ANST - Period Scams

[Crescentia _]

Magnus wrote:
>The report I had seen stated that the Pope IS reinstituing Indulgences.
>However it will have a twist, apparently. Instead of paying the church 
to
>"negate" a sin, they are saying things like community service and 
what-not
>would be the payment for the sin.

I think one of the problems here is that the Catholic mindset on 
indulgences and penance isn't very well understood by non-Catholics.  
Indulgences have been around since the very beginning, and have never 
gone away--although post-Vatican-II, they haven't been stressed much.  
There are two types of indulgences: partial and plenary.  And you don't 
necessarily have to pay for them-- lots of the older Catholic prayers 
have "300 days' indulgence" or "plenary indulgence under the usual 
conditions" written after them.

Penance, on the other hand, is what you do after you go to Confession.  
They'll tell you to do something-- it can be a prayer (ie, recite 3 Hail 
Mary's) or it can be something like "go out of your way to be nice to 
your brother tonight" (especially for the children). But none of this 
(either penance or indulgences) makes any sense unless you understand 
the Catholic concept of Purgatory.

Sometimes, indulgences were abused.  But other times, they went for  
things like building St. Peter's Basilica so it looks as it does now. To 
the medieval mind, it would've been a win-win situation-- they got an 
indulgence out of it, and Rome got a great-looking basilica.  It's just 
like donating $$ to mission work or something.
Sorry for the bandwidth, but these concepts haven't really changed since 
they were established, and I thought some people might like the 
clarification.
-Crescentia
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