“I agree that the Church was responsible for those abuses, but I think what Vlad is trying to relay is that the “sale of indulgences” was not (and is still not) an official teaching of the Catholic Church.”
You use - and wisely so - the word “abuse”. Think about it. There’s a difference between “use” and “abuse”. Use is what the Church authorizes - the standard usage. Abuse is NOT what the Church authorizes. No abuse of indulgences (and abuse would include selling indulgences) was authorized by the Church. No selling of indulgences was authorized by the Church. Those are just facts - and they’re irrefutable.
To say that the Church “was responsible for those abuses” makes no sense since the Church forbade the abuse of indulgences. Could the Church have done more to stop abuses of indulgences? I suppose so, but what exactly could it do? It was already forbidden to sell indulgences. It was illegal. It was a criminal offense. Even after Trent - when any connection between money (”use” = donations; “abuse” = sales) and indulgences was forbidden, people still sold indulgences and went to prison for it. If I recall correctly, John Tedeschi mentions this fact in his book The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy. So what exactly could the Church have done other than what it did? It could have done some things sooner, but the Church is often very slow to act on anything.
In any case, the following fact remains unchanged: No matter how much they huff and puff and stamp their feet, no anti-Catholic here or anywhere else has been able to post a single Church document that shows the Church wanted indulgences to be abused. EVER.
That won’t change.
Vlad, I get the distinction you are making, but the Churchmen are responsible for their actions. The Church is responsible as long as it was allowed to continue.
Nope.
The 'abuse' comes in where the Church teaches that an 'indulgence'; of ANY kind; is going to sway what GOD is going to do!