Excerpt FTD

[_namo_]

For those of you interested, I put the excerpt "'Father President,' said Father Gomez at once, 'I have done preemptive penance every day of my adult life. I have studied, I have trained---' The President held up his hand. Preemptive penance and absolution were doctrines researched and developed by the Consistorial Court, but not known to the wider church. They involved doing penance for a sin not yet committed, intense and fervent penance accompanied by scourging and flagellation, so as to build up, as it were, a store of credit. When the penance had reached the appropriate level for a particular sin, the penitent was granted absolution in advance, though he might never be called on to commit the sin. It was sometimes necessary to kill people, for example; and it was so much less troubling for the assassin if he could do so in a state of grace."
-Philip Pullman's "The Amber Spyglass" For those of you not interested, you won't read it.