And this is the fault of Protestants? Why link it to the Reformation?
On the inside of the cover of the New St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism published in 1969 there is a prayer. After the prayer it says the following:
“An indulgence of five years. A plenary indulgence on the usual conditions, provided this prayer has been recited daily for a month.”..... This means that by saying the prayer properly, five years is removed from a person’s time in purgatory.
On the same page of the New St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism it says,..... “The faithful who devote 20 minutes to a half hour to teaching or studying Christian doctrine, may gain: an indulgence of three years. A plenary indulgence on the usual conditions twice a month, if the above practice is carried out at least twice a month.”
So ‘indulgences’ continue and were definitly re-enstated in Vatican ll...which is paying your way.
Indulgences only have value in Catholicism due to the unbiblical teaching of purgatory, which the Roman Catholic Church teaches is a place of punishment where people expiate their own sins there (CCC, 1475).
Expiation is “a term associated with the removal, cleansing, or forgiveness of sin.”1 But how does a person expiate or cleanse himself of his own sins? He doesn’t. If there were a means by which we could cleanse ourselves on our own sins, then God would have provided that.
“I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly,” (Gal. 2:21).
That's where protestants came from...1,600 years after the fact.