Can you please explain temporal punishment for our sins? I think too many Catholics confuse “forgiveness” for “forgotten.” I think that people feel they only need to be concerned about any wrongdoing since their last confession and forget about the “attachment to sin” that is still on their souls. Our world would be a better place if everyone understood that they will be held accountable for every wrong. On that note, can you explain, how through indulgences, we can clean our soul from this attachment to sin?

Steven in Godfrey

It is understandable that the phrase “temporal punishment due to sin” can be confusing because the word “temporal” isn’t very common in the English language. “Temporal” comes from the Latin word tempus which means “time.” Usually when people think about punishment for sins, they think about eternal punishment which is outside of time, and we refer to this as hell. While hell certainly is the eternal punishment reserved for unforgiven, mortal sins, it must also be remembered that all sins, even venial sins, have suffering as a consequence. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the ‘temporal punishment’ of sin.” (1472). Put another way, the consequences we suffer from every sin involve preferring creation over the Creator, disrupting our relationship with God and with one another, and creating an attachment to sin. 

Perhaps the following scenario can help you with these concepts in a more concrete way. Let’s imagine you stole $100 from your best friend and spent it all. Naturally, you feel guilty for doing this, so you go to your friend and confess to the theft. Your best friend loves you and cares deeply about your friendship, so he forgives you. It’s great that your relationship has been healed, but you still owe $100 to your friend. 

The sacrament of confession is like this hypothetical situation. When we go to confession, we admit to God, who is our best friend, that we have done things to damage our relationship with Him. Because He loves us and desires friendship with us more than anything else, He gladly forgives us if we’re sorry. The relationship with God has been healed and our guilt has been forgiven. However, our sins have caused damage which must be repaired. Just like you would need to return the $100 you stole from your friend to fully make things right, so too we must do penance for our sins so we can truly understand how destructive they are, detach ourselves from them, and firmly resolve to not commit them again in the future. 

This can also partly explain why people often feel discouraged when they find themselves confessing the same sins over and over again. Sometimes this is the result of addiction, in which case mental health professionals should be contacted as well as a priest to address both the psychological and spiritual dimensions of such situations. In other cases, this discouragement is the result of feeling like you can’t break out of the cycle of sin. You commit sin, you go to confession, and then sooner or later, you commit the same sin again, so you go to confession again. 

A common but incorrect belief is that the sacrament of confession not only forgives the guilt of sins (the eternal punishment due to sin), but that it also perfectly makes up for all the consequences suffered by us or others in this life (the temporal punishment). In reality, the sacrament of confession truly does remove the guilt of sin and restores us to graced friendship with God, but the temporal punishment, including a certain attachment to sin, still remains. Why is this so? By allowing us to endure the painful consequences of our sins, God gives us the chance to do penance, learn from our mistakes, and unite our sufferings to the Passion of Christ. While this can be difficult, it also draws us closer to God so that in His own providential and mysterious way, He actually transforms our sins into opportunities to grow in holiness. So, if you’re feeling discouraged because you find yourself confessing the same sins over and over again, don’t lose hope. By growing in spiritual discipline through continued acts of penance and by relying above all on God’s grace, detachment from sin and increasing in sanctity are certainly possible!

Closely related to the Church’s teaching on temporal punishment is her teaching on indulgences. The Catechism defines an indulgence as “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven” (1471). In other words, indulgences either lessen or completely remove the suffering due to sins that have been confessed and absolved in the sacrament of confession, but they do not forgive sins themselves. Indulgences are a great gift of God’s mercy which He has entrusted to His Church to distribute. They can be applied to ourselves in this life, or we can obtain them for the holy souls in Purgatory, lessening the length of their purification and helping them on their way to Heaven. Indulgences are said to be either “plenary” or “partial.” A plenary indulgence totally removes all temporal punishment due to sin while partial indulgences remove only some of the punishment our sins deserve. 

During this Jubilee Year of Hope, established by Pope Francis, here are also several ways you can receive a plenary indulgence:

•  Making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for Mass or prayer or adoration.

•  Spendingtime with those in need such as the sick, prisoners, lonely elderly, the disabled — “making a pilgrimage to Christ present in them.”

•  In a spirit of penance, offering up “futile distractions” (real or online) and “superfluous consumption” (through fasting, abstinence or almsgiving) for at least one day.

•  Support defending life efforts at all stages or helping abandoned children, struggling youth, the needy, lonely elderly or migrants. Doing acts of community service.

Other ways you can receive an indulgence that are not tied to the Jubilee Year of Hope are:

• Visiting the Blessed Sacrament for adoration for 30 minutes.
• Devoutly participating in a Eucharist procession, especially on feast day of Corpus Christi (June 19 but transferred to June 22 in this and some other dioceses).
• Spending three entire days in retreat.
• Devoutly reciting five decades of the Rosary in a church or with your family members or any other group of people.
• Reverently and prayerfully reading the Bible for 30 minutes as a means of spiritual reading.
• Praying the Stations of the Cross in a church on Fridays.

When doing these acts, you must also be detached from sin (even venial). So, this means going to confession. You must also receive the holy Eucharist and pray for the pope’s intentions (e.g., an Our Father and Hail Mary). These acts do not all have to be on the same day. You can receive one plenary indulgence each day.

While an indulgence grants the remission of temporal punishment due to sin, it is important to remember that the Church offers indulgences to encourage us to perform pious activities that help us grow in faith, hope, and love.

If you really want to dive deep into indulgences, I recommend you read Indulgentiarum Doctrina by Pope St. Paul VI which can be found online in English.

• Beginning July 1, Father Troy Niemerg will be parochial vicar of St. Agnes Parish and will also be a theology teacher at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School, both in Springfield. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) in systemic theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.