Comments | novak: Theological Notebook: Allen on Levada heading the CDF and on Reese and America

novak

Theological Notebook: Allen on Levada heading the CDF and on Reese and America

May 14, 2005 01:30

In from Mike and Donna's where we watched the final episode of Enterprise, talked Trek for a very long time, then talked theology studies, book-binding, and my new apartment and move-in politics for even longer. I am now home and facing grading until the sun rises ( Read more... )

media, theological notebook, cdf, ecclesiology, curia, francis a. sullivan s.j.

Comments 3

simeonjawn May 14 2005, 19:48:43 UTC

once again, a comment having nothing to do with your original post.

i picked up a copy of The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism from the bookshelves at work the other day. I was looking through and noticed that it actually gave times for indulgences. The times at first were 3 and 7 years, which I can see an orgin for. However I canme across time periods of 10 years, 5 years, 500 days. How are these standards set by the Catholic Church? This book was published in 1971 and I'm not sure if they still put the amount of time you can take off of purgatory in children's catechism book. Is this still a practice that you see active? I am not trying to start a debate, just trying to become more informed.

So, my questions are: Who decides the amount a time assigned to an indulgence and how is it decided.

Does the practice of placing time amounts still occur?

novak May 14 2005, 21:19:45 UTC

I assume the numbers have some sort of tie to the fact that we have 10 fingers and thus a base-10 numerical system. I honestly doubt there's any real value to them other than that and that people like nice "round" numbers.

I'm sure that there are people who take this seriously and that the fact that I'm rather scornful of the practices means that I'm not a True Catholic, etc., etc.. But honestly, that entire aspect of medieval spirituality deserved the withering critique that it suffered both by the Protestant and by Catholic Reformers. The idea of penance as spiritual disciple is one thing, and a profitable one I think, given human life and its patterns. The idea that God's forgiveness is partial, ineffective, or relies on years of punishment to transform human beings is simply a failure to grasp the fullness of the reality of grace, and to try to pull God down to a human level and make him work through the kind of "system" that we accept more easily. It's ultimately a version of Pelagianism, this purgatorial idea that I pay ( ... )

simeonjawn May 14 2005, 22:56:28 UTC

Thanks for the reply. I find my views on this to be similar to yours. There was a little dispute in my band about this Pelagian idea once, although it really didn't have to do with purgatory. It was more along the lines of human suffering and its effect on salvation, mainly whether it has any or not. It arose when a song which was called Submerged in Self ( ... )