Article 3
indulgences for the
dead
1. State of the Question.—Indulgences for the dead
require a separate treatment because, unlike indulgences for the living, they
are not granted in the form of a judicial absolution, owing to the fact that
the poor souls in purgatory are no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the
Church.
But if this is so, how can the Pope authoritatively grant
indulgences to the dead? We shall briefly explain this apparent contradiction.
Jurisdiction may be understood either in a wide or in a narrow sense, according
as it means merely the right to guide others or to rule subjects. In the strict
sense the Church can exercise her power of jurisdiction only over those who are
her subjects through Baptism. The jurisdiction she has over catechumens and
pagans is confined to preaching the word of God and exercising a certain
guidance over them. It is only in this wider sense of the term that the power
of the keys can be said to extend to the poor souls in purgatory. The Church
simply offers to God from the treasury of merits at her command an equivalent
satisfaction with the request to remit any remaining punishments to the extent
of the indulgence offered. This is called the application of an indulgence by
way of suffrage (per modum suffragii).
The poor souls receive these indulgences not directly, but indirectly, through
the intercession of the living. A living Christian must first gain an
indulgence for himself before he can make use of the privilege of applying it
to the poor souls.
2. The Church Has the Power to Grant Indulgences for the
Dead.—Though not an article of faith, it is certain that the Pope, as supreme
steward of the treasury of the Church, has the power to grant indulgences which
are applicable to the poor souls by the intercession of the living.
It is no longer possible to base this teaching on the
Bull in which Sixtus IV condemns the proposition of Peter of Osma: “Papa non potest indulgere alicui viro
poenam purgatorii.” The word viro
is a misprint for vivo, as clearly
appears from a Quodlibetum of the
same writer, in which he combats the assertion that one can obtain remission of
the punishment awaiting him in purgatory while still among the living. However,
in another Bull, dated Nov. 27, 1477, Sixtus IV expressly declares that
indulgences can be applied to the poor souls per modum suffragii. Pope Leo X rejected Luther’s assertion that
indulgences are neither necessary nor useful to the dead or dying. When the
Jansenistic Council of Pistoia repeated this falsehood, it was censured by Pius
VI.
a) The chief reason why indulgences are applicable to the
poor souls is that the Communion of Saints comprises the inmates of purgatory
as well as the elect in Heaven and the militant Church on earth.
As the faithful can aid the poor souls in a general way
by their intercession, so they can help them in particular by means of
indulgences applied through their pious suffrages (per modum suffragii). The poor souls in that case simply
participate in the mutual exchange of spiritual benefits to which all the
members of the Communio sanctorum
have a claim. If the individual Christian can aid the poor souls by praying for
them, he can aid them still more effectively by applying to them the
indulgences granted by the Church, for in these there is superadded to private
suffrage the authority of the Pope, through whom the Church herself intercedes,
not with empty hands, as in mere prayer, but by presenting to God a full
equivalent for the punishments still due, and which somehow or other must be
redeemed as a matter of strict justice.
b) The question arises: Do indulgences for the dead
attain their purpose with infallible certainty, or do they depend for their
effect on the mercy of God? On this subject theologians differ. Dominicus Soto,
Suarez, De Lugo, and others maintain that the efficacy of such indulgences is
regulated by “an infallible law.” These authors give two reasons for their
belief. The first is that parallel to the divine wish that the living assist
the poor souls runs a divine guarantee that any aid they may render them will
be effective. The second is that whenever the Church by exercising the power of
the keys, reaches (at least indirectly) into the world beyond, she cannot fail
in her purpose so long as there exists a subject fit and ready to receive her
favors. Other theologians hold with Cardinal Cajetan that, while we may presume
that God in a general way is willing to accept indulgences for the dead, we
have no certainty that He does so in any single case because the divine
counsels and decrees are hidden from our knowledge. The advocates of this
theory say that only in this way is it possible to explain why the Church
permits more than one plenary indulgence to be applied to the same soul. It is
probably safe to assume, however, that every indulgence for the dead attains
its purpose infallibly, provided the soul to which it is applied does not offer
an obstacle (obex).
If one wishes to apply a plenary indulgence to the poor
souls, must he perform the good works upon which that indulgence is conditioned
in the state of sanctifying grace? Some theologians answer this question in the
negative. They claim that sanctifying grace is not necessary unless one of the
requisites demanded for the validity of the indulgence is confession or an act
of perfect contrition. Suarez, whose view is favored by De Augustinis and
Pesch, holds that any Catholic can gain indulgences for the poor souls in
purgatory by simply complying with the prescribed conditions, even though he
himself be in the state of mortal sin. The state of sin, these writers argue,
prevents an indulgence from taking effect only when it exists in the
beneficiary, who in this case is not the living man who gains the indulgence,
but the poor soul for whom he gains it, and the poor souls are undoubtedly in
the state of grace. This shallow view, as De Lugo rightly calls it, was the one
advocated by Tetzel, which gave rise to the famous couplet, “As soon as the
gold in the casket rings, The rescued soul to heaven springs.”10 It
is justly rejected by the majority of theologians. For, in the first place, it
is based on a false assumption, viz.:
that the Church applies indulgences for the dead directly through the living,
thus reducing the living intermediary to a sort of spiritual machine, whereas
it is an undeniable fact that indulgences can profit the poor souls only in an
indirect way. And secondly, the human intermediary plays the part of an
intercessor, and as such must comply with the conditions which are required for
gaining an indulgence for the living; consequently he must be in the state of
sanctifying grace. (Joseph Pohle, The Sacraments: A Dogmatic Treatise [London:
B. Herder, 1918], 259-63)
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