[amc] Martin Luther would find this interesting (perhaps you will too)
- From: Werner S <wjs3108@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Mennonite Church Austin <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:53:37 -0800 (PST)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Paul%20Vitello&st=cse
February 10, 2009
For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened
By PAUL VITELLO
The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with
enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the
heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means:
“Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”
In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a
spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort
of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the
church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.
The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of
indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the
selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply
makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring
fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.
“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn,
who has embraced the move.
“Because there is sin in the world.”
Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the
traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the
Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of
simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part
of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some
highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the
excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.
The indulgence is among the less noticed and less disputed traditions to be
restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to
its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.
According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the
confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still
face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In
exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a
Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment
instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.
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Austin Mennonite Church, (512) 926-3121 www.mennochurch.org
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