Pope Offers Young People Indulgences

Selling of Indulgences in the 16th Century

Pope Benedict XVI announced that a special indulgence has been authorized for the young people who address with a contrite heart a prayer to the Holy Spirit. The pope’s indulgence meets the World Youth Day that is about to be celebrated in Madrid beginning with August 16.

Pope Benedict decrees that the participants of World Youth Day will receive a plenary indulgence if they participate with devotion in every sacred event and attend the closing Mass, receiving the sacrament of reconciliation and the Eucharist.

The decree includes a full indulgence for all the people who participate in the meeting with the pope in Madrid. The World Youth Day begins on August 16 and will last until August 21. Pope will arrive there on August 18.

By the same decree, the Vatican agrees to offer a partial indulgence to all Catholic people who pray for the Catholic youth and urges the priests all over the world to hear confessions of the young people.

An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment someone is supposed to receive for the sins they have committed. In order for someone to receive a plenary indulgence, they must go to confession, receive the Eucharist, and offer prayers for the intentions of the pope.

The doctrine of indulgences is strictly a Roman Catholic tradition, developed in the Western Latin Church and inexistent in the Eastern Orthodox Christianity and in the early Church (though it is said that until the 12th century certificates of absolution were offered in parts of Eastern Orthodoxy, they have nothing to do with the doctrine of the church, nor with the remission of the sins as the Latin church expresses it).

The doctrine is based upon another strictly Roman Catholic teaching, with no relative in the Eastern Orthodox church or in the early church, according to which the super abundant merits achieved by Christ through his sacrifice are stored in a so called Treasury of Merit along with the merits earned in time by the saints of the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI

The pope is presumed to have the keys to this treasury out of which he offers indulgences for the people who have observed the conditions above-mentioned.

Indulgences theology was the trigger of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, as Martin Luther asserted that the indulgence theology is a fraud and a manipulation of papacy to make money.

In the days of Luther, pope Julius II was selling indulgences in the Western Church, and was using the money to build the famous Sistine Chapel.

There was a saying ascribed to cardinal Tetzel, who was operating in Germany: “When the money touches the bottom of the chest, the soul flies to heaven.”

Luther argued that there was no sign of indulgence theology in the Scriptures, and that there was no such thing as a treasury of merits.

The same argument is made by the Eastern Orthodox theologians who say that the pope in Rome has no treasure out of which he can forgive people any way he wants. They also maintain that the sins that are being forgiven through the holy sacrament of confession must not be expiated in any way, because they are erased as soon as the priest bestows the absolution in the name of Christ.

According to the Eastern Orthodox theology, which conserves intact the theology of the early church, the absolution in the confession brings full pardon of the sin, and no further temporal punishment is required.

The penance that the Orthodox priest recommends after confession is no punishment but rather medicine that helps the penitent straighten up their paths, which is why no indulgences are required.

The indulgences are considered by both Protestant and Orthodox Churches as means by which the papacy is bracketing penance, so useful for the spiritual healing of the sinners. They never existed in the early church, and their presence in some parts of the Eastern world can only be related to the same motivations as those of Julius II.

Vatican has not being selling them since the Council of Trento, in the 16th century, but continued distributing them for free.