A Treasury of Merit

Indulgences

Rev dear Rev - May I ask if one buys an indulgence at the same time that one buys an antique indulgence certificate, and does the indulgence apply to oneself accordingly even in this day and age of large scale unbelief in such things?

A Manual of Indulgences - still very much available from the official Roman websites if one is keen to underpin the institute with some doctrine. There is an old adage from psychology students at my university in Ireland that - "Just because you aren't paranoid does not mean there is nobody out to get you." I used to keep that printed on a postcard on my plain wooden wardrobe door in my cell in my seminary next to another postcard designed to check my enthusiasm for change as a young radical thinking student freshly imported to an Irish romano-romano ecclesiastical seminary on the north side of Dublin on the banksies of the River Tolka - "Change when it becomes an unceasing and unchanging ideal, itself becomes changeless, and so ceases to be change." Two noble postcards that prepared me for the teachings of St Gilbert Chesterton. Romano-romano that seminary. But anyway, back to the one on paranoia which was very suited to the streets of the capital in those days for anglophone students of a very posh kind. A very fitting adage during a civil war when we had to keep one eye half-cocked over our shoulders for fighting sides of the war there. But it is similarly applied to church institutes - just because the majority of the christian flocks do not believe in an institute, usually because it is ancient and antique and nobody now understands the doctrine behind it, does not mean that the institute is outmoded or invalid - the centre still holds even in an age of unbelief. This is especially true of the sale of Indulgences, of which the antique certificate above is proof of purchase or so it might seem. But as per below:

Well whaddyaknow - a quaesitum about Indulgences and the whole Treasury of merit that overlays such conventions and certificates of former times. The relevant segment of the Codex which underpins all of this kind of thing is based on doctrines concerning sacred power, and to be honest one could drive a coach and horses through this segment of the Codex so thin and weak is this segment. There are lots of holes in the segment which would allow a coach and horses through unhindered and unmolested. It is a bit of a nightmare for lawyers to ponder it all. Chiefly because when it all came up for revision, the theologians got to work on it and insisted that they wanted to tie sacred power direct to sacred ordination through the power of holy orders and the episcopate, while the lawyers had a feeling that hanging onto the power of jurisdiction might not be a bad idea in the long run especially when analysing papal elections and the like, hence the expression in the norms concerning papal candidates elected without episcopal orders, statim ordinetur - he is to be ordained quickly. But it is all very thin and ghostly and there are more holes in this segment of the Codex than in a wedge of Swiss Gouda cheese. Still the theologians got their wish, especially during the Plenaria of 1981, and out came the Codex in 1983, coming into force in 1984.

There was some debate among theologians of the old kind about the Thesaurus Indulgentiarum of Paul VI that came out after the council, but it is a sincere effort to clean up the mess left behind by the famous debates about the sale of indulgences by a monk called Tetzel at the time of the German reformation, chiefly designed to fund the building of more spectacular cathedrals of the time. But addressing the specifics of the quaesitum above from a girl near Turvey Abbey, a certificate of indulgence, even when it is a mere antique, is an expression of particular power, it is not a general decree that can be applied willy nilly everywhere to everyone; it is rather an individual decretal or precept applied to an individual he or she having performed the good works and the spiritual works required to gain the indulgence of which the certificate is proof of accomplishment, so it is an articulation of particular power, what is called in the trade of church and comparative lawyers, a singular administrative act of administrative [sacred] power or ecclesiastical power. Famous proceduralists have gotten involved in the doctrine behind such acts of ecclesiastical power, and the most famous of modern times, Fr Ignacio Gordon, once explained that an act of ecclesiastical power once placed could always be recoursed or appealed about, if a person felt that there was an injustice to be challenged, quite innocently and without too much rancour being involved - the system, especially the new system after the old last council now envisaged abuses of power or misunderstandings between christians and their bishops, so it was now possible to seek some help on this issue. So the christian member of the flock above can always appeal for more clarification to the local bishop and local cardinal and local nuncio if not to Rome on this particular subject and this specific interpretation.