You're going to make me pull out JRS and start transcribing EMJ's section on the Hussite rebellion, aren't you?
Hus was a Proto-Protestant Revolutionary, the first true Judaizing movement in Europe, and first example EMJ cites of the devastating consequences of taking Scripture out of the Church.
...John Wycliffe, a professor of heretical leanings...became the pride of Oxford University when he was appointed Doctor there in 1371....By 1390 Bohemian students were studying at Oxford, and Wycliffe's philosophical works were being copied and discussed in Prague. John Huss was one of the scribes.
Wycliffe's ecclesiology made dangerous inroads into the mind of John Huss. Wycliffe does not distinguish between Church and State. He uses "Regnum," "ecclesia" and "respublica" interchangeably. Huss soon talked about the "regnum" or realm as a salvationary community....The idea of the realm as a salvationary community enabled an ethnic group to approprate models from the Old Testament and define itself as a "holy nation," whose purpose was spreading heaven on earth by the sword, which became the essence of the revolutionary ideology.
...Huss's appropriation of Wycliffe's conflation of regnum and ecclesia "encouraged others to revolt." Rome became the Antichrist, and Huss's followers longed for "that blessed hour when the Whore of Revelation will be stripped bare and her flesh consumed by the fire of tribulation," as Nicholas of Dresden, one of Huss's followers, put it.
...The confluence of Wycliffe's heretical ideas and nascent Czech nationalism spawned a powerful political movement, which immediately became the vehicle for messianic politics. Huss's followers were soon carrying the Conflation of ecclesia and respublica to its logical conclusion. Jerome of Prague, who would follow his master to the stake, called Bohemia "a holy nation" in his sermons and claimed the "Law of God" could be identified with "the national community loyal to King Wenceslaw, the realm of Bohemia." John of Jesenice took the idea a step further ideologically and a step backward toward its Jewish source when he claimed the Bohemians' relationship to King Wenceslas was comparable to Israel's relationship to God, a comparison that encouraged the King's appropriation of the Church's worldly goods. As later in England, the appeal to Scripture, to the example of the Primitive Church, and to Israel provided intellectual cover for revolution among the masses and justification for the freed of the princes.
...Huss took his heretical doctrines and used them as a springboard to revolution by invoking the Old Testament. "Will you stand with me?" Huss asked the congregation at Bethehem Chapel [in Bohemia] after his excommunication became public. When the people responded affirmatively in Bohemian, "We will and we do," Huss knew where to take them next. "The time has come for us," he said to the eager congregation, "just as it did for Moses in the Old Testament, to take up our swords and defend the law of God."
You should have pinged .
Why don't you defend indulgences too, while you're at it?
Do you even care? Must I run through every apologetic response to every anti-Catholic talking point, just for the sake of it?
Purgatory exists. It exists to purify those in need of purification before entering heaven. Obviously, the fewer impurities we permit within us prior to death, the less purification is required in Purgatory.
Not everyone is going to actively pursue sainthood in this life, bolstering the supernatural virtues and taking meaningful action to remove the impurities within them at the source.
Small and minor acts of charity and piety, at least, can serve to remove some small amounts of time required to purify the impurities in Purgatory.
The Church has been given authority in heaven and on earth by God to "bind and loose" ().
So the Church has the authority to declare, at different times and under different circumstances, that certain acts will serve to remove certain amounts of time one would spend in Purgatory, by virtue of the charity and piety of the act. So the Church can declare that "praying five decades of the Rosary during this liturgical year will remit 5 days in Purgatory", and thus someone who prays the Rosary every day of that year will be spared 1,825 days in Purgatory.
If the Church or territories sympathetic to the Church are being threatened by Muslim hordes, then the Church can declare that "a tithe made of this amount or more will remit one year in Purgatory", so that the Church can use those funds to raise a defensive army and protect Her interests. Insofar as the Church's interests are heavenly interests, this kind of action is licit. Given that the Church is true, Her temporal strength and safety is no insignificant matter, and so in times of needs awarding indulgences for such financial support is not at all unreasonable, given that She has the authority to do so.
Men like Luther and those who followed him misunderstood (intentionally or through incredible error) the doctrine on indulgences, and accused to Church of "selling salvation". This is not even remotely the case; the Church is not selling access to Purgatory or heaven, but specifying acts of charity and piety that can reduce the time a soul spends in Purgatory, given that they were able to enter Purgatory in the first place. The salvation of any given soul is entirely independent of whether or not they have received indulgences.
Do you even care?
No.
Must I run through every apologetic response to every anti-Catholic talking point, just for the sake of it?
Maybe for .
certain acts will serve to remove certain amounts of time one would spend in Purgatory
My understanding was that beef with indulgences was that people would buy them on behalf of OTHERS, like a mother who lost her son buying indulgences FOR HIM! This seems like exploitation of love, whereas buying indulgences for oneself merely seems like an exploitation of fear.
(post is archived)