The Catholic Church defines Indulgences as such:
“An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment for sins, whose guilt is forgiven, which a properly disposed member of the Christian faithful obtains under certain and clearly defined conditions through the intervention of the Church, which, as the minister of Redemption, dispenses and applies authoritatively the treasury of the expiatory works of Christ and the saints.”
The Catholic Church certainly loves starting off with a bang! Wouldn’t you agree? I would suppose that, in order to capture the whole spirit of the question “What is an Indulgence,” that a lot of time was spent in carefully picking the perfect words to craft a perfect definition. Unfortunately, even though this definition may have the best and most complete word bank, there are many of us who read this and we are left scratching our heads. Plainly, what does this mean?
To expand this into something closer to layman-terms, I would like to start out by taking some of the heavier words and phrases, and breaking them down to their definitions. Starting with:
Remission- Remission is a word that has 3 definitions: cancellation (in reference to finances), reduction (in reference to health), or forgiveness (in reference to sin). I can see why this word would be used here, because all 3 of these definitions tie in very well to Catholic theology and doctrine. Christ often refers to reducing finances in his parables. He himself is refereed to as the great physician, and of course His power is necessary in the forgiveness of sins
Temporal Punishment- Temporal refers to time. Catholic sources define it as something that lasts only for a time, whose existence or activity will eventually cease. So “Temporal Punishment” would be PUNISHMENT that lasts only for a time, and it will eventually cease.
A Properly Disposed Member of the Christian Faithful – This statement doesn’t seem to have a conclusive definition. It’s talked about in Catholic sources, and often expanded in phrases like “being in right relationship with God”, or “being in a state of grace.” There is an Indulgence Norm, Norm 17 (N17.) that I believe may also shed some light on what a Properly Disposed Member may look like. “...one must be baptized, not excommunicated, and in a state of grace…” For all intents and purposes, and especially in light of Indulgences, I would lean heavily on this last phrase to try and understand what this .
Dispense: To dispense is a much more familiar word, but just to keep the clarification going, to dispense is defined as being able to “distribute or provide (a service or information) to a number of people.”
Expiatory Works – Expiatory (or Expiation being the noun) is defined as the act of making amends or reparation for guilt or wrongdoing; Atonement. So Expiatory WORKS, would be works that atone.
So now, please bear with me as we try to fill in these heavy words, with definitions that we can understand a little better.
‘An indulgence is a [cancellation, reduction, or forgiveness], before God, of the punishment [that lasts only for a time, but will cease] for sins, whose guilt is forgiven. Which a [baptized, not excommunicated, and in a state of grace] Christian (-faithful) obtains under certain and clearly defined conditions through the intervention of the Church. Which, as the minister of Redemption, [distributes] and applies authoritatively the treasury of the [atoning] works of Christ and the saints.’
Now this is starting to look a little more understandable. If I was smart, I would stop here…The farther you altered a definition, the more it is likely it is that the definition will change to something it wasn't originally... but let’s dare to continue, shall we?
We have clarified the definitions of the hard words, but for someone like myself I feel like this is still a bit confusing, from a grammar side and just from a “plain english” side. I still feel there are specific meanings behind certain words or phrases, and all it would take is a little more digging to get those hidden meanings out. So I’d like to present my thoughts on how these segments might be better read, hopefully without altering it to much:
The first “sentence” I carved out seems a little, shall we say, grammatically unorthodox, and it’s because the sentence is structured in kind of a strange way. It presents its key points as follows: It starts by addressing the remedy to an action, then the ill-effect of the action, then who supervises that action, and lastly it finally names the action itself. Now, in the english language at least, we don’t really structure our sentences this way. We’re also often carful not to pack too much information in to a single sentence (which you can see I’ve already made changes to the edited definition by adding punctuations, since the whole original definition is a run on sentence). But by taking this small segment, and just making a few flip flops, try listening to this information in a different way.
“The action of sin, even forgiven sin, leads to temporal punishment. Because of this ill-effect a remedying remission is done under God.”
I have another little exercise below that I won’t go in to, but if you're having trouble even following this sentence, and you want to scroll down a little further you may find it helpful.
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I would like to try to combat some confusion about the structure of the first part of the definition. I hope to help by making a few comparisons. To start, let's paraphrase:
"(-An indulgence is) a remission before God of the temporal punishment for sins, whose guilt is forgiven..."
‘the remission (remedy), of punishment (ill-effect), before God (supervisor), [due to] sin (action)’ could comparably be equated to:
‘the cancelled, of interest, before your loaner, [due to] debt’
‘the reduction, of deterioration, before a doctor, [due to] cancer’
‘the forgiveness, of consequence, before Christ, [due to] sin’
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The second “sentence” is far more straight forward in structure, but they just had to throw in the phrase “A Properly Disposed Member of the Christian Faithful,” to give it that edge of confusion. I know we expanded the phrase a bit, going off from information we found in other Indulgence documents, but I think there’s a very obvious point that needs to be made, which even this amended phrase isn’t exactly clear about.
To be blunt, and fairly basic, what the Catholic Church is trying to get at here is that Indulgences are only obtainable to Catholic Christians. Which makes sense, at least to me, because why would someone be interested in participating in something that’s explicitly Catholic if they are not Catholic, or if they may even be against the Catholic Church? Now, like I said, this is a fairly basic understanding. It’s worth pointing out that, all thought I say that Indulgence are obtainable to Catholics, that doesn’t mean that every Catholics is able to obtain an indulgence whenever they try, just because they are Catholics. There’s more to it, but this covers the sort of “minimum requirement.”
Moving on to the last “sentence,” there are two thoughts I’d like to cover: First “the minister of Redemption.” Who is that? This is referring to the Catholic Church. For most everyone when hearing a phrase like this, their minds will automatically go to “The minister of Redemption! That’s Jesus Christ!” and you are right! However, an alternative way that this can be read, and be just as correct, is to read it as such: the Church is a minister of Jesus Christ, who is Redemption.
If you looking at how this phrase is written, you will notice that redemption has an upper case ‘R.’ This drops a hint that the use of Redemption here is not just a description or an activity, but its a title or a name. In the same way, we often say Jesus is The Word, or the Holy Spirit is Wisdom, and God is Love (all of these being uppercase). Because that's who this is. Love is not just a description or an action of God, it is an alternative name to Him. This is a fairly traditional way to use words, and it’s not just found here. This way of writing or speaking can also be found in the Bible and in other Church issues. So because Jesus is Redemption, of course he can administer redemption. Also, because he is redemption, he can enlists ministers of redemption, that's to be done on his behalf which is just what the Church believes is the case here. The Church finds that it has been enlisted by Redemption as a minister, therefore it is the minister of Redemption.
The second and final thought in this definition is the ideas of a “treasury.” So, the Catholic Church has the belief there is something called The Treasury of Merit, or The Treasury of the Church. This is in reference to Christ’s merits, and their “infinite value, which can never be exhausted”. All though Christ’s merits are entirely sufficient to keep this spiritual treasure overflowing and unending, all the saints [living and departed] are invited to contribute to the treasury by prayers and holy merits as well. So the big idea behind this treasury is that all the saints can contribute, as well as take out from it, as sort of a communal dipping pot. This is mentioned here because the Church is trying to give assurance to Indulgences. To speak to the validity of Indulgences.
Because the Church is the minister of Christ, Christ being the main guy who stocks this treasury, the Church wants us to know that they have a measure of authority and can prescribe ways that we, the saints, can give to and take from this treasury.
Because of their authority, and their backing of indulgences, indulgences can be seen as just a unique way of dipping and contributing to the pot.
Now, finally getting to the point of all this defining, I’m going to try to give to you a short paragraph, based off the definition of what an Indulgence is, that will hopefully help you to actually understand it.
“The action of sin, even forgiven sin, leads to punishment [that lasts only for a time, but will eventually cease]. Because of this ill-effect of sin a remedying [cancellation, reduction, or forgiveness] is done under God. This is an Indulgence. A Catholic Christian, [baptized, not excommunicated, and in a state of grace] can obtain this under certain and clearly defined conditions through the intervention of the Church. The Church is the minister of Christ, who is Redemption. Therefore the Church can authoritatively [distribute] and apply the [atoning] works of Christ and the saints. Works that are accessible thought a spiritual, communal treasury."
I hope this has been helpful. Indulgences can be a confusing topic so please feel free to leave your thoughts and questions. I hope to address all I can so that we can come to know this hidden gem.
*Due to unforeseen limitations, the Audio read for this post has been moved to the FAQ page. I apologize for the inconvenience
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