Three reasons I’m skeptical about the Year of Mercy

Last updated on: February 10, 2016 at 8:53 am by Jane the Actuary

Three reasons I’m skeptical about the Year of Mercy 2016-02-10T08:53:43-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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I’m going to be honest here: I know there are many people who find the Year of Mercy to be truly meaningful to them. And that’s great. But I’m simply skeptical of the whole enterprise. I hadn’t wanted to voice my complaints in the past but I’m getting increasingly irritated with the whole endeavor — though I invite readers to tell me why I’m wrong.

1. Why?

To begin with, try as I might, I can’t find a specific reason for this Jubilee. The closest that there seems to be is that its opening day coincided with the 50th anniversary of the closing of Vatican II. But was that the reason? It strikes me as much more the case that Pope Francis wanted to preside over a Jubilee year, and didn’t want to wait until the next “naturally occuring” year, so jumped the gun in his impatience. Perhaps it speaks to the limited number of tools in his toolkit — sure, he can travel and give speeches or make off-the-cuff remarks that leave people feeling inspired, but there’s a limit to his effectiveness here. So he pulls the Year of Mercy out. But it also feels to me as if his declaration indicates that he thinks of his papacy as special and more deserving of Big Events than the other guy, which feels wrong. (My initial reaction also had a bit of skepticism that this was all a matter of getting more of a cash infusion into the struggling Italian economy, but he’s declared Holy Doors all over the world.)

2. Indulgences? Really?

Look, the whole concept of indulgences feels so archaic, that it just seems out of place in the year 2015. I admit that, as a non-cradle Catholic, the whole notion of purgatory is something about which I’m really reluctant to sign on to more than a minimalistic belief, that there’s something there, though we don’t know the details — both because of scriptural references and longstanding practice of prayers for the dead, and similar notions that heaven requires a purification of some kind. It makes intuitive sense too, not as a sort of punishment, but as a way in which our hearts and minds are changed. After all, consider how many times you’ve heard someone say, “I’d much rather go to Hell than Heaven — it sounds soooo boring!”?

I also understand that in the old terminology, the “20 days’ indulgence” didn’t refer to 20 days off of purgatory, but to an indulgence deemed to be the equivalent of 20 days of bread-and-water fasting.

But that all doesn’t get me to the point of signing on to indulgences. Go to confession, pray for the Pope’s intentions (is this a “trick”? what if his “intention” is for the U.S. to open its border to Mexico and Central America?), go to mass and receive communion, have a firm resolve to avoid sin, and walk through a Holy Door, and receive a plenary indulgence — I’m willing to assent, to say “I don’t get it” rather than “I reject it” but it doesn’t motivate me, it doesn’t inspire me.

And I’m going to take a wild guess and say that those fallen-away Catholics, or non-Catholics of whatever stripe who the Pope wishes to draw (back) to the faith ar going to react as I do, and only those who are already faithful, and traditional, Catholics, are going to be inspired and motivated by the promise of an indulgence.

3. Mercy?

The Year of Mercy is, in the end, about God’s mercy. The very idea is to bring to everyone the knowledge that God forgives their sins.

After all, I as the ex-Lutheran, heard countless times growing up the story of Martin Luther, who, try as he might, always felt that he was so sinful that he could never do enough good works or penitential acts to earn forgiveness of his sins, until, in a flash of insight, he realized that he did not need to do good works, but was forgiven by God’s grace alone. Only much later did I learn that the story was not as simple as my religion teachers told it.

But how many people do you know who are burdened by the weight of their sins, who feel unworthy of forgiveness, who are trapped in destructive patterns because of this?

Isn’t that a problem of another day and age? Isn’t the issue now, in 2015, that the ever-growing secularism produces a generation who simply don’t believe in sin in any conventional sense? Sinfulness becomes either a problem of the larger society (the sinfulness of institutions which perpetuate racism, or of large corporations), or, at any rate, of other people, and even then, we explain sinful actions away as justifiable or the sinner as not culpable due to his/her upbringing or present circumstances, or perhaps because of mental illness. And anyone who doesn’t perceive him/herself as sinful is certainly not going to be particulary interested in receiving mercy.

I’m not saying that people in secular societies are doing great, or that their self-perception that they “don’t need God” is correct. But I don’t think they’re going to hear the message that the Pope is offering them.

Now, perhaps I misjudge the whole endeavor. Perhaps the Pope is doing something else entirely — perhaps, instead of reaching out, this is an action of trying to shore up support among traditional Catholics. Perhaps this is a true “dog whistle” situation, and I genuinely can’t hear the whistle, so it doesn’t make sense to me.

What do you think?

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