Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Rome offers a plenary indulgence

I'd like to note this in relation to what took place at the Svendsen-Pacwa debate during the Audience Questions section.
(Edit in green text)
Father Pacwa, answering an audience question...
Question: "Please comment on the view of today's Vatican regarding the selling of indulgences in history."

Pacwa (almost verbatim): "The Vatican hasn't said anythg about selling indulgences b/c it was condemned earlier in the C of Trent. There was abuse of selling of indulgences and the reason that Vatican didn't say anythg was b/c it's not being done."

First of all, that's awesome for our RC friends. In particular I'd love to know why such goodies as plenary indulgences are only granted from time to time rather than all the time. And why the RCC doesn't just go all the way and become Reformed, where the one sacrifice of Christ provides for a true plenary indulgence. As to the former, I wonder if Indulgentiarum Doctrina has anything to say?

In my review, I noted that Fr Peter Stravinskas disagreed w/ Pacwa's assertion, and apparently the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is coming down somewhere near Stravinskas' side as far as I can tell. So I guess here we have a problem between Stravinskas and Pacwa, and it leads to a few questions:
  1. What is the difference between buying an indulgence with money and buying one with stuff you do?
  2. Is this not demonstrative of disunity among RC clergy? (I know Mateo wouldn't agree that this is a big deal, but he's not the majority opinion so far as I've seen.)

Pretty good stuff. Either way, I hope all the Roman Catholics who can will take advantage. I sure would.
And what good fortune to die just a few hours after hooking one of these dandies!
I'm gonna go ahead and post screen shots of the article here b/c another link I found turned out to be dead just hours after I saw the article that links to it.




1 comment:

Matthew said...

Hilarious and tragic, both at the same time...