Dear Konrad:

Thank you for asking after my health. My illnesses, however, are chronic. I will someday be healed on the day that I enter (assuming I enter) the heavenly country. As for running around ... well I am typing this while reclining with my feet up (per doctor's orders). I seem to be spending more time like this than I do at my desk these days.

Concerning a comparison of the effects of the Sacrament of Confession and that if Indulgences, these two are completely different theologically and ontologically. The Sacrament of Confession forgives sin and confers a sanctifying (saving grace) restoring the soul to a state of grace. Indulgences do none of that.

An indulgence is "the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church, which, as minister of the redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints" (Pope Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution on Indulgences).

In other words. an indulgence applies not to sin, but to the consequences of sin that remain after a sin has been forgiven. Confession is order to the forgiveness of sin; Indulgences is order to the mitigation of penance.

Let me illustrate. If I throw a rock through your window I have sinned. I can be forgiven of that sin, but the window remains broken. Although I am fully forgiven of the sin of throwing a rock through your window I must still be held responsible to fix the window I broke (the consequence of my sin). Let's say the window cost $150 to replace. My sin is forgiven but I am still responsible to pay for the broken window.

Now how does an indulgence relate to this penance (of paying $150 for the window)? Well, let us say that you agree to take $75 off what I owe you for the window if I mow your lawn for two months. I agree. You have just given me a $75 indulgence (partial indulgence) off my penance of the $150 I owe. A plenary indulgence would take off the entire $150 so that I would owe nothing.

Purgatory is related to this in that if I do not get all the broken windows in my life paid for either directly or through indulgences by the time I die then I will have to work to repair any remaining broken windows in purgatory.

Indulgences originally related in this way to penances. In the early centuries of the church confession was public and so was penances. For purposes of illustration if a person confessed the sin of adultery perhaps he would have to serve a penance of standing in the public square for 300 days with a sign around his neck that says "adulterer." A partial indulgence of 100 days might be taken off his 300 day penance if he chops 10 cords of wood for the parish.

The Church ceased the public confessions and public penances and thus the idea of a certain number of days of indulgence became obsolete. The theology of indulgences, however, continued. Since the "number of days" no longer made any sense, the Church re-characterized indulgences as "partial" and "plenary."

The effect of the indulgences applies to our "time" in purgatory.

When we gain indulgences we can apply the "credit" either to ourselves (as time off purgatory) or we may apply the indulgence to a soul already in purgatory.

A list of indulgences is published in the Enchiridion indulgentiarum.

God bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary