What is an Indulgence?

Question

An Indulgence is the remission in the eyes of God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose culpable element has already been taken away. (Enchiridion of Indulgences)
God infinite goodness, we are finite creatures. We can never make up for the sins and affronts we do to God. But God allows us to make an effort in this regard.
The whole idea in gaining an Indulgence is conversion of heart.
If a soul is in hell, indulgences do them no good whatsoever. If a person performs an indulgence with the idea of sinning again, the Indulgence does them no good. Indulgences are only good when the actions done and the conversion of heart to deeper love of the Lord is done pure.
You cannot buy your way into heaven. Those preachers who said that during the reformation times were wrong. You cannot buy your out of purgatory. The quickest way to God's heart is to love him unconditionally. Thats what indulgences demand and aim towards.

Answer 1

Here is the way I understand it:

An indulgence is to time in Purgatory what a parole is to time in prison.

Consider a parallel: It is suppertime, and everyone needs to be clean to come to the table. The person who has been reading needs to wash his hands, while the person who has been fixing the car needs to take a shower and change his clothes.

The Bible says that no unclean (guilty) person can be in the presence of God, so Catholics believe that if a person dies with unrepented-of sins, he needs to spend some time cleaning up before he goes to Heaven. The place where he cleans up is called Purgatory.

They also believe that many people did good things over and above what God expected of them; that these extra good-things constitute a treasury; and that the Pope can assign good-things out of this treasury to other people.

By doing certain charitable/prayerful things here, a person can (back to the parallel) provide strong soap and fresh clothes, either for someone already cleaning, or to be kept for himself against the day he needs it.

Some acts carry an indulgence of a specified time. For example, if an act carries "an indulgence of ten years," performing that act provides the same cleansing effect as spending ten years in Purgatory. An act that carries "a plenary indulgence" waives all Purgatory time.

Answer 2

An indulgence is receiving something that you don't deserve, based on the good work or merits of someone else, who does.

This is a totally Christian concept, that's almost universally misunderstood.

In the Catholic Church, the merits of Christ and the saints are freely applied to the very specific needs of the members of the church, even though all or many do not deserve such favors.

Answer 3

In Catholicism the ability to buy yourself less time in hell for a sin committed before your die. In fact I think you were even able to buy time off in hell for people who were already dead. Ideas like this are what triggered Martin Luther to instigate The Reformation in 1517.

Answer 4

An ancient Writ to get time off from purgatory. An obsolete concept.

Answer 5

Well in England a long time ago it was a way to buy ur way out of hell by giving money to the church.

=]

Answer 6

another way catholics try to earn or buy their way to heaven. no where is it mentioned in God's Word. It seems to me that catholics don't think Jesus' death and ressurrection were enough, so they seem to think God will accept a substitute

purgatory is a bunch of baloney, too.

Answer 7

These days, it's 660 million dollars, distributed according to the extent of the sexual abuse.

Answer 8

Directing/Wasting all energy in the pursuit of gratification of desires.

"EXCESS OF ANYTHING IS AKIN TO POISON"

Indulgence leads us our graves sooner than desired.

Answer 9

It is a catholic way to buy forgiveness for a sin.

Answer 10

Too much of something. I love being spoiled!