But there is also Jesus

Indulgences are making a comeback in the Catholic church.

"Why are we bringing them back?," one bishop rhetorically asks. His answer: "Because there is sin in the world."

Yes, there is. And there is also a Savior, through whose merits full forgiveness of all sins is available to all those who repent and believe.

Purgatory was invented relatively early in Christian history in order to answer a question which arose out of the Church's practice of praying for the dead: since prayer cannot help a soul in hell, and is not needed by a soul in heaven, why bother? A better answer, which would have done less violence to the heart of the Gospel, would have been, "Because God is able to take our prayers into account years before we offer them- and because it does us good to be able to pray for our Christian loved ones who have gone before us into the next life now, when we are missing them the most. It helps us feel close to them again, and it soothes our aching hearts to do something which can somehow help them. "

That biblical and pastoral answer, alas, was not the one that was given. Later the selling of indulgences- time off from the suffering of purgatory in expiation of some part of the penalty of sin Christ somehow did not bear on our behalf- turned a theological disaster into a pastoral one, and was the occasion of the Reformation.

No person of good will believes that the Catholic church is about to go back to selling indulgences. But the renewed emphasis on them is a sad reminder of how far apart Lutherans and Catholics still are on the very heart of the Gospel: the sufficiency of Christ's atonement and its full efficacy for all who believe, without need of "get out of purgatory free" cards from the hierarchy.