Further, indulgences in no way forgive sins. They deal only with punishments left after sins have been forgiven.
So God forgives sin but still wants to punish you for it?
The definition of indulgences presupposes that forgiveness has already taken place: "An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven" (Indulgentarium Doctrina 1).
So you confess your sin, the priest tells you that you are "forgiven" if you say a few prayers..and then when you die you have some corporal punishment even though God "dropped the charges " So what you need is a bail bondman to give some money to Rome and then they will tell God to let you out early"
The eternal punishment for sin (hell) is forgiven by God when a person confesses in sorrow and asks God’s mercy. God never refuses mercy to those who repent (which includes a firm will not to sin again, otherwise it’s not genuine sorrow for having sinned).
The temporal punishment to which indulgences apply is better understood as the effect or wound left behind in the soul of the repentant and forgiven sinner.
When a husband betrays his wife and is truly sorry and begs her to forgive him and she forgives him, genuinely, his is forgiven of the crime of betrayal of her.
But a wound remains in each of them, especially in the offending husband. He has proven himself untrustworthy and she cannot just act as if he never betrayed her
because he did betray her.
So he has to demonstrate his trustworthyness over and over and over by loving her, being trustworthy rather than doing new betrayals.
The analogy is not perfect because human-human and human-God relations are not identical. But in some sense, when we betray God by sinning, we wound ourselves, we make ourselves untrustworthy. God forgives us the punishment of hell by paying the price himself. But that wound is there and God knows it and the sinner knows it. And so he prays, and fasts, and refuses to sin again and eventually the wound is healed.
Indulgences remit whatever unhealedness might remain at death.
You can happily skip along saying that after God forgives you your sin everything is hunkey dory and it’s as if you never sinned at all and ain’t you just peachy
but it just plain ain’t true and you know it.
Catholic faith takes account of the reality of what happens when we sin. God’s grace and mercy are all powerful but God also knows how sin affects us and He’s not so stupid as to say, “hey, buddy, just skip down the garden path and pat yourself all over yourself and be peachy keen and burble along, I’m Okay and you’re okay.”
Because it’s not just okay. Yeah, I’ve escaped hell by God’s grace and Christ’s death on the cross, but I sinned against God and it ain’t all okay with me. I betrayed the God who died for me on the cross and it was a Big Deal and I messed myself up Big Time inside and I better do an awful lot of praying and giving and fasting and loving of God with ever fiber of my being just to show that I’ll never, ever betray Him again.
To simply say, “Hey God, thanks a bundle for dying on the Cross for me and forgiving my sins and ain’t we all happy and peachy and it warn’t no such Big Deal” might
1. incline me to succumb to temptation and sin again before long and
2. sounds a lot like I just take God for granted as a big Forgiveness Dispenser in the Sky.
You’ll complain that what I outlined here is “works righteousness.”
Well, go ahead. What you believe in is cheap grace.