Asking EWTN about the Origin of Induglence

Called to Communion - June 5th, 2025 - with Dr. David Anders

Find this Video (Here)

(12:00) 12:50 – 17:45

So, I’ve, uh, two questions. They’re both from my protestant friend who’s about this close, within a hairs-breath of becoming Catholic...

Okay

And I figured I’d bum them off to you. Um, so my first question… his first question is… I guess, could you, like, recommend a book about the historicity of the Catholic Church. And the second question is… about… the indulgences and, like, what are their origins, and how has the practice evolved over time especially as it relates to the protestant reformation?

…..

On the question of indulgences. Indulgences were… um… an innovation born from the bottom-up and not the top-down and I think that’s really important for protestants who object to Catholicism to understand. Because the caricature is that indulgences are something invented by the pope to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. That’s, you know, that’s the way Luther caricaturized indulgences. As a kind of abuse of the faithful. And historically they weren’t imposed from the top down. Certainly not as a revenue generating mechanism. They were proposed from the bottom-up. And the reason why is that, in antiquity, when Christians engaged in bad behavior they would be made to do penance, and as Christ indicates in Matthew 18 that they’re supposed to… and St. Paul also in 1 Corinthians 5… they uh... and sometimes those penances could last a long time. Sometimes they could last for years if it was a particularly egregious fault like murder, or adultery, or apostasy. Christians could be bared from the Eucharist for a very long time, consigned to an order of penitence and that could be quite burdensome and painful. Now during the Decian persecution of the 3rd Century in the 250’s, there were a number of people who were martyred for their faith. There were some who confessed Christ who when to prison. There were others who lapsed and denied Christ under persecution. The latter group was disciplined by the church for the sin of apostasy and they would be bared from the Eucharist for a vary long time, sometimes until death. But then there was this group of people in the church called the confessors who were languishing in prison because of their faithful witness to Jesus. And what some of the faithful did that were in penance was they had this brilliant idea. They said ‘You know these guys over here that are in prison, and they were noble, we weren’t noble... surely there’s merit associated with their sacrifice. What if they share some of that with us? And I wonder if we can go to the Bishop and say: Look here, you know, Bob over here in prison says he’s doing time, he might as well do it for me. So you should cut off, you know, say, 10 years of my penance because Bob’s going to offer his sacrifice on my behalf.’ The merits of the confessors applied to me. And they went over to the prisons and they said, ‘Yo Bob, this is my idea. Question. Would you write me a writ of indulgence?’ Asking the confessors in prison to write out a testimony saying ‘I’m doing my penance on behalf of Dave over here so that you Bishop Cyprian will let him go.’ Let him out of penance literally. And so they tried this out, and they took it to the Bishop. And the Bishop said… this is Saint Cyprian, said… um… yah well the logic works! Because we believe in the communion of saints. We believe that, you know, the merits of the few can avail for the benefit of the many, that’s a very biblical concept. If you don’t believe me go read Genesis 18. ‘So, I like the idea! It’s a good idea guys, I like it. I approve. One request: that is the disposition of this thing needs to be within the bishop’s jurisdiction, so no more of this going to the prisons and getting your writ of indulgence. Okay? You come to me and I’ll write the writ of indulgence and then yah, we’ll let you off.’ Thus was born the practice of indulgences. This idea of applying the merit of the saints to remit the temporal punishment due to sin. And this temporal punishment actually imposed by the Church itself. And that practice continued, basically, ever since. Now, you know, what the Church would do is: ‘Well we can’t just let these people off completely scott-free, there’s no motive to change of life and holiness. So, you know, we’ll ask them to do some sort of token. Right? And then we’ll assign the penance and you know… today that token might be, you know… pray a rosary or read scripture for 30 minutes or something and then we’ll give you an indulgence. But, um, one of the works of mercy that is committed by Christ is giving alms. And so you could say, well give alms to a beggar and I’ll give you an indulgence. Well, you can see how once you start the whole business of, ‘Let’s give alms as your condition of getting the penance,’ then the unscrupulous people saw an opportunity for revenue generation. And so that’s where that business came from and that eventually, of course, gets out of bounds and it becomes a great mechanism to raise money for therebuilding of St. Peter’s, hence the corruption.

Sure.

And Luther's critique of that is just and there were Catholic’s who had critiqued it at the time. He wasn’t the first person to critique it. And everybody recognized that that was, uh, that was really bad optics for the church and so the church forbid that practice and it is no longer acceptable to offer indulgences in exchange for temporal donations, either to the poor or to the church. Right? We just don’t do that anymore, we learned out lesson at the reformation. Indulgences however, still exist within the catholic church, based on the very sound theology that surrounded their emergence in the 3^rd century.

Topics of Discussion

3:35 – Jesus a ‘Catholic Person’

12:00 – Origins of Indulgences

18:10 – ‘Rock,’ singular or plural

20:10 – Latin Mass

33:35 – Orthodox and Roman Reunion

36:15 – ‘Don’t hold onto me’

39:45 – Catholic role in Bible Translations

48:15 – Morality of Mature Themes in media

51:10 – Church Fathers