To treat with excessive leniency, generosity, or consideration

I was not particularly indulgent with the Catholic Church and Pope Inquisitor, when I last discussed plenary indulgences on here. (Quoting Hitchens doesn’t count.)

I see that the indulgences are newsworthy again, with some discussion this week of a piece in the Times. I’m mostly amused that part of the point of the piece is that most Catholics apparently don’t know, or don’t understand what the indulgences are. How hard is it to explain that if you sin, you need to get forgiven (confession), but you still need to “do the time” for your sin by hanging out for some period of time in Purgatory, and that the indulgences can carve off some or all of that penalty box time?

Apparently pretty complicated, since the Church apparently has a manual on the subject, and a FAQ. Or, as the article says:

The indulgence is among the less noticed and less disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.

I am kind of tempted to buy the manual, just to do a line-by-line comedy deconstruction.

I was also amused by John Crowley’s description of the time he was granted one:

The Vatican ambassador to the US, the Apostolic Nuncio, visited the University of Notre Dame across the road from my high school, and the Nuncio came to address my school in an assembly (boys on one side, girls on the other). He brought with him, whether as spiritual power or in the form of some physical juju I don’t know, the ability or right to give Papal Plenary Indulgences. I don’t remember at all what he said, but at the end, after we had taken a moment to prepare ourselves spiritually, he dispensed or provided it to us. Thus was wiped away every sin committed in our lives, and also every nasty trace of forgiven sins still darkening our souls and meriting us an unspecified stay in Purgatory (just as Dad forgives your trespasses but you still get the spanking). I immediately negated this advantage by returning to those indulgences (other sense) that at 15 I was prone to.

This kind of foolishness seems to be making me less angry this time around, and more amused. It’s like Ratzinger has chosen to grow the flock by emphasizing the mysterious, mystical aspects of the religion. Costumes, dead languages, pomp, ceremony, mysticism, etc. Making it a show puts bums in seats, apparently.

But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

Me, I say, why not push harder to get people in. Coupons are good for that, I hear.