Indulgences still exist, and you can still purchase them in the sense that you can make a donation to a priest to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for a specific intention (like the remittance of a portion of the temporal punishment for the sins of a friend or loved one), and the offering of the sacrifice has indulgences associated with it in addition.
This is not the only way to gain indulgences. There are many ways to gain them. Praying for the souls of the faithful departed on All Souls Day (in combination with the usual conditions, i.e. a) being in a state of grace, b) having the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin, c) having sacramentally confessed their sins, d) receiving the Holy Eucharist, and e) pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) on November 2nd allows for one to obtain a plenary indulgence (which remit ALL temporal punishment) either for oneself or for a person of your choosing.
the companionship you feel with the others on the journey with you, the feeling of losing yourself in something much bigger than you, the structured life with a clear definition of The Good (do these is this order to achieve digital/eternal reward)...this analogy works.
Source? If you do it with a mortal sin I can understand it would be a second mortal sin. But it seems harsh to make a venial sin into a mortal sin from this.
I'm hesitant to say it's always a mortal sin, because it seems like it can happen in a lighthearted manner. For example if someone struggles with gluttony, that person might think "I know I shouldn't have a 2nd hamburger, but I'm weak and it would taste so good, I'll have it now and go to confession later". That doesn't seem like mortal sin territory to me.
Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.
For a sin that has already been forgiven, an indulgence is associated payment you owe that if you didn't pay, you will spend more time in purgatory.
If this is an accurate reading, does it not dilute the meaning of "forgiven"? Does it not amount to a money-making racket at best, or, more probably, extortion?
The vast vast vast majority of indulgences have no money aspect at all. See the list of plenary (meaning all temporal punishment is removed) indulgences on Wikipedia[1], none of them involve money.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
“ Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer's salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory. “
One might associate it with helping move an individual from a smaller circle to a larger circle of ethics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanding_Circle
“ Singer discusses the relationship between biological capacity for altruism and morality. He argues that altruism, when directed to one's small circle of family, tribe or even nation, is not moral, but it becomes so when applied to wider circles. “
E.g. charity where you sacrifice your individual goods for the larger community is good for the soul.
They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology:
What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell?
Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, guarantee a spot in heaven for their loved one. It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Are you saying it's true that indulgences can be obtained for others or that it's false that indulgences can be obtained for others?
In reality indulgences can be obtained for yourself, or for others, including those in Purgatory. They can't be obtained for people in Hell.
>It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Indulgences are not strictly monetary. The vast majority involve no money at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
Would be interesting if there were a climate change coin...
oh wait, https://earth-token.com/
:-(
Example 1: In countries that had little formal legal structures and rudimentary identification (e.g. India in the early 1800s), it was incredibly easy to be a criminal and just move from town to town while acquiring new identities. In other words, there was a huge upside to becoming a career criminal since it was both difficult to catch you (no forensic evidence) and even if you were caught, you could just reboot your life.
Example 2: He mentions a case where a gentleman was charged TWICE for crimes that were later found to have been committed by someone else who had only a passing resemblance.
I read this book before Twitter/Facebook became ubiquitous and every like, share, comment was public knowledge but even at the time, it was mind boggling how different "identity" was back then.
If you plead the 'benefit of the clergy', you were branded, so you didn't do it again.
I was watching a show on TV last night where they were minutely examining a newly discovered photo of Lincoln to see if it was really Lincoln or someone else. One analyst gave it an "85% probability it was Lincoln".
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/thailand-charges-agai...
(However, if you look at the incentives and deterrence, inflicting inefficient punishment like sending someone to prison for a long time, might still make sense.)
So there's a trade-off between handing out more of that punishment in fines to be paid to the victim or in economically inefficient activities like prison time.
As a related matter, I think corporal punishment deserves more consideration. Mostly because it's cheaper to administer than prison, and also avoids forcible socializing convicts only with each other as happens in prison.
(Of course, it's a punishment with a certain cruelty. Alas violence and injury are a common enough sight in overcrowded prisons, too.)
But restitution isn't punishment. Restitution helps reduce harm to the victim, and is a separate issue entirely to punishment.
I was more worried about issues like deterrence and restitution.
Punishment and deterrence are somewhat related, but not the same.
Justice isn't always about providing benefit to those harmed. It's also about providing a framework in which crime is avoided by all because they know there are repercussions they can't avoid.
When the expectation is that you're rich and you can get away with killing someone either through paying someone to take the fall or bribery, then that will happen more often. If the expectation is that everyone is equal under the law, that will happen less.
The US isn't perfect in this regard, but I think it's a lot better than what's being described here. If Ivanka Trump drove recklessly and killed someone, it would be a lot harder for it to play out the same way here. That's not to say she would necessarily face justice, just that it's a lot harder to get out of it, so there wouldn't necessarily be an expectation that it will go away. There's a huge difference in expecting to get away with something and knowing it's uncertain when the consequences are years in prison.
O.J. Simpson famously got off with 'not guilty' in the murder case, but lost the civil suit.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death_claim and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case#Civi...
This is somewhat inaccurate; while it is true that criminal cases can only be brought by the State, civil cases can be brought by the State or private parties.
I just realized that in Oct 28th, 2020. Thanks for that.
The origin of the phrase is in the classical detective story trope.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, itself doesn't derive from household staff taking the fall for their employers, but from them being omnipresent but, by strong social custom, ignored.
The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope).
It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.
Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.