Plenary Indulgences

From Amy Hal @http://str.typepad.com

Offered by the Catholic Church:

[St. Patrick Cathedral] is offering its 240,000 followers in central Pennsylvania a plenary indulgence that might reduce the time their souls spend in purgatory to be cleansed of their sins.

The Catholic Church teaches that souls of those who have died in grace must expiate their sins in purgatory before ascending to heaven. Those who receive a plenary indulgence have all temporal punishment for sin removed up to that point in their lives.

To earn a plenary indulgence, followers must visit St. Patrick Cathedral, the mother church of the Harrisburg Diocese. They also must repent their sins, take Communion, go to confession and pray for the pope's intentions on the day they visit or within several days of visiting the cathedral.

The Vatican's Apostolic Penitentiary, the office that oversees the granting of indulgences, approved the offer to mark the cathedral's 100th anniversary. The offer began March 17 and will end next March 17 -- St. Patrick's Day.

An online Catholic Encyclopedia says that an indulgence "releases the penitent...from the temporal punishment which he has incurred in the sight of God and which, without the indulgence, he would have to undergo in order to satisfy Divine justice."

And this article explains, "The Catholic Church teaches that people who have received absolution for their sins from a priest may, through an indulgence, draw on the 'treasury of merit' accumulated by Jesus, Mary and the saints to lessen or eliminate the punishment owed to God."

The view seems to be that we must satisfy justice by paying for and being purged of the unrighteousness of our sins, even after being forgiven by God. But here's what I don't understand: If a person were to receive a plenary indulgence and then immediately die, he wouldn't have to go to purgatory. Therefore, purgatory isn't really necessary--that is, even in the Catholic view, it's possible to escape purgatory based on payments made through the merits of another. So if Christ has already completely satisfied divine justice, sanctified and perfected us (once, for all time), purified and redeemed us "from every lawless deed," and cleansed us from all unrighteousness and sin through His blood, what is it the merits of the saints can do that Christ has not already done?

And if Christ's work is sufficient to satisfy all justice (as Catholics would agree, for plenary indulgences are not possible unless the treasury of the saints' and Christ's merit is sufficient to satisfy all justice), why would the Church withhold Christ's perfect merit from His people and only grant its application occasionally during events like a church's 100th anniversary celebration?

Canterbury and Rome to Merge?

Ruth Gledhill of The Times [London] is out with a bombshell in this morning's edition of the paper. If the report had been published in a paper less respected than The Times, we might have reason to doubt it. Gledhill reports that "senior bishops" of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are ready to support a proposal for union under the Pope.

THE CHURCH OF ROME SPAWNED THE CURRENT APOSTASY

From Apprising Ministries @ http://www.apprising.org

In the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (NA), “Declaration On The Relation Of The Church To Non-Christian Religions,” from the apostate Church of Rome we can trace the very roots of The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD) of new evangelicalism. And this document also spawned the current apostasy. For you see it was NA that would open the door for Trappist monk Thomas Merton, one of contemplative spirituality’s prized Buddhas, as well as others to openly pursue their interspiritual dialogues.

these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces.(Ezekiel 14:3).

Interspiritual Compromise In Christ’s Name

In part Nostra Aetate reads: “1. In our time, [1965] day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely he (sic) relationship to non- Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.” Obviously those of us who are Christians should immediately recognize this is not the actual “task” of the Body of Christ. Our Lord told us to be a people set apart from the world unto Him to preach His Gospel and to make disciples (see–Matthew 28:18-20). And while we are certainly not opposed to “unity and love,” we can hardly expect this from the pagan world around us.

Leaving all that aside the Roman Catholic Church, which Dr. John MacArthur correctly labels the Devil’s best counterfeit of Christianity, opened the door for her apostate monks like Thomas Merton, the late Spiritual Master M. Basil Pennington, and Living Spiritual Teacher Brother David Stendl-Rast to begin their ecumenical quest to bring all religions together under Rome through Contemplative/Centering Prayer (i.e. transcendental meditation). It is this so-called “Christian” mysticism that has ultimately become the spiritual methane for the rapidly accelerating apostasy of new evangelicalism so rapidly being spread by the growing Gnostic cult of the Emergent Church.

Peas In A Corrupt Spiritual Pod

The two misguided mystics in the above-mentioned trio of friends who are no longer with us, Merton and Pennington, have become highly recommended sources for contemplative spirituality e.g. by Living Spiritual teacher Richard Foster and Emergent theologian Tony Jones. For more on Thomas Merton's own affinity for Buddhism and Sufism please see Thomas Merton And Mystic Apostasy. And just look at what Merton's friend and meditation mate Basil Pennington himself has written about the true goal of Contemplative/Centering Prayer:

In the course of the years, sitting in silent prayer, beyond where words can interfere, men and women of many diverse traditions have come together. In that deeper place a oneness is experienced that gives assurance and heart to our feeble ecumenical efforts and interreligious dialogues. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has said that if one percent of the people would meditate we will have peace. Jesus spoke of the leaven that will leaven the whole (Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer, p.10,11).

And why were men like Merton and Pennington, who flagrantly engaged in the practice of Gnostic mysticism, which ended in their denial of the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not expelled from the Roman Catholic Church? Because the apostate Church of Rome is itself as heretical as these ministers of hers were:

3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion.

Men and women, look at the horrid blasphemy we have just read! Are we really to believe that the “true” Church of our great God and Savior would regard “with esteem a godless religion that clearly teaches that Jesus is not God? Not only that but the false religion of Islam says that their own Muhammad is an even a grater prophet than Christ! And you should also know that it is impossible to “adore the one God” and not acknowledge “Jesus as God.” As it is written: every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world (1 John 4:3).

May God help us if the Body of Christ continues this despicable pilgrimage back into the bondage of the long apostate Roman Catholic Church now being led by new evangelical leaders within her daughter the ECoD through their contemplative mysticism.


See also:

EMERGENT INTERFAITH COMPROMISE

THE CORRUPT FRUIT OF ECUMENICISM