Dear Catholic Exchange:
Thank you for your fine article on the New Ecumenism. I agree completely with it!
I'm very glad to hear you say (and say it well) something that I have been “feeling” and thinking about a great deal. I'm Catholic (a returning Catholic, for that matter) and I feel myself drawn or maybe even called to the more traditional branch of the Church. I used to be a liberal years ago but that is also when I blocked faith matters out of my horizon. I was never *against* the Church; I just ignored it for years. Since finding my way back to Christ and the Church, I have started recognizing that evangelical Christians are not as crazy as they are usually portrayed in the media. Once I started really listening to them, reading their books and discovering their prayers and love of Scriptures, it put a whole new new spin on things and I began looking at them as my brothers and sisters in Christ. Next were the Orthodox. I met a wonderful Eastern Orthodox teacher at the San Francisco School of Pastoral Leadership and wound up taking all his classes and, consequently, gaining a whole new group of brothers and sisters there!
Around that time I got subscriptions to First Things and Touchstone, which greatly help me articulate my newfound ecumenism. And let me add one more religious group to the ones already mentioned: Orthodox Jews. As soon as it came out, I read the Vatican paper on “le peuple juif et les Saintes Ecritures”, which only brought more “water to my well”.
To be clear, I am definitively Catholic; this is my home and I am sure about this. So this ecumenism of mine is in no way a dilution of my own Catholicism. But Christ has been revealed to me, and suddenly I have a better sense for how to look at our Protestants and Jewish brethren. I believe I was given insights by the Holy Spirit to help me along the way. And the sources I mentioned above — plus now your article — are continuing in helping me along the way.
I am lately filled with a sense of truly walking in the same direction with all people of goodwill who recognize and accept the revelation of God. My openness to them and my love and respect for them is this new form of ecumenism you write about. It is very exciting. As a Roman Catholic, I sometimes find myself having more in common with an Evangelical Christian or an Orthodox Jew than with some liberal Catholics who are wavering and fuzzy about certain Commandments of God. Again, thanks again for your great article!
Michele Szekely
Greetings from Germany
Dear Catholic Exchange,
Greeting from Germany where our family is on a US Air Force Military assignment. We were so blessed to locate your advertisement in the Nat'l Cath. Register. Therefore, we now have our homepage and email with Catholic Exchange – thanks be to God! Please accept the simple check enclosed. Yes! your company is making a difference in this world. Thank You!
Braden Family
On Selling Indulgences
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I read Mark Shea's article on the Indulgences and misunderstanding about it. There he mentioned that the Council of Trent agreed with the guilt of the church on the selling of indulgences or simony. Did the Church actually sold indulgences as such? Is there any particular paragraph on the Council of Trent documents stating that? I'm a Catholic and about to translate a document about this issue. I will appreciate any input you have. I thank you in advance and in the meantime receive my best regards.
Pilar Romo
Dear Pilar,
Peace in Christ! The selling of indulgences is a fact of Renaissance Church history. As Mark Shea points out in the article to which you refer, the Church's theology of indulgences is correct, but practices at the time related to indulgences were not. In selling indulgences, churchmen were “trading” spiritual benefits for a temporal good, which is, also as Mark Shea noted, simony.
There are two key pronouncements concerning the selling of indulgences in the Council of Trent. Both condemn certain abuses and affirm the spiritual good of indulgences. The first is found in the twenty-first session, chapter 9 of the Decree on Reform. The Council declared:
Since many remedies heretofore applied by different councils, those of the Lateran and Lyons as well as that of Vienne, against the pernicious abuses of questors of alms, have in later times become useless, and since their depravity is, to the great scandal and complaint of the faithful, found to be daily so much on the increase that there seems to be no longer any hope of their amendment left, it is decreed that in all parts of Christendom their name and service be henceforth absolutely abolished and in no wise shall they be permitted to exercise such an office; any privileges granted to churches, monasteries, hospitals, pious places, and to any persons of whatever rank, state and dignity, or any customs, even though immemorial, notwithstanding. With regard to indulgences or other spiritual graces of which the faithful of Christ ought not on this account to be deprived, it is decreed that they are in the future to be announced to the people at suitable times by the local ordinaries aided by two members of the chapter. To these also the authority is given to collect faithfully and without fee the alms and charitable contributions offered them, so that all may understand that these heavenly treasures of the Church are administered not for gain but for piety (footnotes omitted).
This section of Trent acknowledges that the faithful often gained indulgences via the “questors of alms.” The “depravity” of the practice had grown so great that, rather than attempt to correct the abuses of the questors, the Church abolished the work of questors completely. This being so, this section of Trent made clear that the benefits available to the faithful through indulgences should not be denied them and that they should understand the heart of the Church in granting indulgences is not for the Church's financial gain, but for the increase of a holy life.
The Decree Concerning Indulgences was given in the twenty-fifth session, chapter 21:
Since the power of granting indulgences was conferred by Christ on the Church, and she has even in the earliest times made use of that power divinely given to her, the holy council teaches and commands that the use of indulgences, most salutary to the Christian people and approved by the authority of the holy councils, is to be retained in the Church, and it condemns with anathema those who assert that they are useless or deny that there is in the Church the power of granting them. In granting them, however, it desires that in accordance with the ancient and approved custom in the Church moderation be observed, lest by too great facility ecclesiastical discipline be weakened. But desiring that the abuses which have become connected with them, and by reason of which this excellent name of indulgences is blasphemed by the heretics, be amended and corrected it ordains in a general way by the present decree that all evil traffic in them, which has been a most prolific source of abuses among the Christian people, be absolutely abolished. Other abuses, however, of this kind which have sprung from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or from whatever other source, since by reason of the manifold corruptions in places and provinces where they are committed, they cannot conveniently be prohibited individually, it commands all bishops diligently to make note of, each in his own church, and report them in the next provincial synod, so that after having been examined by the other bishops also they may forthwith be referred to the supreme Roman pontiff, by whose authority and prudence that may be ordained which is expedient for the universal Church; that thus the gift of holy indulgences may be dispensed to all the faithful piously, holily and without corruption (footnotes omitted).
Trent here insists equally on the truth concerning indulgences and the need to do away with all abuses of whatever kind.
I hope this provides the information you need. If you have further questions about this or any other subject, or would like more information about Catholics United For The Faith, please contact us at 1-800-MYFAITH (800-693-2484). May God bless your day.
United in the Faith,
David E. Utsler
Information Specialist
Catholics United for the Faith
827 North Fourth Street
Steubenville, OH 43952
800-MY-FAITH (800-693-2484)
Editor's Note: To contact Catholic Exchange, please refer to our Contact Us page.
Please note that all email submitted to Catholic Exchange or its authors (regarding articles published at CE) become the property of Catholic Exchange and may be published in this space. Published letters may be edited for length and clarity. Names and cities of letter writers may also be published. Email addresses of viewers will not normally be published.
