Indulgences

[anglomedved]

This notice caught my eye in the Beguinage church in Mechelen (30 km north of Brussels) the other week.

It describes the indulgences attached to certain prayers said at certain times in front of a Mission Cross. Mission Crosses used to be set up to record a mission preached in a parish, normally by a preaching order like the Redemptorist or Passionist fathers. The Redemptorists, whose mission in 1882 this notice records, had a reputation as hell-fire preachers, and drew large crowds in the days before radio, television and the cinema. Most of the crosses themselves were temporary affairs, and have long disappeared.

As a good Protestant boy fifty years ago, I was taught that indulgences were a bad Catholic invention, which Luther rightly condemned, leading to the Reformation.  

And while I may, as an Orthodox today, find purgatory and indulgences to be rather mechanical ways of putting across the need for serious purification in order to come into God's presence, and while they went out of fashion with Vatican II, one nevertheless senses an honest piety:

“Indulgence of three hundred days whenever piously and with a penitent heart, one prays five times Our Father, five times Hail Maries and five times Glory be, in honour of Christ's five wounds, in front of the Mission Cross”, or again:

"To enjoy a full indulgence one must first go to confession, take communion and visit the Mission Cross in a church or public chapel and pray there for the intentions of His Holiness (the Pope).”

Can one really argue with that?

Comments

[bizantinum.livejournal.com]

Как же можно с этим спорить? В православии и сейчас полно подобных поверий, например проползти под чудотворной иконой, что избавляет от грехов и исцеляет от болезни. Правда, эти заморочки не имеют благословения священноначалия...

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

The difference is that these practices were permitted by the church authorities. See the 'Publicari permittimus' (We allow to be published) at the bottom, followed by the list of all the bishops in Belgium.

For me, notices like this are memories of a whole Roman Catholic culture (not dissimilar to the 'Pravoslavia' which many Russian clergy are keen on), which has sunk, like Atlantis, under the waves, but continues to exist in the collective sub-consciousness, at least of my generation.

[bizantinum.livejournal.com]

I see

[mmekourdukova.livejournal.com]

Письменного благословения.
А неписаное благословение они ещё как имеют. Возможно, как раз потому - парадокс такой - они дольше держатся.

[bizantinum.livejournal.com]

А если их письменно запретить, они ещё дольше продержатся.

[olafr-yngvarson.livejournal.com]

May be indulgences are not so bad...
I consider the prayers for Mission help the Redemptorist and Passionist fathers. And indulgences are (however mechanical) way enforce some people to pray for Mission. In Ukraine (and Poland as I know) RC actively promotes the indulgences and do its best to be in old way. In Russian I'd say "В наших краях католическая церковь ещё та".

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

I was also surprised to see them in Italy last autumn. But I do not see them returning to Belgium in a hurry.... other than perhaps at in the Pius X raskol.