Come On, Come All! Lessen Your Time In Purgatory!

In case you didn’t read the story associated with yesterday’s Catholic vs. Protestant poll on Philly.com, here’s the 411: The Vatican has approved a plenary indulgence available to all Philadelphia Catholics in honor of the Archdiocese’s 200th anniversary. While the church used to sell indulgences, now it simply makes people jump through hoops to get them: For the Philly indulgence, one must make a pilgrimage to a shrine (take the El to Girard, it’s just a few blocks to where St. John Neumann is buried), receive the sacraments of penance and communion and pray for whatever the Pope wants you to.

The Catholic church gets a little angry when somebody brings up the point indulgences were never mentioned by Jesus, except in the apocryphal Sermon on the Mount of Gold Doubloons.¹ even going so far as to say for about 400 years that anyone who disagreed with indulgences was going to hell. (Really.) Lots of people, though, believe indulgences are a free path to heaven, which they’re not. Geeze, you idiots: Indulgences simply lessen one’s time in purgatory.² (Wikipedia hilariously summarizes: “God has mercy upon sinners who repent their sins, but like some parents, His justice still requires that the sinner be punished for the wrongdoing.”)

You also have to be actually sorry for masturbating³ to get the indulgences, so tough luck, everyone.

¹ I may have made this up.

² I’m already in the clear here, since I wore a scapular for nine weeks a while back, and as such the Blessed Mother is going to bail me out of purgatory on the first Saturday after my death.

³ Or for using a condom with your AIDS-stricken husband.

Spiritual gift for Catholics in Phila. [Inquirer]