Article — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Article I. On the Nature of Indulgences.
311. Definition. An indulgence is defined as the remission, through the power of the Church, granted outside the sacrament, of temporal punishment owed to God for sins already remitted as to guilt.
a. Through indulgences not guilt, nor eternal punishment, but temporal punishment only is remitted; but the punishment remitted is that which, after guilt and eternal punishment have been blotted out, still remains to be paid to divine justice either in this life or in the other. Therefore the formula by which indulgences are sometimes granted by way of the remission of all sins was always so understood in the Church that by the name of sins there were designated the punishments of sins.
b. The Church grants indulgences by this, that by force of the power of the keys it applies to the faithful the satisfactions of Christ and of the saints from the treasury of the Church. In the sacraments indeed and in the sacrifice of the Mass the satisfactions of Christ alone are applied to the faithful; but indulgences are granted from the satisfactions of Christ and of the saints.2
c. The treasury of the Church is the accumulation of the satisfactions of Christ and of the saints existing in the knowledge of God, from which the Church can grant indulgences. For Christ offered his infinite satisfactions to God the Father for us. Then there are many saints who either did not need the satisfactions performed by themselves, as the Blessed Virgin Mary, or performed more than were required for blotting out the temporal punishments owed for their sins. Those superabundant satisfactions together with the satisfactions of Christ constitute the treasury which the Church can dispense for the benefit of the faithful.3
1 Beringer-Hilgers, Die Ablasse, ihr Wesen und Gebrauch 14 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1915). There on p. 1 several works pertaining to this question are cited.
2 This proposition (60) of Baius was condemned: Through the sufferings of the saints communicated in indulgences our offenses are not properly redeemed. Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1060.
3 Cf. Pesch, Praelectiones dogm. VII, 484 ff.; Beringer-Hilgers, Die Ablasse 14, p. 22 ff.
312. Nature. Dogmaticians teach that the Church has power of granting indulgences both to the living and to the dead; but one is the reason of the grant which is made to the living, and another that which is made to the dead: for to the living they are granted by way of absolution, but to the dead by way of suffrage.1
a. Since in the present order of salvation there is no remission of guilt or punishment without condign satisfaction, indulgences therefore cannot be granted without an equivalent payment which is offered to God for the punishment remitted. But this payment is made through application of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints, whose treasury has been deposited in the Church and committed to Blessed Peter and his successors to be dispensed among the faithful. Therefore, as often as the supreme pontiff grants an indulgence, he applies the satisfactions of Christ and the saints from the treasury of the Church to the faithful, both living and dead: and to the living indeed by way of absolution; but to the dead by way of suffrage. For the living are subject to the jurisdiction of the pontiff; therefore by force of the power of the keys he can absolve them from punishments, and while he absolves them, he at the same time offers to God payment from the treasury of the Church. Therefore an indulgence granted to the living is essentially an absolution having an attached payment from the treasury of the Church. But the dead are not subjects of the pontiff; wherefore he can apply an indulgence to them only by this, that he offers to God the satisfaction of Christ and the saints and piously asks and expects that God by his mercy and liberality will accept them. Therefore an indulgence granted to the dead is essentially payment made by offering a price to God for their debts.
b. Therefore the grant of an indulgence is an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, for whose exercise, however, the power of order is not required; therefore the supreme pontiff and bishops can grant indulgences even before consecration.
Whether indulgences can be applied to the living. We cannot apply indulgences to the living, because the supreme pontiff does not grant the faculty of applying indulgences to the living. By law indeed and from the nature of the thing nothing prevents anyone from gaining an indulgence not only for himself, but also for another living person, if the supreme pontiff, on whose will the whole matter depends, grants this. But in fact he grants that very many indulgences can be applied to the dead, but never grants that an indulgence can be applied to other living persons.
Cn. 930 decrees: "No one can apply indulgences for other living persons; but all indulgences granted by the Roman Pontiff are applicable for the souls in purgatory, unless something else is clear." The reason why indulgences can be applied either to the living or to the dead only from the positive grant of the supreme pontiff is this: because the effect which a work produces ex opere operato can be given to another, not according to the choice of the one working, but only from the grant of him who attaches the effect to the work. But the reason why the supreme pontiff does not grant that indulgences be applied to the living is this: because it is not expedient to assist those who, although they themselves can, do not care to gain indulgences for themselves.2
1 Cf. Pesch, l.c., n. 491 ff. Cf. cn. 911.
2 Cf. Palmieri, An lucratus indulgentiam possit eam ex arbitrio in alterum conferre (Rome: Analecta eccles., 1895); Behringer-Hilgers, p. 32. The S.C. of Indulgences, 22 Aug. 1906, granted to the O.F.M. that the plenary indulgence attached to general absolution to be imparted on certain days through the year to religious men and nuns of the same order could be applied not only for the dead, but also for the living. Namely, previously only the dead could gain this plenary indulgence; but now it has been granted to the O.F.M. that the brothers can apply or gain the same also for themselves, therefore for the living. Cf. Hilgers, Linz. Quartalsch. 1914, pp. 794, 497 ff.
313. Effect. Indulgences granted to the living, the conditions prescribed by the Church having been placed, have a certain and infallible effect: for the Church absolves them by its own authority. But indulgences applied to the dead, all required conditions having been placed, indeed have an infallible effect insofar as God accepts them for the dead; but they do not have an infallible effect insofar as he applies them to the determined soul for whom they are offered, or in that measure according to which they are offered. This application depends on God's good pleasure.
The reason for the first is that the supreme pontiff grants indulgences to the dead by apostolic authority; but if God gave him authority of applying the treasury of the Church for the benefit of the dead, he also accepts the application made. The reason for the second is that, on the one hand, there exists no promise by which God has affirmed that he will accept indulgences offered for certain dead persons; on the other hand, it can happen that the order of divine providence prevents the indulgence from being applied to a determined dead person, either wholly or even only in part. Nevertheless one may piously hope that God will not only accept the indulgences which are offered for the dead, but ordinarily at least will also apply them to those very persons for whom they are offered.1
1 Cf. Zeitschrift f. k. Th. XVII, 1893, p. 297 ff.
314. Division. 1. Indulgences are divided into personal, real, and local.
a. Personal indulgences are those which are immediately attached to a person, whether physical or moral, as to a confraternity or also to the whole body of the faithful, independently of a certain object or place for pious works to be performed.
The faithful who have been lawfully enrolled in a confraternity are not deprived of the indulgences granted to it because they do not observe the statutes of the confraternity, either in part or in whole, provided they fulfill the works enjoined for gaining the indulgences.1
b. Real indulgences are those which are immediately attached to some portable thing, as to a rosary, medal, etc.
a. Real indulgences can be applied only to solid things: iron, wood, lead, also leather bound in glass or covered with glass; but not to those things which can easily be broken or torn, as paper, glass not encased in something solid,2 although these can be blessed.
Real indulgences cease if the objects to which they are applied physically or morally perish and lose their form, as if the image of a crucifix is broken into two parts, if most of the beads of a rosary are lost at the same time, etc.
Medals to which indulgences are applied must bear the image of some saint; nor is the image of some blessed or venerable man sufficient, unless there is at the same time the image of a saint.3
If an indulgence is applied to a cross bearing a crucifix, the subject of the indulgence is the crucifix, which therefore can be transferred to another cross without the indulgence being lost.
Indulgences attached to a rosary or to other such things cease then only when the rosary or the other things cease to be destined for sale.4
Therefore rosaries: a. do not lose indulgences if the cord is broken and the beads are strung again, for the beads are the subject of the indulgence; b. they do not lose them if a few beads only (four or five) are lost and others are substituted; c. if, however, anyone sells a blessed thing endowed with an indulgence, he acts against the prohibition of the Church and causes the indulgence to perish, although the price is in no way increased on account of the indulgence.
b. If anyone receives something for a rosary or another thing under the title of alms, the indulgence attached to it does not seem to cease, because the thing is not sold.
g. To one and the same thing or place several indulgences from various titles can be attached (to the same rosary, apostolic indulgences, those of St. Bridget, of the Preachers, of the Crucigers); but by one and the same work to which indulgences are attached from various titles several indulgences cannot be acquired, unless the required work is confession or communion, or unless something else has expressly been provided.5
c. Local indulgences are those which are immediately attached to a pious place, as to a church, or to a thing (altar, cross, image, etc.) which has been placed in a determined place, and whose visitation is numbered among the conditions for gaining the indulgence.
Local indulgences cease if the church or oratory to which they are attached is entirely destroyed, unless within fifty years it is again built in the same or almost the same place and under the same title.6 In order that a church be judged to have been restored in almost the same place, it is necessary that the new building stand only a little distant from the old, for example, twenty or thirty paces.7
1 Decreta authentica S. C. Indulgentiarum (Ratisbon: Pustet, 1883), n. 298.
2 S. C. Indl., 29 Feb. 1820, n. 249.
3 S. C. Indl., 22 Dec. 1710, n. 32.
4 Cn. 924, 2. Nevertheless rosaries, crosses, etc., do not lose indulgences if anyone buying them entrusts to the seller himself the care of having them blessed in his name, even if he finally pays the price and the expenses of transmission when the things already blessed are delivered to him. S. C. Indl., 10 July 1896.
5 Cn. 933.
6 S. C. Indl., 9 Aug. 1843, n. 323. Cn. 924, 1.
7 S. C. Indl., 29 March 1886.
315. 2. Indulgences are divided into plenary, by which, from the intention of the one granting, the whole temporal punishment is remitted; and partial, by which only a determined part of that punishment is remitted.
a. Although every plenary indulgence, so far as regards the one granting it, can destroy the whole temporal punishment, nevertheless not all gain it fully, but very many gain it only in part: for in those who have no guilt, not even venial guilt, all punishments are destroyed; but in those who still have some venial sin, the punishments due for faults already blotted out are indeed remitted, but not those which are due to the fault still remaining.
They are not to be listened to who teach that those gain nothing of a plenary indulgence who do not gain it fully; for in this matter everything depends on the will of the one granting it; but Cn. 926 manifests the will of the one granting: "A plenary indulgence granted is understood in such a way that, if anyone cannot gain it plenarily, he may at least gain it partially according to the disposition which he has." The theoretical reason of this affirmation is that the effect of an indulgence is by its nature divisible; therefore he who does not gain the whole can gain a part of it.
b. Partial indulgences were formerly granted by this formula: remission of half or of a third part of sins, i.e., of temporal punishments; now indulgences are granted of so many days, years, quarantines; these formulas are not to be taken as though by these indulgences just as much punishment of purgatory were relaxed, but they signify only that as much canonical penance is remitted, which in ancient times was customarily imposed for sins, and consequently only so much punishment owed to God, or of purgatory, is remitted, as would be blotted out through those penances if they were actually performed. Therefore by an indulgence of seven years so much punishment owed to God is relaxed as is equivalent to a canonical penance of seven years. The measure of this remission, as in ancient times it depended on the fervor of the penitent, so now depends on the greater or lesser devotion with which the conditions prescribed for the indulgence are fulfilled.
a. An indulgence of forty days is called a quarantine, by which so much punishment is remitted as would have been blotted out by a fast of forty days, tolerated according to the ancient penitential canons during the time of Lent on bread and water alone.
b. In this formula: an indulgence of six or seven years and just as many quarantines, the name quarantine does not signify a Lenten fast which must be observed within those seven years themselves, so that an indulgence of seven years would signify just as much as an indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines; but it signifies quarantines added to the seven years, so that an indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines signifies a more ample indulgence than seven years alone.1
Whether on the same day we can gain the same indulgence more than once. Cn. 928 solves this question in this way: "A plenary indulgence, unless something else has expressly been provided, can be acquired only once in the day, even if the same prescribed work is performed several times.2 But a partial indulgence can be acquired several times in the day, unless the contrary is expressly noted." With respect to plenary indulgences an exception from this rule is admitted only rarely.3
"A plenary indulgence which has been granted as daily to those visiting a church or oratory is to be understood in such a way that it can be acquired on whatever day, but only once in the year," Cn. 921, 3.
1 Beringer, "Bedeutung der 'Quadragenen' in den Ablassverleihungen" (Quartalschr. Linz, 1900), p. 928.
2 Therefore priests who binate gain the indulgence for the prayer En ego only once. S. C. Indl., 29 June 1892.
3 There are now ten plenary indulgences which the faithful can gain toties-quoties: a. the very celebrated indulgence which is called the Portiuncula (2 Aug.); b. on the feast of the Most Holy Rosary (first Sunday of Oct.); c. on the feast of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel (16 July); d. on the feast of the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary (third Sunday of Sept.); e. on the feast of B. V. M. de Mercede (24 Sept.); f. on the commemoration of all the faithful departed (2 Nov.); g. on the last Sunday of June in churches in which during the month of June devotions toward the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have been held solemnly with daily preaching, or at least in the manner of spiritual exercises for an octave; h. for those who at Rome ascend the holy stairs on their knees, praying and piously meditating on the Passion of the Lord; i. on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity; k. on the feast of the Most Holy Body of Christ. Which persons, and under what conditions, can acquire these indulgences, Hilgers teaches, Die Ablasse.
316. Who Can Grant Indulgences. Indulgences can be granted by him who has proper or delegated power for this.
The supreme pontiff, and he alone, can grant by proper right to the faithful of the whole world indulgences both plenary and partial, for the living and for the dead: for to him alone have the keys of the treasury of the Church been granted with the fullest power of dispensing from it to the faithful. Those who have obtained from the supreme pontiff general grants of indulgences, under penalty of nullity of the grace obtained, are bound to bring a copy of the concession made to the Sacred Penitentiary.1
Cardinals can grant indulgences of 200 days, even to be gained toties-quoties, in places or institutes and for persons of their jurisdiction or protection; likewise in other places, but to be gained only by those present on each occasion.2
Bishops can grant an indulgence of 50 days in places of their jurisdiction.3
But all inferiors to the Roman Pontiff cannot:
a. delegate to others the faculty of granting indulgences;
b. grant indulgences applicable to the dead;
c. attach other indulgences to the same thing or act of piety or sodality to which indulgences have already been granted by the holy see or by another, unless new conditions to be fulfilled are prescribed.4
1 S. C. Indl., 19 Jan. 1756, n. 205, 371. Cn. 920.
2 Cn. 239, 24.
3 Cn. 349, 2.
4 Cn. 913, 3.