Buy A Ticket To Heaven

Much like a corporation can buy carbon credits and get absolution for having polluted the environment, the Catholic Church is once again granting the "indulgence", an amnesty for past sins which one can get with special prayers or with a charitable contribution and "other acts". Indulgences have been restored due to a drop off in people attending confession.

The indulgence is among the less-noticed, less-disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain. According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory before they can enter heaven.

In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament. There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it. You can get one for yourself, or for someone else, living or dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day. It has no currency in the bad place.

It's interesting that you can get indulgences for other people, living or dead. That sort of reminds me of the Mormons who are posthumously baptizing Jews.

(Tipped by JMG reader Stash)