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Alex, this posted article is, to put it kindly, a bit simplistic, even dumbed down. This is 4th grade stuff and I'm surprised that a Professor would pen such a piece. I am therefore thankful for the link to the Vatican site for "INDULGENTIARUM DOCTRINA". Its somewhat easier to work with than stories of little kids and their pennies!

It seems to me that this article speaks of three things, namely, purgatory, indulgences and the treasury of merit. Within the system of the Latin Church, I can see how each of these concepts developed. To be fair, the concept of "indulgences" predates the schism by many centuries and is found in popular beliefs within The Church in North Africa where some of the faithful were in the habit of acquiring letters of remission of punishment for sins issued by certain monks on account of the "merits" gained by martyrs. This practice was never widespread in the areas which eventually became the Orthodox world but I think its hard to distinguish these, fundamentally from the Latin concept of indulgences and perhaps, without too much stretching, to the idea of a treasury of merit administered in some fashion by holy men, The Church or in the Latin system by the Pope. Again, though, this isn't anything which gained currency in the Eastern Church. Purgatory, another concept which never gained a foothold in the East, does have its roots in the theology of the early Church and the writings of The Fathers. The Church has always taught that there was a place where most souls go after death for an intermediate period between the Partial and Final Judgments. The early Church also believed that in this place God's love, spoken of as a fire, either purifies and fills the soul with joy or torments depending on the destination of the soul at the time of the Final Judgment. I suspect the concept of purgatory developed from this early theology, a theology which Orthodoxy maintains to this day. But purgatory seems to carry with it the concept of atonement, of making up for sins committed, for offenses given to God. As I understand it, the Latin Church teaches that while a soul cannot repent of its sins, or do much of anything for that matter after death, we can, through our prayers, activate the "merits" of Christ, Panagia and the saints for the benefit of those souls and thus do away with, in some non-temporal sense, the suffering "due" to God in recompense for the sins of the deceased and thus that soul enjoys the "beatific vision" "before" it might otherwise (I'm leaving out for now any benefit for us here on earth).

Having read Paul VI's writing, I am struck, as I often am, with the great difference between the Latin/Western concepts of sin and salvation and that of Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. I have noted before that this stands in stark relief when one compares the Western focus on atonement, a sort of payback for sin through the Cross and the East's focus on the descent to Hades and the Resurrection. In the West, sin is an offense which God takes very personally and demands retribution for. This just isn't the way the East looks at things at all. Payback has nothing to do with salvation. The West, at least in popular belief, sees the Cross as an expiation for the sins of man, then past, then present and then future. The East sees the Cross as the means whereby Christ died in order to destroy the power which death formerly had over us on account of the Sin of Adam; "Death took a corpse and found God". In other words, Christ didn't die on the Cross to "make up" for your sins or mine, but rather to release us from the inevitable consequences of the Sin of Adam, spiritual death (which is the only real death). As the people pray in the Latin Rite Mass, "Dying you destroyed our death; Rising you restored our life!"

I noticed in the pope's writing that he speaks of how our sins affect not just ourselves but indeed everyone (and I assume everything). This is what The Church has always taught. Our sin distorts God's perfect creation and every sin we commit adds to the burden under which "all creation groans". What the West sees as a "punishment from God" for sin, whether it be personal, or societal or global, isn't a "punishment" at all, at least not most of the time; it is as a result of the distortion of creation caused by sin. God allows it to happen, but he doesn't cause it, we do. This is not to say that there are not what some theologians have called pedagogical punishments, punishments to truly "teach a lesson", but these are quite different from retributions or "paybacks" or atonements.

Orthodox theologians often note that at the Final Judgment we are not judged as if our good and bad deeds are placed on some sort of scale (though that is certainly a very, very ancient, pre Christian idea), but rather by how much like Christ we have become. We sin and thus separate ourselves from God because sin makes us less like Christ than we might otherwise be. We repent of those sins, not because that pays God back but rather because repentance is a denial of the self, which opens us to grace which in turn makes us more like Christ. All of this happens during this life. If we die without being fully in the image and likeness of Christ, it is only by God's mercy that our souls, in some fashion resembling Christ, will become through God's love, burnished and shining as by fire. Our prayers for the dead, therefore, are for our loving God, a God we call "Philanthrope", Lover of Mankind, to show mercy.

Do the prayers of intercession from the saints and Panagia help here? Orthodoxy believes so. Do the prayers of the living faithful help? Orthodoxy hopes so and in any event, those prayers are efficacious for those who make them.

As I said, in a system where God demands satisfaction, where good and bad deeds are weighed out in a judgment process, purgatory as a place of suffering, becomes necessary lest people loose hope. The concept of a treasury of merit administered by the Pope fits in with such concepts of sin, punishment, and the meaning of Christ's granting of the Keys to +Peter and indeed the Western concepts, at least the popular concepts, of the purpose of the Cross. In the Eastern Church, however, with very different beliefs in these areas, they have neither meaning nor place.

I agree that the article is written very simply, but that merely makes it accessible to more people. I, of course, do not presume by that that you personally need an entry level introduction to the concepts of atonement and merit.

I also agree that the theology of atonement is different in the East and in the West. I plan to make a post or two on the differences there next week. I hesitated whether I should have concentrated on the differences first, but decided to knock down this easier topic of treasure of merit first. For indeed it is easier and most if not all objections that you raise seem to me really objections to the punishment and satisfaction atonement theory in light of the Orthodox more ancient ransom theory. But if the topic is treasure of merit, it seems to me, we are fighting shadows of real disagreements rather than discussing the topic itself.

You also mention one real disagreement on the Purgatory:

The Church has always taught that there was a place where most souls go after death for an intermediate period between the Partial and Final Judgments. The early Church also believed that in this place God's love, spoken of as a fire, either purifies and fills the soul with joy or torments depending on the destination of the soul at the time of the Final Judgment. I suspect the concept of purgatory developed from this early theology, a theology which Orthodoxy maintains to this day.

The Catholic Church teaches that when the Particular Juidgement after death is favorable -- the man is justified, -- the outcome is sometimes immediate entry into heaven and beatific vision, or a detour in Purgatory. But when the judgement is condemnation it is immediate. In other words, the souls in Purgatory are all on their way to heaven. There are, of course, ample reasons to believe just that for the Latin mind, since unconfessed mortal sin at the time of death leaves no room for repentance after death, where will does not operate; yet temporal consequences of sin can be expiated through torment. So the question arises, does the Church in the East teach that condemnation can go through an intermediate stage as well?

Aside from this possible material disagreement, and, as I said before, aside from the very real disagreement on atonement, I do not see a true objection to the treasure of merit. That is because the ransom theory of salvation allows for intercession just as the atonement theory allows for it, and indeed the clergy and the faithful in the East are engaged in the prayers for the dead and for the sins of unrepentant mankind perhaps more than the West. A monk in the West mortifies flesh because he thinks that his suffering will accrue to the penance of someone in the world. A monk in the East mortifies flesh to be more like Christ. But the whole purpose of Christ is to lift up the world. That monk in the East cannot be like Christ unless he directs his suffering to the spiritual benefit of fellow men. He then contributes to the same treasury of merit even though he labels these things differently: in terms of mercy rather than in terms of merit.

Let us not forget that merit is an obverse of mercy. Here the Holy Father places the indulgences firmly in the context of divine mercy and of emulation of Christ.

11. Therefore Holy Mother Church, supported by these truths, while again recommending to the faithful the practice of indulgences as something very dear to the Christian people during the course of many centuries and in our days as well—this is proven by experience—does not in any way intend to diminish the value of other means of sanctification and purification, first and foremost among which are the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Penance. Nor does it diminish the importance of those abundant aids which are called sacramentals or of the works of piety, penitence and charity. All these aids have this in common that they bring about sanctification and purification all the more efficaciously, the more closely the faithful are united with Christ the Head and the Body of the Church by charity. The preeminence of charity in the Christian life is confirmed also by indulgences. For indulgences cannot be acquired without a sincere conversion of mentality ("metanoia") and unity with God, to which the performance of the prescribed works is added. Thus the order of charity is preserved, into which is incorporated the remission of punishment by distribution from the Church's treasury.
(INDULGENTIARUM DOCTRINA 4:11)

It goes without saying that the primitive notion of heavenly bookkeeping as we fill in some kind of purgatorial time cards is just that, primitive piety, and the Catholic Church knows that.