the fact. One of the foremost dogmaticians of once upon a time in the 20th Century, from 1970 to 1999, Fr Tom Lane, used to say that if one looked hard at Mt 16 one would find much there to confirm such a power and more besides, since the scriptural text is much broader and ampler in its dimensions than some critics of Vatican One and some lutheran people think. Canon 992 of the final document of Vatican II, the Magna Carta Codex of 1983, contains the essentials of the doctrine to be accepted by the flocks of the real and genuine Christ. Canon 993 contains the distinction between plenary and partial, and canon 994 reminds us that such Indulgences can be applied either to self or to the deceased in purgatory. Obviously the saints in heaven do not need Indulgences, since they are happy and thoroughly integrated by their similarity to Christ.