The Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, (i.e., a tribunal that is responsible for overseeing issues dealing with the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church) issued a statement yesterday declaring:
“The gift of special Indulgences is granted to the faithful suffering from COVID-19 disease, commonly known as Coronavirus, as well as to health care workers, family members and all those who in any capacity, including through prayer, care for them.”
The move seems designed to meet the challenges Roman Catholics are facing with being locked down or displaced and unable to easily access confession and mass. The decree comes just hours after learning that Italy has overtaken China with the number of deaths being reported.
For those not embroiled in the satanic power structure known as sacerdotalism, here is a brief refresher.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that, because the church is united, when all the Christians who ever lived (the saints in heaven, Mary, Jesus, those in “purgatory”) collectively do certain deeds – like good works, giving alms to the poor, praying to Mary, giving money to the church, saying the rosary, etc – all these things generate “merit.”
This “merit” is kept in a place called the “treasury of merit,” and only the Roman Catholic Church has the authority and ability to “withdraw” merit from this storehouse to dispense it. There’s no accounting for how much “merit” is in this treasury, but it’s usually administered pretty stingily in the form of “indulgences.”
They further believe that after you die, you don’t go to heaven, but rather have to spend an untold number of years (could be 50 years or 50 million years) in purgatory doing penance for sins committed on earth. This hellacious suffering can be removed or lessened by getting your hands on these indulgences or having them applied to you by others. (Think Johann Tetzel’s jingle that scandalized Martin Luther and greatly contributed to the Protestant Reformation: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” The soul was being sprung from purgatory because of the coin being given to buy an indulgence.)
There are two kinds of indulgences: partial ones, which count against some of the penance, and plenary ones, which count against all of the penance up to that point and remove all one’s sin and all one’s eventual punishment. The latter are the jackpots of indulgences and the type of indulgence that the Roman Catholic Church announced they are dispensing to anyone involved in COVID-19 – not just those directly suffering from it, but also those in health care helping alleviate those suffering, such as front line doctors and nurses, and also anyone praying for/ against COVID-19. Plenary indulgences are nowhere near as common as partial indulgences. Usually they are given out once a year to mark Holy Week in the Roman Catholic Church.
The indulgence is not just a freebie though. In order to fully receive the indulgences, Roman Catholics still must participate in certain tasks. They have to fulfil the conditions of the indulgence, which involves engaging in their sacrament of confession, taking the eucharist, participating in the mass through the internet, giving at least half an hour of adoration before the sacrament, reading scripture for half an hour, and reciting both the rosary or the “chaplet of divine mercy” and a “pious invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, offering this trial in a spirit of faith in God and charity towards their brothers and sisters.”
The statement, signed by Mauro Cardinal Piacenza and Krzysztof Nykiel, ends with one of the most distasteful, idolatrous statements we’ve ever seen and shows where they believe their help is truly coming from: “May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, Health of the Sick and Help of Christians, our Advocate, help suffering humanity, saving us from the evil of this pandemic and obtaining for us every good necessary for our salvation and sanctification.”
