Posted on 09/16/2004 10:09:17 PM PDT by AskStPhilomena
As tragic as its destruction was, I take great consolation in the model Jesus Christ perfected: trial and death must come before resurrection.
Oh, what a letdown! Like a handshake at the doorstep at the end of a date! The article ends with a cliffhanger!!!
Actually, I think I can see where the author is going with this. Indulgences are (if I'm reading the signs right) the flip-side of Penance. In other words, indulgences are the Church's offer of an opportunity to repent of sins monetarely. But I could be really, really wrong about this.
Please feel free to ping me if there's another installment. It was a well-written, well-reasoned article for as far as it took us.
That's just sick.
Oh wait - you meant conversing with her. Never mind.
It's very likely that 80% of Catholics today have no earthly idea what indulgences are.
I'm sorry - who were you trying to have an argument with? When did I say the Church still does?
Because Sinky wants the Church to allow married priests so that he can be one--then we could have divorced priests just like the Protestants do--wouldn't that be a fine example?
"I get nothing for spending an hour listening to a lonely woman in a nursing home tell me about her life?
"I get nothing for being a Big Brother to a fatherless kid?'
You would have if you hadn't announced it to the entire world for all to see.
I think you know the answer. What is your problem, Sinky?
No problem.
There is strong Scriptural direction that prayers for the dead help blot out the sins they incurred during life, which leads us to reflect on indulgences.
I quote:
2 Maccabees 39 et seq.
On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden.
Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.
But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
_______
Here, the Bible tells us that prayers and almsgiving for the dead helps to blot out the sins they incurred during life. How much more efficacious, then, prayers and alms and charitable acts undertaken while we are yet alive to help blot out our own sins!
"While we're on this, what do I get if I spend an hour with a woman in a nursing home?"
Probably depends on what you do with her and whether she is your wife or not!
+5,000 years for one of the nurses?
"In the name of charity, I will forego a most amusing and sarcastic question."
I should have read further down before I posted! Well done! You've certainly beaten me in the charity stakes. :(
I had to superglue my fingers to the desk to prevent myself from typing in the question I really had in mind. It was modern technology, not grace. lol!
And there is this from St. Paul's stirring defense of the Resurrection:
"Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?"
I Corinthians 15:29 (NASB)
That passage raises some serious doctrinal issues, but it does acknowledge that devotions on behalf of dead were part of the practice of the early Church.
Indeed. 2 Maccabees and Paul both indicate that what we, the living, do can help to purify the dead. The whole concept of the Communion of Saints and the Ave Maria reposes on the belief that the prayers of the holy dead are efficacious for we, the living, in our own endless battle with sin and generally poor behavior.
While it is not directly on the point of indulgences, it is closely related. For if our prayers and efforts to do good can help to increase the grace even of the dead, imagine the effect that it can have on obtaining God's mercy for our own shortcomings!
Reducing it to an exact mathematical formula, of course, is a bit of a guess and not worth too much effort. Grosso modo, we know that it is good to pray, for the living, for the dead, and to ask others (living or the saintly dead) to pray for us. And we know that it is good to do good works and give generously too. The exact quantum of good done is, of course, not really spot on. Life is a pass/fail exam, apres tout.
You may appreciate this article...
http://www.the-pope.com/purg.html
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