What About Indulgences?

Believers gathered together in prayer

“Any one whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ.”

2 Corinthians 2:10

No Catholic word carries more Reformation freight than indulgence. It summons one scene instantly: Tetzel with his money chest, forgiveness for sale by the coin, and a young Augustinian nailing ninety-five theses to a church door. For most Protestants the word is not an objection to be argued but a verdict already rendered — the moment the medieval Church showed what it had become. The surprise, for many, is learning that indulgences still exist; the second surprise is learning what the Church says they actually are.

This page runs on two tracks that must not be confused. One is historical: what happened in the indulgence trade, which was a genuine scandal — conceded here without softening, as the Council of Trent itself conceded it when it abolished the indulgence-sellers outright. The other is doctrinal: what an indulgence is by definition — which has never been the purchase of forgiveness, and involves no money at all in the Church’s present law. Underneath both lies a question worth anyone’s time: when God forgives a sin, is everything about it instantly over? David was forgiven, and the consequences came anyway. What the Church does with that fact — and what Paul did with it at Corinth, in the verse above — is the substance of the matter, once Tetzel’s chest is carried off stage.

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Protestant View

Jump to the Catholic View ↓

The Protestant case against indulgences begins with history because the history is undisputed. In 1517 the Dominican Johann Tetzel preached the plenary indulgence for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s across Germany with the subtlety of a market crier — contemporaries reported the jingle that a soul springs from purgatory as the coin rings in the chest. Luther’s Ninety-five Theses were written against that traffic, and thesis 82 asked the question no salesman could survive: if the pope can empty purgatory for money, why not empty it for love?1

Forgiveness Is Not Merchandise

Behind the scandal stands the principle: grace cannot be transacted. “You were ransomed… not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). Simon the magician offered the apostles money for spiritual power and received the New Testament’s most withering rebuke: “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20). Whatever refinements canon law adds, a system in which acts, alms, and applications can shorten punishment has priced the unpriceable.2

A Treasury Christ Already Filled

The doctrine beneath the practice — a “treasury” of Christ’s merits and the saints’, which the Church dispenses against the temporal debts of sinners — strikes the Protestant as bookkeeping imposed on Calvary. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). If Christ’s one sacrifice perfects, nothing remains for a treasury to top up; and the suggestion that saints’ merits could add to it misunderstands both the saints and the sacrifice. “It is finished” leaves no outstanding balance.3

Still on the Books

Nor is this a medieval memory. The Church still grants indulgences — plenary and partial, under stated conditions, published in an official handbook — for pilgrimages, prayers, and jubilee years. The machinery survived its own scandal, the Protestant observes, because the doctrine behind it survived: a purgatory to be shortened, a treasury to draw on, and a Church claiming keys to both. Reject the premises — as the Reformation did — and the entire apparatus, polite modern form included, falls with them.4

Endnotes
  1. Luther, Ninety-five Theses (1517), thesis 82, quoted on this site’s purgatory page; on Tetzel’s preaching and the contemporary reports of the jingle, see the standard Reformation histories. ↩
  2. 1 Peter 1:18–19; Acts 8:18–24. ↩
  3. Hebrews 10:14; John 19:30. ↩
  4. Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina (1967); the current Enchiridion of Indulgences. ↩

Catholic View

Concede the history first, whole. Tetzel’s campaign was a disgrace; the traffic around indulgences was a standing scandal for generations before him; and the clearest witness to both is the Catholic Church, which at Trent abolished the office of the indulgence-collectors outright — rooting out, in the council’s words, the evil traffic — and which today attaches no money to any indulgence whatsoever. When the Protestant condemns the sale, he condemns something the Church condemned too. What the Reformation then did was reject not only the abuse but the doctrine — and the doctrine deserves to be examined as it actually is, not as Tetzel performed it.1

What an Indulgence Is, and Is Not

An indulgence has never been the forgiveness of sin, and forgiveness could not be bought even at the worst of times — it comes only through repentance and absolution, and no rite of the Church has ever sold it. What was bought, in the worst of times, was the indulgence itself: almsgiving was among the works an indulgence could be attached to, and Tetzel’s trade turned the alms into a price. That is the abuse Trent abolished. An indulgence presupposes the sin already forgiven, and addresses something else: the temporal consequences that forgiveness does not erase. That such consequences exist is not a Roman invention but a biblical pattern: Nathan tells David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die” — and in the next breath, “the child that is born to you shall die” (2 Sam. 12:13–14). Moses is forgiven and still barred from the land. Sin forgiven is like a nail withdrawn: the hole remains, and healing the hole — penance, discipline, restoration — is the space in which indulgences live.2

Paul Grants the First One

For the practice in embryo, read this page’s opening verse in its setting. A Corinthian had sinned gravely; the church, at Paul’s direction, had imposed a punishment; and now Paul, judging the man’s sorrow sufficient, remits the remainder of the discipline and commands the church to do likewise, “so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” — and he does it, he says, “in the presence of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:6–10). Every element of the Catholic doctrine is present: a forgiven sinner, a temporal penalty imposed by the Church, and the Church’s authority — the binding and loosing Christ conferred (Matt. 16:19; 18:18) — releasing part of that penalty, for the sinner’s good, before Christ. An indulgence is that act, and nothing more exotic: the Church loosing what the Church, under God, had bound.3

The Treasury Is the Communion of Saints

And the “treasury” is bookkeeping language for something the New Testament teaches without embarrassment: that in the Body of Christ, no one suffers or prays alone, and the abundance of one supplies the need of another. Paul says it of money and means it of grace: your abundance supplies their want (2 Cor. 8:14). He says of his own sufferings that they “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Col. 1:24) — a sentence no theology of a solitary, finished transaction can even read aloud. Christ’s merit is infinite; nothing tops it up; the saints’ share in it is His gift and His delight, the way a father’s wealth loses nothing by becoming the family’s. Hebrews 10:14 is not the objection; it is the treasury’s deed of title. The one offering perfects — and the perfecting reaches the members through the Body, which is the only way anything of Christ’s has ever reached anyone.4

Why Keep the Practice Its Abusers Nearly Ruined

Why not drop the whole apparatus, as embarrassing salvage? Because the alternative quietly teaches something false: that once forgiven, a Christian owes nothing, repairs nothing, and is unaffected by the wounds his sins left in himself and others. Penance is simply love taking the damage seriously; an indulgence is the Church — which imposed penances of years in the early centuries — applying the family’s riches to shorten them. The modern form could not be further from the money chest: prayer, pilgrimage, works of mercy, under conditions whose whole point is interior conversion, with the Church’s law itself declaring that an indulgence gained without detachment from sin gains nothing. Whether there is a purification after death for the temporal residue of forgiven sin — the doctrine this one presupposes — is examined on the purgatory page; granted that, indulgences are nothing but mercy organized: Paul at Corinth, extended across the whole family of God.5

The full essay tells both stories honestly: the trade and Trent’s abolition of it, the definition with its terms unpacked, David and the withdrawn nail, Paul at Corinth, the treasury as the communion of saints, and what the practice looks like in the Church’s present law. Download it from the summary below — and the comments are open, without your name if you prefer.

Endnotes
  1. Council of Trent, Session XXI, ch. IX, abolishing the office of the alms-collectors (quaestores); Session XXV, Decree on Indulgences, condemning “all evil gains for the obtaining thereof.” Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina (1967), governs the present practice; no grant in the current Enchiridion involves money. ↩
  2. 2 Samuel 12:13–14 (RSV); Numbers 20:12; Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1471–1473 on the double consequence of sin. ↩
  3. 2 Corinthians 2:5–11 with 1 Corinthians 5; Matthew 16:19; 18:18. ↩
  4. 2 Corinthians 8:14; Colossians 1:24; Hebrews 10:14; Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1474–1477 on the treasury as the communion of saints. ↩
  5. Indulgentiarum Doctrina, Norms; Enchiridion of Indulgences, on the required interior dispositions, including detachment from all sin for a plenary indulgence. ↩

Summary

An indulgence is not forgiveness, and forgiveness was never for sale. In Catholic teaching sin has two consequences. Guilt, which cuts a person off from God, is forgiven only through repentance and absolution, and no rite of the Church has ever sold that. The second consequence is the damage a sin leaves behind, in the sinner and in others, and it remains after the guilt is gone. Scripture knows the difference. Nathan tells David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die” — and in the next breath, “the child that is born to you shall die” (2 Sam. 12:13–14). Moses is forgiven and still barred from the land. Sin forgiven is like a nail withdrawn: the hole remains. An indulgence concerns only that hole — the temporal consequence of a sin already forgiven — and nothing else. What Tetzel sold was the indulgence itself, with alms as the price: the abuse, not the doctrine.

Concede Tetzel whole — the Church did. The indulgence trade was a disgrace, and the loudest witness is the Council of Trent, which abolished the office of the indulgence-sellers outright and condemned the “evil gains.” Today no indulgence involves money anywhere in the Church’s law. The Protestant who condemns the sale condemns what Rome condemned; the argument only begins when the abuse is off stage and the doctrine is on it.

Paul granted the first one at Corinth. A Corinthian had sinned gravely; the church, at Paul’s direction, had imposed a punishment; and Paul, judging the man’s sorrow sufficient, remitted the remainder of it and told the church to do likewise, “so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” — doing it, he says, “in the presence of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:6–10). Every element of the doctrine is there: a forgiven sinner, a penalty the church had imposed, and the church’s authority to bind and loose (Matt. 16:19; 18:18) releasing part of that penalty, in mercy. An indulgence is that act and nothing more exotic: the Church loosing what the Church, under God, had bound.

The “treasury of merit” is the communion of saints in bookkeeping dress. The phrase alarms because it sounds like a bank. What it names is something the New Testament teaches without embarrassment: that in the Body of Christ no one suffers or prays alone, and the abundance of one supplies the need of another (2 Cor. 8:14). Christ’s merit is infinite and nothing tops it up; the saints’ share in it is His gift, as a father’s wealth loses nothing by becoming the family’s. Paul’s own sufferings “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Col. 1:24) — a sentence no solitary-transaction theology can read aloud. Hebrews 10:14, “by a single offering he has perfected for all time,” is not the objection; it is the treasury’s deed of title, because the perfecting reaches the members through the Body.

What the practice looks like now. An indulgence today is gained by prayer, a pilgrimage, half an hour with the Scriptures, or a work of mercy, under conditions whose whole point is interior conversion: confession, Communion, prayer for the Pope’s intentions, and, for a plenary indulgence, detachment from all sin — without which, the Church’s own law says, it gains nothing at all. The doctrine presupposes purgatory, the purification after death of what forgiven sin leaves behind; that question has its own page. Granted it, an indulgence is mercy organized: Paul at Corinth, extended across the whole family of God.

Dropping the practice would teach a falsehood. That the forgiven owe nothing, repair nothing, and carry no wounds. Penance is love taking damage seriously; an indulgence is the Church — which in the early centuries imposed penances of years — applying the family’s riches to shorten them.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download What About Indulgences? (.docx) or (.pdf)

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