Question

Prior to the Reformation, the Catholic Church began a practice of selling indulgences. What were indulgences?

A. Churchgoers were required to attend church two days per week in order to get into heaven.
B.If money was paid to the church, one's sins would be pardoned and their time in purgatory would be reduced.
C.People could eat meat on Fridays if they paid money to the Church.
D.There was no such practice of selling indulgences.

Answer 1

A

Answer 2

B. Martin Luther split away from the church because of this. He believed that Money had nothing to do with the salvation of a person.

Answer 3

b

Answer 4

B, but it's poorly stated. It's not that by merely donating money to the Church that your sins would be forgiven. The idea is this: prayer by those left behind can reduce the time a soul spends in purgatory. That is, if a man's children and widow pray for his soul, that can reduce the time he spends in purgatory. Furthermore, even the prayers of strangers can help. Finally, the prayers of unusually virtuous people -- saints, say, or priests and bishops, even the Pope himself -- can help even more than the prayer of regular people.

So the idea is, while your family ought to pray for your soul just out of love (and because you've been a good father, mother, brother, et cetera), strangers can be induced to pray for you if you do them some good while you are alive.

For example, if you build a bridge, and let people cross it for free, you can put a little plaque on it saying you built it, and asking people who cross it to pray for your soul. If they do, it will help (goes the theological theory).

But where to build the bridge? There are so many places that need bridges. Where is the need greatest, and hence your heavenly rward for doing so greatest? Well, the person to ask about that would be -- the Church, of course. Because the Church keeps track of just those things, where a bridge is most needed, and would most people people out. (You can ask government, but the idea here is to do what's best for the souls of others, not necessarily their body. You don't want to be told to put a bridge where it will do the most commercial good, but rather where it will, say, allow poor families to honor their dead, or lepers to get clean water.)

By and by, it becomes a streamlined transaction. You just give the money for a bridge, or whatever most needs doing, to the Church, and in return the Church promises to spend the money wisely, for the good of all Christian souls, and in exchange the Pope, biships, priests, and congregations affected by your generosity will all pray for your soul, and you'll spend less time in purgatory.

That's the idea. Martin Luther, of course, mocked this, and said it was all just a giant scam to get money for the church, and that the prayers of NOBODY were going to get you out of purgatory or even Hell, because that was determined entirely by God's grace and your essential nature. Didn't matter how many bishops prayed for you, or even whether your own mother did. Either you were a good man, and God liked you, or you were doomed, end of story.