Facts of Faith

The Pope’s Spiritual Bank

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that a person can by his good works and penances, pay off his own debt, and have some to spare. These extra good works form a Spiritual Bank from which the pope can draw for the benefit of those who lack, as the following quotations show. Dr. M. J. Scott says: FAFA 163.2

“A sinner has it in his own power to merit forgiveness and mercy while he lives.” — “Things Catholics Are Asked About,” p. 148. FAFA 163.3

Rev. J. Procter writes: FAFA 163.4

“Some holy ones of God more than satisfy the debt of temporal punishment which they owe to the Eternal Father.... All these ‘satisfactions,’ these merits, these uncalled-for penances, are not lost, nor are they useless and in vain. They form a spiritual treasure-house, a ‘bank’ we have called it, upon which the Church can draw for the benefit of her needy children.” — “Indulgences” (Roman Catholic), p. 9. London: Catholic Truth Society. FAFA 163.5

Canon Law says: “To the Roman Pontiff is committed by Christ the entire spiritual treasury of the Church, wherefore only the Pope and those to whom he has given participation in the power by law, have the ordinary power to grant indulgences. (Canon 912).” — “The New Canon Law,” Rev. S. Woywod, O. F. M., pp. 143, 144. New York: 1918. FAFA 164.1

The Catholic Encyclopedia testifies: FAFA 164.2

“According to Catholic doctrine, therefore, the source of indulgences is constituted by the merits of Christ and the saints. This treasury is left to the keeping, not of the individual Christian, but of the Church. FAFA 164.3

“This treasure He ... entrusted to Blessed Peter, the keybearer, and his successors.” — Vol. VII, pp. 785, 784. FAFA 164.4

“By a plenary indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in purgatory. A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the penalty. FAFA 164.5

“An indulgence is valid both in the tribunal of the Church and in the tribunal of God.” — 1d., p. 788. FAFA 164.6

“When the church, therefore, by an indulgence, remits this penalty, her action, according to the declaration of Christ, is ratified in heaven.” — Id., p. 785. FAFA 164.7

“Here, as in many other matters, the love of money was the chief root of the evil; indulgences were employed by mercenary ecclesiastics as a means of pecuniary gain.” — Id., p. 787. FAFA 164.8

We shall now enter into a careful examination of the two questions: (1) whether Catholic authorities, before the Protestant Reformation., had begun to represent indulgences as actual remissions of sin.; and (2) if these indulgences could be purchased for money. Professor William E. Lunt says of the period following 1095 A. D.: FAFA 164.9

“The commercialization of indulgences began with those issued in connection with the Crusades.” — “Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages,” Vol. I, p. 115. Columbia University Press, 1934. FAFA 164.10

“Boniface IX (1389-1404) issued several bulls of plenary indulgence to aid the building of the dome of the cathedral at Milan. In the course of the fifteenth century plenary indulgences for similar purposes became common.... One third or one half was the share most commonly taken by the pope, occasionally it amounted to two thirds.” — Id., p. 114. FAFA 165.1

“The general Summons of Pope Innocent III to a Crusade A. D. 1215 [requested all civil rulers] for the remission of their sins [to furnish soldiers. To all who joined in the Crusade, and also to those who could not go themselves, but who paid the expense of sending a substitute, the pope declared:] ‘We grant full pardon of their sins.’ [To those who went at their own expense, he promised not only] full pardon of their sins, [but he says:] ‘We promise them an increase of eternal salvation.” — “Bullarium Romanum, editio Taurinensis,” Vol. III, p. 300; copied in “Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,” E. F. Henderson, pp. 337, 339, 343. London: 1892. FAFA 165.2

This papal permission to secure an indulgence by paying for a substitute in one’s place, to fight in the Crusades, soon developed into a system of paying for indulgences. Another means of enormous income to the Holy See was started by Pope Boniface VIII, by inaugurating the “Jubilees” with their indulgences. We read of these: FAFA 165.3

“Jubilees. — On the 22nd of February of the present Year 1300, he issued a Bull, granting a full Remission of all Sins to such as should in the present Year, beginning and ending at Christmas, or in every other Hundredth Year, visit the Basilica of the two Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul [on fifteen different days.] — Bower’s “History of the Popes,” Vol. VI, year 1300, P. 474. FAFA 165.4

Herbert Thurston, S. J., in his book: “The Roman Jubilee,” bearing the sanction of the Catholic Church, and of its “censor,” says: FAFA 165.5

“And the same year, since a solemn remission of all sins, to wit, both of guilt and of penalty (solemnis remissio omnium peccatorum, videlicet culparum et poenarum), was granted by Pope Boniface to all who visited Rome, many - both Christians and Tartars - came to Rome for the aforesaid indulgence.” Id., p. 12. London and Edinburgh: 1925, abridged edition.

Of the Jubilee of 1450 we read: FAFA 166.1

“Large sums of money were brought as offerings by the pilgrims, and we learn that money was scarce at this time, because ‘it all flowed into Rome for the Jubilee.’... Early in the following year the Pope .. despatched legates to certain foreign countries, to extend the Jubilee indulgence to the faithful who were unable to visit Rome. The conditions usually enjoined were a visit, or series of visits, to the cathedral of the Diocese, and an alms to be offered there for a special intention.” — Id., p. 27. FAFA 166.2

During one of these Jubilees, we are told, there were millions in Rome, and the plague that had broken out carried off innumerable victims. Graves were to be seen all along the roads. H. C. Lea declares: “The pilgrim who went to Rome to secure pardon came back much worse than he started.” And any one who joined the “crusades ” against the Turks or the “heretics” to gain a “plenary indulgence,” if he came back alive, “was tolerably sure to return a lawless bandit.” — “The Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” Vol. I, pp. 42, 43. FAFA 166.3

Pope Alexander VI ordered a Jubilee in 1500, but great as the crowds were who sought the papal indulgence at Rome, there remained a still greater number in the British Isles, “who were prevented from seeking Rome”; and so the pope issued another “Bull dated 9 December 1500,” proclaiming a Jubilee in 1501 for Britain. Professor William E. Lunt quotes the following from Polydore Vergil’s “Historiae Anglicae“: FAFA 166.4

“A Chronicler’s Account of the Sale of Jubilee Indulgences in England. - It was not gratuitous liberality, for Alexander ... had decreed what was the price of his grace for providing for the salvation of men.” — “Records of Civilization Sources and Studies,” Vol. XIX, “Papal Revenues In the Middle Ages,” Vol. II, p. 477. FAFA 166.5

Professor Lunt informs us that this Papal Bull is found in the “British Museum, Cottonian MS, Cleop. E. III, fol. 157V,” “as entitled by Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 11, 93-100,” from which we quote the following: FAFA 167.1

“The Article of the Bull of the holy Jubilee of full remission and great joy granted to the realm of England, Wales, Ireland, and Garnesey, .. by granting of great indulgence and remission of sins and trespasses.”

Those who “at any time after the publication hereof to the last evensong of the Octaves of Easter next coming, truly confessed and contrite, visit such churches as shall be assigned ... and there put into the chest for the intent ordained such sum or gratuity of money, gold or silver, as is limited and tared here following in the last end of this paper, to be spent for the defense of our faith, shall have the same indulgence, pardon, and grace, with remission of all their sins, which they should have had if they had gone personally to Rome in the year of grace.” — Id., pp. 478, 479. FAFA 167.2

Then follows the “Tax List“: FAFA 167.3

“Tax that every man shall put into the chest that will receive this great grace of their jubilee. FAFA 167.4

“First, every man and woman.... having lands, tenements, or rents, amounting to the yearly value of £2,000 or above, must pay, or cause to be paid .... and effectually, without fraud or deceit, put into the chest ... lawful money current in that country where they be, £3, 6s. and 8d. ¹⁸ FAFA 167.5

“Also, every man and woman having tenements and rents to the yearly value of £1,000 or above, to the sum of £2,000 exclusive, must pay for themselves and their wives and children 40s.” — Id., pp. 481, 482. FAFA 167.6

This sliding scale goes down to the payment of 12nd. FAFA 167.7

“The Pope ... granted full authority and power to the venerable father in God, Jasper Powe, his orator and commissary, to absolve [any one who] hath committed simony.... with all those that occupy evil gotten goods, all usurers, and all such that wrongfully and unlawfully occupyeth or witholdeth other men’s goods, ... that they may lawfully keep and occupy the same goods, first making composition for the same with said commissary of some certain sum of money to be spent in the foresaid holy use.” — Id., pp. 482, 483. FAFA 167.8

Hon. Thomas E. Watson, U. S. Senator from Georgia, writes: FAFA 168.1

“Claude Wespence was Rector of the University of Paris in the sixteenth century. He published a ‘Commentary on the Epistle to Titus.’ He was [a] devoted Roman Catholic and his standing was high in his church.... Here is what he wrote and published about the ‘Tariff on Sins’: FAFA 168.2

“‘Provided money can be extorted, everything prohibited is permitted. There is almost nothing forbidden that is not dispensed with for money .... They give permission to priests to have concubines .... There is a printed book which has been publicly sold for a considerable time, entitled, ‘The Tares of the Apostolical Chancery,’ from which one may learn more enormities and crimes than from all the books of the Summists. And of these crimes, there are some which persons may have liberty to commit for money, while absolution from all of them, after they have been committed, may be bought.’ FAFA 168.3

“In the British Museum are two small volumes which contain the Pope’s Chancery Tares, and his Penitential Tares. These books - in manuscript bound in vellum - were taken from the archives of Rome, upon the death of Innocent XII. The Prothonotary, Amyon, was the abstractor. One of the booklets bears date, ‘6 February, 1514’: the other ‘10 March, 1520.’ The inscription is ‘Mandatum Leonis, Papae X.,’ - which, freely rendered, means that the compilation of these Tares was ordered by Pope Leo X.” ¹⁹ - “The Watsonian,” October, 1928, Vol. II, No. IX, pp. 275, 276. FAFA 168.4