It was announced a few days ago that Pope Francis will be offering plenary indulgences via Twitter, so naturally Catholics and non-Catholics alike took to Twitter to announce that the pope will be forgiving sins via social network…I hate to burst those bubbles, but that’s not quite true.
While it would be nice to be forgiven via tweet, that’s not exactly what a plenary indulgence is. For the non-Catholic scholars out there, I’ll explain:
As any good Catholic (who is well versed in the finer points of the catechism…or has access to Dictionary.com) could tell you, a plenary indulgence is a remission of all temporal punishment that is still due to sin after absolution…now just give me a minute to look up temporal punishment…
The gist is this: the pope will not be forgiving your sins in 140 characters.
But if you take the time to go to confession, have your sins absolved, attend mass, and then watch the World Youth Festival in Brazil next week…your temporal punishment (which I have since learned has to do with how much time you spend in purgatory) slate will be wiped clean.
I might point out that the amount of time spent accomplishing all of those qualifying actions might amount to more time than you’re removing from your purgatory sentence…but that would be beside the point. Suddenly that get out of jail free via Twitter card isn’t looking so easy is it?
And you have to watch live for it to count, don’t think you can get away with pretending you witnessed the tweet live when you really retweeted it 2 days later—God knows.
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Mashable: Pope to Offer Plenary Indulgences Via Twitter
…bi-daily smile…
Does this count as mass?
