Question of Faith
A weekly question of faith answered by Cleveland Catholics. Fr. Damian Ference, Vicar of Evangelization and Deacon Mike Hayes Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland co-host with frequent guests from the Diocesan Office who join in the conversation. Sponsored by Briefcase Marketing--check them out at https://www.Briefcase.marketing
Question of Faith
What is An Indulgence and Why Should I Want One?
SPONSOR: Briefcase Marketing
This episode unpacks the concept of indulgences within the context of modern spirituality, highlighting their importance in the healing process of sin. Fr Damian, Deacon Mike and Mary Fugate discuss the relationship between guilt, temporal punishment, and practical pathways to obtain indulgences, reinforcing the idea that nurturing both spiritual and mental health is essential in our journeys of faith and recovery.
• Explaining indulgences as a grace that removes temporal punishment
• Distinguishing guilt from its lasting effects
• Emphasizing the need for healing post-confession without falling into the trap of favoring indulgence over the Sacrament of Confession.
• Outlining steps to obtain indulgences through specific practices
• Highlighting types of indulgences: partial vs. plenary
• Discussing the intersection of faith and therapy for holistic healing
• Exploring indulgences' communal aspect through offering for souls in purgatory
• Encouragement to embrace indulgences as a means of grace and restoration
Links for the Jubilee Year:
Pilgrimage sites in the Diocese of Cleveland
Requirements to receive the plenary indulgence
Jubilee Resources
Book: Jesus and the Jubilee
SPONSOR: Briefcase Marketing
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Church Search: Lourdes Shrine
Readings for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
On today's Question of Faith what is an indulgence, and why should I want one? Hey, everybody, this is Question of Faith. I am Deacon Mike Hayes. I am the Director of Young Adult Ministry here in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:And I'm Father Damian Ferenc, the Vicar for Evangelization.
Speaker 3:And I am Mary Fugate, the Executive Assistant for Parish Life.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the show, Mary.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's been a little while now.
Speaker 3:October was the last time we did the Halloween episode.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that was a good one that was a good one, indeed. So Mary has a degree in theology from the Catholic University of America and it's part of my job to make sure that she receives intellectually stimulating work, because some of her job is just practical things. And we're in the middle of this Jubilee year. We had another Mary on last week, mary Rich, and we talked about the Jubilee year and we mentioned indulgences and we said we would have a show particularly on indulgences, because that is a big part of the Jubilee year but can often confuse people or make people have, you know, bad vibes about Catholics because maybe they don't know what indulgences are. So this show we're going to try to answer that question. Like, what is an indulgence? Why should I want one? I should say, too, that last week I mentioned this book by John Bergsma called Jesus and the Jubilee, and he's a former Protestant and we reviewed his chapter in preparation for this podcast. So maybe we can. I mean, I marked up my book today, but I found that to be helpful.
Speaker 1:But anyway.
Speaker 2:Mary, what is an indulgence? Can you give us a basic understanding?
Speaker 3:An indulgence is a special grace that removes temporal punishment from sin.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now we have to figure out what temporal punishment is and what it's not. Isn't it the case that for Catholics to sin removed the normal ways, first baptism and then through the sacrament of reconciliation, particularly for mortal sin? But that's normally what happens, that's what removes guilt, but you just used a new term, temporal punishment. So what's? The difference between guilt and temporal punishment.
Speaker 3:So guilt is the culpability that we have for sin. So when we are forgiven in the sacrament of confession, God forgives us and removes, yes, that guilt, the guilt that we hold for sin. So it's like it's almost as if we never we never committed that sin.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's say someone you know does tarot cards or cheats on their spouse or steal something or murder somebody. They go to confession and then they're forgiven of that sin.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yet yes.
Speaker 3:Yet sin still causes disorder and chaos in our lives and there are still negative effects of sin.
Speaker 1:So it still has an effect on us.
Speaker 3:Right, despite the forgiveness. So you mentioned adultery, for example. If a wife is unfaithful and the husband forgives his wife, that forgiveness is unconditional. There's not a condition for that forgiveness. Yet they're still, you know, damaged onto that relationship and you know the husband is reaching out his hand to the wife to forgive her and the wife has to reach back and make amends and purify herself so that they can reach that union that they once had.
Speaker 2:Right. So it's a very it's a very incarnational understanding of the human person. That it's not magic, because although one is forgiven, the effects of that sin still remain, maybe particularly in one's habit or one's character, and needs to be pulled out. Bergsma uses the example of a teenage want to tell it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I think it's helpful. Here's something like let's say you're a teenage boy and you decide to take your father's car out for a joyride and you want to really see what it can do, and you turn the corner and you kind of swipe the car next to you and damage the car next to you and then you're all out of sorts and you drive the car into a ditch. Now your car is completely damaged. There's another car that's completely damaged and for some reason the father and the person who owns the car forgives you for what you've done, but the cars are still all marked up and they have to be repaired and there's all those kinds of things, and so the indulgence is like repairing the car afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a nice example when people hear that, or the one that mary just gave it. Okay, that makes sense. So this is the temporal punishment that works out. How about? And before we started recording, I said to Mary. I said what are you going to say about indulgences? What did you say?
Speaker 3:I said you're going to suffer one way or the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and what did you mean by that?
Speaker 3:So the temporal punishment that we're talking about is the temporal punishment that we undergo in purgatory. So we're either going to suffer in this life and make amends for the sins that we've committed or, once we die, we'll suffer in purgatory and enter that stage of purification so that we can be in union with God.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Bergsma says in here and he quotes somebody saying it's like don't waste the time in purgatory, like work on this stuff here, and the church then affords us these things called indulgences to help us with that. So it really is a spiritual principle, but because we're both a body and soul, it works on our humanity too, so it heals our humanity and this is the power of what grace does and it makes a lot of sense in that way. So if you have, you know, struggled with a particular sin in the past and you go to confession for it, but you're still feeling like man, I just I don't feel whole, I'm not fully healed, then perhaps, like working for one of these indulgences and going through the effort of visiting one of the holy sites or spending time studying scripture or praying a family rosary, we'll get into like how you do these things could be really helpful and trusting that the church has an answer to that longing like, all right, I've done this and he uses an example in the book too.
Speaker 2:Back in his Protestant days someone would say you know, I've taken Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior, but man, okay, you've got that, but you still have a lot of habits that you had that used to take your life one way that and you need, you need some healing there. So an indulgence is one of the ways to help that. One of the ways to help that. Okay, so how do I get one? Let's get in the practicalities, mary, you have.
Speaker 3:Well, there are lots of ways to obtain an indulgence.
Speaker 2:You talk like NPR lady. I think it's funny.
Speaker 3:There are the usual conditions for an indulgence confession receive the Eucharist, pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, and is there one?
Speaker 2:more and the spirit detached from sin.
Speaker 3:Yes, the spirit detached from sin which we can get into that if we want to.
Speaker 2:So, spirit detached from sin, confession as soon as possible, Eucharistic communion as soon as possible, prayer for the Holy Father's intentions. And normally you have an eight-day window to go to confession, but the Holy Father extended it to 20 days. 20 days, yes, he is such a Pope of mercy, you know. Spread it out. I actually was in New York City this past weekend with two priest buddies. I go every year for my birthday and we visited the Shrine of St Francis.
Speaker 1:Xavier Cabrini Is that good In Wood in Manhattan.
Speaker 2:That is Manhattan, it's northern Manhattan, so it's almost right, it's the upper part of Manhattan.
Speaker 1:It's the very top of Manhattan.
Speaker 2:It's right by the.
Speaker 1:Cloisters Correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you went any farther, you'd technically be in the Bronx, in the Bronx, okay, or Galcruz, even if you went even further than that, I see.
Speaker 2:So I went there and I'm going to confession tomorrow because I have a spiritual direction and confession tomorrow, so I'll complete this and I have Mass every day, so hopefully this will be good and I can receive an indulgence. Go on, mary, you have something else.
Speaker 3:I was just going to talk about the other activities that you can do so in John Bergsma's book. He lists four easy works. Those are 30 minutes reading the Bible, 30 minutes before the Blessed Sacrament, praying the Stations of the Cross before properly blessed Stations. That would be like in a church or a shrine.
Speaker 1:They're in every church.
Speaker 3:And then praying the Rosary in a group of two or more persons with the mysteries announced.
Speaker 2:And before a crucifix. Yeah, that was interesting, but there's a crucifix on almost every rosary unless your rosary is broken so you're good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then for the Jubilee in particular, we have these Jubilee sites, and so you can make a pilgrimage to one of those. You can make a pilgrimage to Rome At any time. You can make any sort of pilgrimage and obtain one of these indulgences.
Speaker 2:Our good friends Lynette Cisneros and Kayla Gill designed these beautiful Pilgrims of Hope passports that are I think they're at every parish. Now I have to drop off the one at Ashland and I'm heading there next week, but you can visit all 11 sites. You only need to do one, but St Edward Parish, ashland Cathedral here in Cleveland. St Mary Chardon, immaculate Conception, madison, nativity of the Blessed Virgin, mary Lorraine, st Colette, brunswick, queen of Heaven, uniontown, peter and Paul, doylestown, and then three shrines Our Lady of Lourdes in Euclid, queen of Holy Rosary, parma Heights and St Anne Shrine in Highland Heights. So then you get a little stamp and you can have your passport stamped and you can get all 11, and you've got a year to do it, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try to go to all 11, I think I am too, when the weather gets a little better, I think During Lent my goal is to give a talk at all eight parishes on the Jubilee and Bishop Molesik's new pastoral letter, and then what I want to do with these is maybe lead a rosary at each of the Marian shrines, and maybe in different languages.
Speaker 1:Even if I don't lead.
Speaker 2:I can only do a few languages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was looking to see how far away the sites were from each other because I was thinking of maybe trying to do a walking pilgrimage between all of them. But you know, like I would probably like break it up like Ashland and St Peter and Paul and Queen of Heaven, Like you could do all of those in a very long day if you wanted to, and so I was like, well, maybe I'll do those three one day and then maybe I'll do a couple others the other day and then see what's left over.
Speaker 2:What if we do the Jubilee Challenge, that if you do all 11 in one day, you get a piece of chocolate dipped in honey or something? Yeah, I don't know, whatever. What else do we need to talk about in terms of these jubilees? Oh, the two types of indulgences. Mary, can you make a distinction?
Speaker 3:So there are partial indulgences and plenary indulgences, so they're pretty self-explanatory. A partial indulgence removes only a part of the punishment due to sin, whereas plenary indulgence would remove the entirety of your punishment that you've incurred up to that point in life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm reading a book, rereading it now from my book club. It's called the Relentless Something of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It's a red book, it's good and in there he quotes some guy who says something so simple. But it stuck with me and it leads to this punishment thing Because sometimes we could think, oh God's just out to punish us. It's not that at all. It's that when you go against the grain you get splinters.
Speaker 3:That's how he?
Speaker 2:says it. So it's kind of respecting how things are. Reality is how God has created the world and his commands. When you go against them, the punishment is built in because you're not doing what you're supposed to do. And most of us realize that anyway, even if we're like I want to be a little rebellious, but, like man, that actually wasn't good for me, that wasn't helpful for me, that wasn't helpful for me. So the punishment is built in and what the church wants to do is say, yeah, it is your sacrament of confession. Um take, you know, absolves you from sin. But those effects that remain there can be worked on in other ways, and one of those ways is through these um indulgences. So I have one final question.
Speaker 2:I didn't tell you about this because I wanted to kind of do it live. But what do you think about? Like, okay, so this is the grace side of things. But how about on the human side? What do you think about therapy? Like, let's say, someone was struggling with anger or pride or infidelity or these things. Should they get the indulgence or do you think they should go the route of therapy? Should they get the indulgence or do you think they should go the route of therapy?
Speaker 3:Probably both. I would say both, yeah, because the indulgence, you know, would remove the temporal punishment, but you could still be afflicted mentally, emotionally, by whatever habit you've built up or whatever sin has entered your life. Addictions Right, and so you know talking to you know a qualified professional could help you work through that.
Speaker 2:That's what I thought too. I was hoping you'd say that. I think it's a great iteration of the both, and it's faith and reason together. It's humanity and spirituality together. These things are not in contradiction to each other. So work with a good therapist and also go visit a holy pilgrimage site, make a holy hour, pray a rosary.
Speaker 1:And just by the same token I would say this is what I was going to bring up was that just because you've received some remittance of the temporal punishment doesn't mean that you shouldn't go and make amends to someone that you've wronged.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, Right yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, that's sort of a cheap grace, right. You know it's like okay, I went and confessed my sins and now I'm good, but I'm not going to apologize to the person who I was wronged.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the grace that flows out of the sacramental life of the church is meant to heal not just the one receiving it. But when you go out, it's similar. At Mass, go and announce the gospel of the Lord. So the graces received are also to be shared as you make your way out in the world.
Speaker 1:Cool, and it gives you the grace to go and ask someone for their forgiveness on top of it.
Speaker 2:Then yeah, any other thoughts on the Jubilee? Anything else that we missed here?
Speaker 3:One other particular thing about indulgences is that they can be applied to the souls in purgatory. Oh, yeah, we forgot that they're not just for yourself, which is kind of cool yeah.
Speaker 2:And Mary. Although she's much more high culture than I am, she still likes low culture a little bit, and so do I, and so does Deacon Mike, and so I often will remember, like Elvis Presley or David Bowie. If there's a celebrity that dies, I'll often offer a mass for that person, because everyone else is like, oh, I miss them so much. Well, I do too, but I want them to go to the promised land, and so perhaps my prayers or an offering of an indulgence could help someone who's suffering. Of course, we do it for our family and friends too, but maybe those that are just thought of as celebrity or famous, but no one ever prays for them.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, that's good, do you have?
Speaker 2:anybody you pray for, mary or no? Have you ever prayed for a celebrity who died?
Speaker 3:I have. I mean, I like pray for who's uh mary or no? Have you ever prayed for a celebrity who died? I have. I mean, I like can't think of specifics, but yeah, I have this week I've been praying for jimmy carter oh yeah who died, who I've had had two experiences with.
Speaker 1:Actually I interviewed him for busted halo. I'll put the link inside in the show notes. It was an interesting interview that we did with him on one of his books on On the phone. We did it, oh good Still. Then, when I was a little kid, his wife came through Yonkers and I guess it was a campaign swing or something, and I met her and. I have a nice picture of me and Rosalyn together.
Speaker 2:I have a good friend from Georgia who went to his. She's actually in my book club and miss book club that night because she went to his wake. But as a proud georgia daughter, that was the right thing to do now we in here in ohio have eight dead presidents, I think I don't know yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh. Yeah, we're heavy-hearted here this week at the diocese hq with um. Our hr director, amir, and blakely passed this week, so we have her wake today and her funeral tomorrow, so maybe we'll do something for her this week.
Speaker 2:She was a very good and holy woman. She suffered in her own life and particularly with her cancer near the end, but she was the head of HR. The priests in the diocese loved her, which is rare that you find all the priests raving about someone who works downtown. But she was a good woman, who was smart and supportive and fun. I was telling Mary the other day that when Mary applied for her job, I was told that we normally don't hire right out of college because she was 22,. And Mary Ann says well, who do you want? And I said I want Mary Bonino because she's the best candidate for the job and she goes hire who you want. So anyway, go funeral mass tomorrow she hired me.
Speaker 1:She, you know she was on the team that hired me, her lynette uh sister, sister reed mary harwood and father rich samiti oh, really, we're the hiring team.
Speaker 2:Rich was in my youth group at the time well, not at the time, which is my youth group, when he was a teenager, but back in the day that's what you had to say, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's funny. So rest in peace, Marianne. Just a great person to get to know and be a colleague with.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so we'll pray for people and offer an indulgence for them. Actually, the Pope made the new rule also now that you can get two in one day, as long as you apply one to someone else.
Speaker 2:Yes, you could receive communion twice in a day, but I really like that. I think that's a great way to be generous and it's cool. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, that's great. So why don't we go to Lord's Shrine for our church search this week? And when was the last time you were there? I haven't been there in a while.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably Three months ago Now. I used to go there weekly because the seminary faculty, the priest faculty, staff them sacramentally. So they have mass there every day at 7 am it's 5.15, I think, or 5 o'clock on Tuesdays, and then they have two masses on Sundays, and in the summertime those masses are outdoors and so it's a big shrine. It's like a tribute to lords. In France they have the Stations of the Cross, they have pancake breakfasts. It's the Trinitarian sisters who run it, I think.
Speaker 3:Trinitarian sisters or Mercedarian sisters. No, I think they're Trinitarian.
Speaker 2:No Sisters of the Holy Trinity Salt, and it's right in the middle of Euclid, right off Euclid Avenue. Have you been there, mary, or no?
Speaker 3:I have not.
Speaker 2:Oh, you and Ben need to go on a.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what we should do? It's the perfect time. Because Mary likes the Latin Mass, we should host a Latin rosary at one of these shrines, because we're going to do one in Spanish, korean, vietnamese and English Probably Italian, so we should do that. That's an idea. Have you ever prayed the rosary in Latin?
Speaker 3:I do not know all the prayers in Latin, but I've there's only two.
Speaker 2:It's the.
Speaker 3:Our Father. Well, I mean, I don't know them in Latin. I'm just kidding Mysterious.
Speaker 2:I can read them. You know before. This is funny. When I was in Rome, before every papal mass they prayed the rosary in Latin, and part of it was to pray the rosary in Latin. The other part, I think, was also human, just to calm the crowd down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:But that was when I practiced my Latin, like before any canonization mass Interesting.
Speaker 3:The universal language of the church. It is yeah.
Speaker 2:I wish I was better at it, but anyway, we all have our gifts.
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Speaker 2:need proof. Briefcase Marketing gets great Google reviews. They've done superb work with our friends at Theology of the Body, cleveland, st John Cancius in Tremont. That website's so good and we'll put those samples out Now. Mary, you are the executive assistant for Parish Life. Have you ever come across a poorly designed parish website?
Speaker 3:I have. I won't name any names, but they are out there.
Speaker 2:Especially if you're younger, like the first place you go is not the church bulletin. You want to see the website and if it doesn't look good, you know, maybe you turn off to what they have there, even if the parish is good.
Speaker 1:So, mary, if someone calls and you say they have a bad website, now you could say hey, do me a favor, call Dan first have him look at your website.
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Speaker 1:Marketing. That's briefcasemarketing. We'll put all that in the show notes. Fix your website already. You're already behind. Let's take a look at the readings back in the OT.
Speaker 2:Hold on. I want to say something else about the Jubilee and briefcase marketing. It's the Jubilee year, it's a time for renewal. So if you've been saying, wow, maybe it's time to renew something, how about renewing your parish website? There you go. Perfect man, are we good at that? This is our first sponsor that we've had.
Speaker 1:So yeah, anyway, yeah, that'll be good. Good job, Jubilee, Mark it. Do it now All right back in the OT ordinary time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's nice to be in green again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it's not easy being green. It's none of my business. We're in the Gospel of John. This week, at the wedding feast to Cana, I'm preaching this weekend also, you are, I am well what are you going to do?
Speaker 2:what's your? What's your big?
Speaker 3:idea one of the things I?
Speaker 1:I have not planned this out just yet, but one of the things I thought I might talk about is at my own wedding, so I may have told this story before, but marion and I had wedding favors that were m&ms, because we're mike and marion and they're a lavender, because that were M&Ms, because we're Mike and Marion and they were lavender because that's her favorite color, and we made them ourselves.
Speaker 1:We put M&Ms in these little tool bags and we had one for every couple and we're going to put them all out on the table. And, because I'm somewhat organized, I brought all these things down, along with several other items for the wedding, to the restaurant we were having our reception at and they took our M&Ms and they put them into a cabinet down in the kitchen somewhere and they had a really humid day, and so the chocolate ended up getting overrun by ants, which ended up going all through the restaurant three days before our wedding, and so I know what it's like to have a disaster at a wedding, where you're like, okay, now what do we do with all of our guests and everything else and do we have to go somewhere else?
Speaker 1:And thankfully the restaurant did kind of fix everything. They went out and got different M&Ms for us and we had more M&Ms than we knew what to do with at that point. They fumigated the whole restaurant and it was fine and the day ended up being exactly as we had planned it to be and it was really wonderful.
Speaker 1:And people still kind of talk about our wedding. For some reason. It was like one of the family weddings that people continue to talk about. It was a really good time, and so my thought on that is you know, you have to care about the ordinary things sometimes, and that's what Jesus does here, is he cares about the ordinary things. Not exactly ants and the chocolate, but wine was a staple. You know, if you ran out of wine it was like running out of food, it was really bad.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also running out of wine and you're at a party and you want to be drinking and celebrating. Yeah, and so there's those guys like God cares about your ordinary things. Where will God be when your wine runs out?
Speaker 2:Yep, that's the idea Mary, any thoughts?
Speaker 3:Well, mary brings all of our needs to Jesus. That's what she does here at the wedding feast at Cana and that's what she does eternally for us in heaven. Yeah.
Speaker 2:In the bishop's new pastoral letter. There's a really beautiful prayer at the end of it and I think it alludes to this scripture passage of Cana. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:That's cool. So I have some friends who suggested that I should ask the Lord to put a word on my heart for the year, and I did at the beginning of the year and I was actually with Father Brian Stacy, who's a Capuchin, and I felt we were on our way to mass in Columbus, at St Thomas the Apostle Parish, and I felt like I had the word on my heart and I said, okay, lord, if this is the word you want when Stacey's preaching, father Brian Stacey, have him say this word one more time to confirm it. And three times in his homily he used the word ponder and Mary pondered these things in her heart. Now she pondered it earlier on, when she gave birth to Jesus and the shepherds came.
Speaker 2:But here I think there's maybe it's not, is it here? Did I just read it or did I not read it? But when these things happen she ponders them and so that's like my Marian spirituality is oh well, here we go again. So maybe the word isn't there, but I still like the notion that she reacts to things and then she has to kind of ponder what just happened in her heart. So something merry in that way, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you haven't seen the scene of this in the Chosen, it's actually a rather good one. It's excellent. Yeah, it's good. All right, so get your indulgences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then be able to explain them to other people too, because it's helpful, and I think when you take the time to think through it, that makes sense. It's just the word I think turns people off sometimes.
Speaker 1:And we don't sell these anymore. We should have said that at the top. That caused the Protestant Reformation. But they were always given freely. But some people decide to scandalize this and sell them.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times what happens in the church isn't the official teaching of the church that someone has done something who's part of the church, and then the whole church takes the blame for it too. So yeah, do your and Bergsmuth's book. I can't recommend it enough, especially that chapter on confession and indulgence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was very good. All right, so we'll see you all here next time here on Question Time.
