Treatise VII. On Indulgences

538. Preliminary note. The treatise on indulgences is a certain complement of the treatise on penance. For it is Catholic dogma that, when guilt has been remitted, the whole punishment due is not always remitted. In satisfaction for this punishment, the confessor is bound to impose a salutary penance, which the penitent must fulfill. But even when the salutary penance has been fulfilled, all the punishment due has not yet always been remitted. Indulgences, however, are the most efficacious means of entirely destroying all punishment when guilt has been remitted. Hence moralists commonly treat indulgences as a complement of sacramental satisfaction and of the sacrament of penance. Since many controversies exist concerning indulgences which are freely disputed among theologians, it is worthwhile here to set forth briefly in one view those things which are beyond controversy and must be admitted by every Catholic. All these things are contained in the Council of Trent,¹ which defines: "Since the power of conferring indulgences was granted by Christ to the Church, and she has used this power divinely handed down to her even from the most ancient times, the holy Synod teaches and commands that the use of indulgences, most salutary for the Christian people and approved by the authority of sacred Councils, is to be retained in the Church; and it condemns with anathema those who either assert that they are useless or deny that there is in the Church the power of granting them."² Therefore two things must altogether be held by faith:

1. The power of granting indulgences was divinely handed down to the Church.

2. The use of indulgences is salutary and therefore is to be retained.

Furthermore, it is certain (on account of the condemnation of proposition 17 of Luther³ and proposition 41 of the Synod of Pistoia) that there exists a treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints, from which the Church can dispense indulgences.

We divide this treatise on indulgences into five articles: 1. the nature and division of indulgences; 2. the authority of granting indulgences; 3. the conditions required for gaining indulgences; 4. the jubilee indulgence; 5. certain indulgences in particular.

¹ Sess. 25, De indulg. (Denz., n. 989).

² Cf. also the condemned propositions 40-43 of the Synod of Pistoia (Denz., nn. 1540-1543).

³ Denz., n. 757.