CT Blue

I mentioned a few days ago that Mr. Infallible (that’s the Pope, for you non-believers) has been playing to his base by rehabilitating Nazi loving clerics, among other things. Well now we learn that he’s bringing back some old traditions, namely, Indulgences.

I can still remember trolling through my Missal during Mass, looking at the bright color pictures and checking out the number of days off of my sentence I could get by saying various prayers.

For the untutored, let me explain, as I have done at more length in the pages of my old blog some time ago.

There are three places where we can go after we die, now that the Church has abolished Limbo. Here they are in ascending order of probability:

1. Heaven. Don’t waste your time shooting for heaven. You have to be absolutely sinless to get into heaven, and the fact is that no properly raised Catholic can exist for more than a few minutes without sinning in some way or other. Certainly no male can do it. The average male thinks about sex about every other minute, on average, and every one of those impure thoughts is a sin. Your only hope is to receive absolution and then get shot as you walk out of the confessional.

2. Purgatory. Eminently doable. Just avoid the biggies. The aformentioned impure thoughts are fine. Just don’t kill anyone or miss Mass on Sunday. Those are mortal sins. Downside: you have to endure punishment for eternity, or until the end of the world. After that, having been purged of your sins, and no doubt feeling well disposed toward the god who has been torturing you for the past several eons, you go to Heaven.

3. A piece of cake. Anyone can get in. Downside: You are tortured absolutely forever.

The choices aren’t so great, but it’s pretty obvious that your best hope lies in Purgatory. My ambitions were always modest, so Purgatory was always my objective, which is why I liked the idea of indulgences. What are indulgences, you non-Catholics and under 50s may ask? Well, the Times has it about right:

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.

But not quite right. Take a Hail Mary for instance. That might get you a 300 day indulgence. I can’t remember any prayer getting you much more than that. Nothing got you out completely.

Now, there are a few problems with indulgences, of the logical variety. First, if we assume that we really do have to spend eternity in Purgatory before we get to heaven, and we lop off 300 days at a time from the sentence, how does it get shortened? Isn’t that a bit like subtracting something from infinity? The problem is somewhat amelioriated, of course, if we assume that the maximum Purgatory term is until the end of the world, which scientists currently estimate at a mere 7.5 billion years. If we assume you can say a Hail Mary every minute, and you don’t do anything else (except think about sex once -to qualify for Purgatory in the first place), including sleep, for a life that lasts 100 years, you could successfully reduce your sentence by 43,274,400 years, approximately 0.576992% of your total term, which makes our penal system look generous-time off for good behavior wise. It’s pretty clear that one rosary a day isn’t worth squat.

But wait, the percentage goes up if the end of the world means the end of the existence of humankind, which, with any luck to the folks in Purgatory could come almost any day. In fact, that’s the main objective of the Left Behinders, if I’m not mistaken: To hasten the end time so all the Good Christians can ascend into heaven, and the rest of us can spend eternity in Hell, since at that point there will be no need for Purgatory. If that’s when Judgment Day is held, our hypothetical Indulgence gatherer can accumulate enough good time to get out of Purgatory free, with time to spare to spring a flock of other folks.

Speaking of logic, some might also wonder how it is that the Church gets to control an otherwise omnipotent God. For after all, it’s the Church that decides how many days a Hail Mary is worth, and God just has to go along. Some might think that God would want to preserve a little freedom of action, but apparently that’s not the case. Like so many things Holy Mother Church teaches us, this is a Mystery, that we must take on faith.

For my own part, I think Benedict is being too timid by half. Why go back to the early twentieth century, when you can go all the way back to the 13th. Times are tough, and the Church is having trouble making ends meet, what with all those lawsuits. Why not sell the indulgences, like in the good old days?