Jenna Marie Cooper

Indulgences are deeply rooted in several key Catholic theological concepts, such as the nature of purgatory, the church’s authority, the spiritual power of prayer and sacrifice and the communion of saints.

Jesus was trying to explain the goal and some possible pitfalls to avoid. He never suggests that he was giving us a breakdown of who attains salvation in terms of percentages.

Although purgatory is not exactly a “punishment” in the way we would tend to use the term today, traditionally purgatory has been understood to involve a degree of suffering.

A valid marriage is essentially a marriage where the wedding “worked,” and produced a true bond. In contrast, an attempted marriage where one of these necessary elements was absent would be considered an “invalid” or “null” marriage.

The church does not have any current official teaching on fairies or leprechauns. However, in traditional folklore, fairies and leprechauns were not the sweet and playful creatures that they tend to be in our modern depictions, and they have an association with pre-Christian European paganism.

Some seminaries attach the wearing of clerical clothes to a specific stage of formation called “candidacy,” but candidacy can also occur at different times in different places.