The Catholic Church has been making a fair bit of news the past few weeks. On February 9, the New York Times reported that the Church is renewing the availability of limited and plenary indulgences for the first time since the Second Vatican Council. I won't try to give an exhaustive definition of "indulgences," but they apparently can shorten a believer's stay in purgatory, and played an important role in European history, as the impetus for Martin Luther's exodus from the church. Earlier, Newsweek reported that the Pope was making conciliatory motions towards a group of rogue bishops who formed the Lefebvrist schismatic sect in protest of the reforms introduced after Vatican II.
In isolation, these stories might interest me, but together I wonder do they constitute a trend under Pope Benedict XVI of backtracking on the Vatican II reforms.
Most famously, Vatican II got rid of the Latin mass. As a non-Catholic (and so from the outside looking in), it always seemed to me that this must have been a signifcant loss. Looking back at my own religious upbringing, I feel like I sort of missed out on the sort of ritualism and the incantatory effect that something like the Latin mass must have elicited. Right or wrong, I've always somewhat suspected that I would feel more religious if the clergy didn't expect me to be able to affirm that what they were saying made any sense.
I won't go any further down that particular rabbithole though for three reasons: (1) I'm not Catholic, so if I continue I'm bound to start sounding insipid and insulting, (2) ritualism comes with its own set of liabilities, just as an absence of ritualism does, and (3) it turns out that the end of the Latin mass was only the most visible, and by no means the most important, result of Vatican II.
The Newsweek article (which I cannot recommend highly enough) reports that Vatican II was the first time that the Church had recognized that "the human person has a right to religious freedom," and that it was this doctrine that incited Archbishop Lefebvre to split from the Church. To me this fact is shocking.
Sean, I wonder are the changes accompanying the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI being talked about locally, and how people feel about them. Are people even aware of the renewed availability of indulgences? NYT was reporting that it varied by diocese whether the priests were publicizing them or not. If people are aware of them, how do they feel about them? And how do people feel about conciliatory gestures towards the Lefebvrists? On the one hand, yeah, maybe schisms ought to be healed as a matter of course, but on the other, is the recognition of religious freedom negotiable?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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Honestly, I hadn't heard about any of this, and I have no word on what other people think.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know though, indulgences haven't fully left the church in a sense. There are still prayers to reduce or eliminate purgatory time. It's been fairly common in my experiences to pray such prayers for recently deceased persons. As the article stated, there's still no selling, so I wouldn't think anybody would be too up in arms.
As for the Lefebvrists, I don't think the lifting of the excommunications implies at all that the Catholic Church will concede anything.
I probably don't understand enough of this to offer up a meaningful distinction, but it seems like there's a big difference between offering a prayer for a shortened stay in purgatory (which is a request) and receiving an indulgence (which appears to be more in the nature of a guarantee). You're certainly right though that the bigger problem with indulgences was their sale rather than their bare existence.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should phrase my befuddlement this way: the sale of indulgences had been banned in 1567, but they remained available on other bases until Vatican II. There must have been some reason why it was decided that indulgences should be heavily deemphasized starting in the 1960s, and there must be some countervailing reason why those old arguments are no longer holding sway. I just wonder what the reasons might have been.