I have no problem with people giving all the money they want to the church.
In the case of the sale of indulgences, bereaved people were told that their loved ones would suffer long sentences in purgatory unless let out by a indulgence, purchased by the loved ones to get their dear departed out early.
Or they bought themselves out in advance, either because they were terrified, or they wanted a paid license to sin.
Thus they were extorted most cruelly by an unbiblical doctrine. They were fleeced.
“Tetzel traveled with great pomp and circumstance through Germany, and recommended with unscrupulous effrontery and declamatory eloquence the indulgences of the Pope to the large crowds who gathered from every quarter around him. He was received like a messenger from heaven. Priests, monks, and magistrates, men and women, old and young, marched in solemn procession with songs, flags, and candles, under the ringing of bells, to meet him and his fellow-monks, and followed them to the church; the papal Bull on a velvet cushion was placed on the high altar, a red cross with a silken banner bearing the papal arms was erected before it, and a large iron chest was put beneath the cross for the indulgence money. Such chests are still preserved in many places. The preachers, by daily sermons, hymns, and processions, urged the people, with extravagant laudations of the Popes Bull, to purchase letters of indulgence for their own benefit, and at the same time played upon their sympathies for departed relatives and friends whom they might release from their sufferings in purgatory “as soon as the penny tinkles in the box.”
” Sobald der Pfennig im Kasten klingt,
Die Seel aus dem Fegfeuer springt.”
Mathesius and Johann Hess, two contemporary witnesses, ascribe this sentence (with slight verbal modifications) to Tetzel himself. Luther mentions it in Theses 27 and 28, and in his book Wider Hans Wurst (Erl. ed. xxvi. 51).
“The idea of selling and buying by money the remission of punishment and release from purgatory was acceptable to ignorant and superstitious people, but revolting to sound moral feeling. It roused, long before Luther, the indignant protest of earnest minds, such as Wiclif in England, Hus in Bohemia, John von Wesel in Germany, John Wessel in Holland, Thomas Wyttenbach in Switzerland, but without much effect.”
(History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaeff)
I don’t think the whole indulgences/purgatory thing is defensible, really.
It is not wholly defensible, but taken in balance, I’d trade it for the cheerful self-absolution that Protestantism offers today. It was a healthier culture overall.