That the Church can remit temporal punishment from the treasury of merit is doctrine. Everything about how indulgences are granted, counted, and applied is discipline — and it has been reformed drastically, including the abolition of the medieval reckoning in days and years.
“An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which a properly disposed member of the faithful obtains under certain and defined conditions by the help of the Church.”
Whom it binds
- ·A plenary indulgence requires sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion, prayer for the Holy Father's intentions, and the exclusion of all attachment to sin, even venial.
- ·Only one plenary indulgence may be gained per day, except in danger of death.
- ·Indulgences may always be applied to the dead, and to the dead only by way of suffrage.
- ·No indulgence may ever be attached to a payment. This has been the law since 1567.
How the rule has moved
Watching a law change is the fastest way to learn it was never dogma.
- 1517
The preaching of the St. Peter's indulgence in Germany, and the financial abuses attached to it, precipitate the Reformation.
The occasion of Luther's Ninety-five Theses, 31 October 1517 - 1563
Trent affirms the Church's power to grant indulgences and, in the same decree, orders all evil gains connected with them abolished.
Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decree on Indulgences · read it - 1567
Pius V abolishes outright all indulgences involving any fee or financial transaction.
Bull of St. Pius V, 1567 - 1967
Paul VI reforms the whole system: the reckoning of partial indulgences in days and years is abolished, and their number is greatly reduced.
Apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, 1 January 1967 · read it - 2002
A plenary indulgence is attached to Divine Mercy Sunday.
Apostolic Penitentiary decree, 29 June 2002
The Church condemned the abuse before her critics did — and after
The honest account has two halves and this site gives both. The abuse was real: in the early sixteenth century indulgences were being preached in Germany with financial expectations attached, in a scheme entangled with a bishop's debts, and it was scandalous. Luther's objection on that point was substantially correct, and Catholic reformers had been making it before him.
The second half is less often reported. The Council of Trent, in the same decree in which it affirmed the doctrine, ordered every evil gain connected with indulgences abolished. Four years later Pius V abolished all indulgences involving fees outright. Since 1567 it has been impossible in Church law to buy an indulgence — which means the abuse that broke Western Christendom has been illegal for longer than most countries have existed.
What Paul VI changed in 1967
The medieval habit of numbering partial indulgences — 'three hundred days', 'seven years' — was widely misunderstood as time off a sentence, which it never was; it referred to the severity of the ancient canonical penances the indulgence was reckoned equivalent to. Since nobody understood that any more, Indulgentiarum Doctrina abolished the numbers altogether. A partial indulgence is now simply partial, and its extent corresponds to the fervour of the person gaining it.
The same reform cut the number of indulgenced prayers and works drastically, on the principle that fewer and better understood was worth more than many and mechanical.
Where it gets mistaken for doctrine
Catholics can buy their way out of purgatory.
Not since 1567, and not legitimately before. Any indulgence attached to a payment has been abolished in Church law for over four and a half centuries.
An indulgence forgives sin, or permits a sin in advance.
Neither. It remits temporal punishment for sin whose guilt is already forgiven — which is why sacramental confession is required to gain a plenary one. Nothing about it touches future sins.
'Three hundred days' meant three hundred days less in purgatory.
It never did; it referenced the ancient canonical penances. Because the misunderstanding was universal, Paul VI abolished the numbering in 1967.
Why it matters
- ❋It is the case where the Church's critics were partly right about the practice and wrong about the doctrine, and where saying so plainly costs nothing.
- ❋The conditions for a plenary indulgence — confession, Communion, prayer for the pope, and no attachment to sin — describe a person in good spiritual health. The demand is the point.
- ❋The last of those conditions is the hardest, and the Church says so: complete detachment from all sin, even venial, is not easily had.
Follow it further
Every citation on this page was checked against the document it names. Where a public text exists it is linked, so nothing here has to be taken on this site’s word. Where a claim could not be verified it was removed rather than left standing.