Monday, May 26, 2025

Roman Catholic Theologian Martin Jugie (1878-1954) on Indulgences

  

Indulgences

 

We have in indulgences, so liberally granted to us by the Church, a means at once easy and efficacious to wipe out the debt of our sins. This means is attached directly, by its origin, to sacramental penitence, which requires of the penitent contrition, confession, and satisfaction.

 

Satisfaction is represented by the penance imposed by the confessor. Its purpose is to satisfy divine justice for the sins committed after Baptism. In the early centuries of the Church, long and hard penances were imposed on those who confessed grave sins, and only after the performance of these penances did the penitent receive full absolution, that is to say, not only the absolution of sin itself, which can be had immediately by Confession, but also the total absolution of the temporal punishment due to sin. IN other words, to that final reconciliation the Church attached what we call today a plenary indulgence. The Church has received from Christ the full an entire power to absolve the faithful, not only from the sins themselves, but also from the punishment due to sin. “Whatsover you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in Heaven,” said Christ to St. Peter. The same words were spoken, on another occasion, to all the apostles together (Matt. 18:18). The temporal punishment due to sin is a binding chain, which prevents our entry into Heaven unless and until we have been delivered from it. It is in our hands, then, to have ourselves delivered from these chains by those who, in the Church, have receive the power to do so. But it is understood that the deliverance must respect the requirements of equity. Divine justice demands a compensation commensurate with the sin. Formerly, the Church demanded far more from the penitent than she demands today. It is true that our confessors impose very light penances on us, even for mortal sins, if one compares them to those which were in use in the early Church. What is a chaplet or an entire Rosary, or a Way of the Cross, or a day’s fast, or a small alms, next to whole years of series, of fasts on bread and water, or long pilgrimages on foot? However, divine justice remains ever the same: its tariff has not changed. One must pay the price. What does the Church do in order to aid us? Knowing our weakness, and the frayed health of these latter times, she dips her hands deep into her treasury—the treasury of the satisfaction of Christ and His saints, of which she is the dispensatrix. We call this divine coinage by the name “indulgences.” An indulgence is a random from the temporal punishment which we owe to divine justice for our sins, even after we have repented of them and obtained absolution. It does not concern the remission of sin, but the remission of the pain due to sin already pardoned. This must not be forgotten.

 

How can we acquire this precious currency? We have only to observe the conditions which the Church very wisely imposes, whether there is question of plenary or partial indulgence. These conditions are not draconian, for they contain nothing that is beyond the power of goodwill, and they are easy to fulfill. For a plenary indulgence, which remits all debts and makes the soul immaculate for Heaven, there is required a full repentance for all sin, both mortal and venial, without wilfull attachment to the least of them. The soul must renounce all that displeases God and unite itself with all its powers to His Will. In a word, it must love God, according to the first and the greatest commandment. It is so difficult to love in this way an all-good and all-lovable Father, especially when we are aided to this perfection by Confession and Communion, which are ordinarily (not always) required for the gaining of a plenary indulgence? Add to this, usually, a visit to a church with prayers for the Pope’s intentions, and you are delivered from the heavy weight of your sins, in their pains as well as their culpability. If we were to make this exercise every day, or at least once a week, we would stand a very good chance of escaping Purgatory.

 

Perhaps you find that, now, it is all so easy that you are inclined to be skeptical about it. But ask yourself the question: what have I done more difficult than this, to obtain a remission incomparably greater than that of the temporal punishment, the remission of the mortal sin itself and of the eternal pain it entailed? You went and knelt at the feet of a priest who represented Christ, and you said: “Father, I have sinned”; and he raised his hand over you, forgiving you in the Name of Jesus Christ. What more simple in its means, what more marvelous in its effects? Do you forget that the love of God for us knows no bounds; that He has given to us His Only Son, and has allowed Him to offer Himself as a victim for our sins, that the rights of justice might be fully satisfied? What God asks of us in faith in His love and a return of love. If we give that return of love, He will forget all. “For charity covereth a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). (Martin Jugie, The Truth About Purgatory and The Means to Avoid it [Westminster, Ma.: Newman Press, 1949; repr., Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2022], 154-57, emphasis in original)

 

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