Beitzel: Vatican indulges self, sinners

Sinners, start your demons! Catholic churches in the United States have resumed issuing… Sinners, start your demons! Catholic churches in the United States have resumed issuing indulgences. Purgatory is getting congested, so Catholicism is engaging in its own infrastructure stimulus: paving a golden express-lane to heaven.

Catholic.com — yes, com — draws from the Indulgentiarum Doctrina, the Vatican’s constitution for indulgence doling, to explain, ‘An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain defined conditions through the Church’s help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints.’ What?

Basically, after you commit a sin, God gets to smiting. Wayward sons can escape or lessen their earthly punishment through common practices like confession or ‘Hail Mary’ recitations. The truly devout might just skip straight to self-flagellation. However, none of these ambitious penances guarantee an open path on the stairway to heaven. Sinners might still have to spend time in Purgatory — so bring that Bible you’ve always been meaning to read.

Enter: indulgences. These are God’s version of the Willy Wonka golden ticket. With enough prescribed deeds, like donations and pilgrimages, Catholics can elude otherworldly punishment for peccadilloes.

Issuing indulgences never technically fell out of practice, but it became so rare that many lifelong Papists didn’t know about it. Now the Church is resurrecting the practice in areas such as Pittsburgh.

Two types of indulgences exist, partial and plenary. Plenary absolves the sinner completely, whereas, according to the New York Times, partials only ‘reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years.’ This is where it gets complicated. What ratio of sin to punishment is tolerable? Maybe treating one’s body like a Vegas casino, rather than a temple, on a Saturday night is worth a few days in spiritual timeout.

We need to create a conversion chart.

First, days in the afterlife do not seem to equal 24 hours. Geologists place the Earth at around 4.5 billion years old, whereas creationists date the Earth somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 years old — for the purposes of this calculation, we’ll meet halfway at 8,500 God years. That means one day on God’s clock equals 529,412 earthly days. Suddenly, that weekend debauchery got costlier.

Which bring us to money. Dioceses are not ‘selling’ indulgences, but donations can cut through some rosary tape. The dollar isn’t faring well on the world market, though. So, its exchange rate in the City of Light is assuredly worse. Frankincense stocks are trading higher than GM. Big Myrrh is shutting down mom-and-pop aromatic resin shops across the country. You get the idea, so let’s skip the algebra here.

The only number that matters is the No. 1 — as in: ‘A plenary indulgence can be acquired only once a day,’ according to the Doctrina. But if you confess in the next 10 minutes, because we can’t do this all day, we’ll throw in four partial indulgences at no extra tithe. Heaven might be paved in gold, but its earthly avatars can’t just print plenary indulgences. It’s not like they’re making this stuff up as they go.

In the Bible, Matthew 7:6 reads, ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.’ Therefore, officials must exhibit sacrosanct judgment in choosing who acquires a get-out-of-Purgatory-free card. They wouldn’t want to issue indulgences to dogs. A dog is mindlessly loyal to its infallible master, blindly following the commands it is taught. Dogs spend their existence in submission, obediently lying prostrate in their owner’s presence.

Human judgment marks the true contention. That Matthew chapter begins with the famous quote, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ It’s the oldest line in the Good Book. However, is judgment of the positive any more righteous than judgment of the negative?

I’m no man of the cloth, but it seems judging goes both ways — I wonder if it can get an indulgence for that. Nobody should presume to speak for God on behalf of punishment, nor reward. A difference exists between acknowledging a good deed and presuming the capability of divine judgment. Furthermore, if stray lambs seek true contrition, they shouldn’t expect some quid pro quo reward for repentance.

The New York Times explained that re-emphasizing indulgences is meant to remind Catholics of ‘the Church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.’ Only 49 years ago, Americans thought the Pope would control the White House if John F. Kennedy was elected. Now, in an attempt to maintain membership, Catholicism is auctioning off V.I.P. passes to show Saint Peter.

It’s a marketing ploy, like a commercial that says, ‘Fly Catholic. We get you to your cloud quicker.’ While busying itself calling people heathens, the Catholic hierarchy got stuck in its own purgatory — a limbo between modernization and tradition. Bringing back indulgences is a true Hail Mary: a long-shot pass with the hope of restoring relevance to a losing team.

If anyone would like to confess, e-mail Dave at drb34@pitt.edu.

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