The first oversimplification says, “Catholics taught that people could buy forgiveness from God.”
The second says, “The whole controversy was just a Protestant misunderstanding.”
Neither explanation is good enough.
Official Catholic teaching did not define an indulgence as the purchase of forgiveness. But historically, indulgences were often preached, promoted, and received in ways that made ordinary Christians think money could help reduce punishment for sin, shorten time in purgatory, or benefit the souls of the dead. That was the heart of the scandal.
To understand why this became so controversial, we need to start with what an indulgence was supposed to be.
In Roman Catholic theology, sin involves more than guilt. Guilt is forgiven through repentance, confession, and absolution. But Catholic theology also teaches that sin can leave behind “temporal punishment,” meaning remaining consequences that must still be purified either in this life or in purgatory.
An indulgence, according to Catholic teaching, is the remission of that temporal punishment for sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. In other words, the formal doctrine was not supposed to mean, “Give money and God forgives your sin.” It meant something closer to this: after forgiveness, the Church could apply spiritual benefits to reduce remaining punishment connected to sin.
That distinction is important. A fair criticism should not pretend the official doctrine was identical to selling forgiveness.
But the problem was what happened in practice.
In the late medieval Church, indulgences became closely connected with public campaigns, financial contributions, and institutional fundraising. Indulgences were sometimes granted in connection with donations to churches, crusades, hospitals, or major building projects. By the early sixteenth century, one of the most famous indulgence campaigns was connected to funding the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
That created a serious pastoral problem.
Most ordinary Christians were not theologians. They did not always understand careful distinctions between guilt, punishment, penance, satisfaction, purgatory, and indulgences. What they often heard was much simpler: make a contribution, receive spiritual benefit, reduce punishment, help yourself or a loved one.
That is why critics became alarmed.
The issue was not only theological. It was spiritual and pastoral. The practice risked turning repentance into a transaction. It risked making frightened people think they could secure spiritual relief through money. It placed pressure on the poor, the grieving, and the anxious. It made holy things look commercialized.
This is where Martin Luther entered the controversy.
In 1517, Luther responded to the preaching of indulgences with his famous 95 Theses. His attack was not simply against corruption in general. He was especially concerned that indulgence preaching was giving Christians false confidence.
Luther argued that Christians should be taught that giving to the poor was better than buying indulgences. He warned that people should not spend needed family resources on them. He objected to the idea that indulgences could be preached in a way that made repentance seem unnecessary or secondary.
His concern was simple: if people believed an indulgence could solve their spiritual problem, they might stop focusing on genuine repentance, humility, charity, and trust in God.
One of the most infamous figures connected to the controversy was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican preacher associated with indulgence preaching near Luther’s region. Tetzel became famous for the slogan often summarized as, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Historians debate the exact wording and how directly it should be attributed to him, but the slogan captures the kind of message critics believed was being communicated.
Whether every popular version of the slogan is exact or not, the concern was real: indulgence preaching had become closely associated with money and promises of spiritual benefit.
The financial background made the scandal even worse.
In early sixteenth-century Germany, indulgence revenue was connected not only to St. Peter’s Basilica, but also to the debts and church offices of Albert of Brandenburg, a powerful churchman who held multiple ecclesiastical positions. A portion of the money from the indulgence campaign was connected to financial arrangements involving those obligations.
That meant the controversy was not happening in a vacuum. It looked to many people as though sacred authority was being used to raise money for powerful church institutions and elite figures.
This is why the indulgence controversy struck such a nerve. It exposed a deeper tension: the Church claimed to be shepherding souls, yet the system appeared to many Christians as though spiritual benefits were being attached to financial payments.
The Roman Catholic Church later acknowledged that abuses surrounding indulgences needed correction. The Council of Trent did not abolish indulgences. It defended them in principle. But it also condemned corrupt gain connected with them and called for abuses to be removed.
That point is significant.
Trent’s response shows that even within Roman Catholic reform, there was recognition that indulgence practice had become corrupted and needed discipline. The Church did not say, “Nothing went wrong.” It said, in effect, that indulgences should remain, but abuses and financial corruption had to be corrected.
So the strongest criticism of indulgences is not that every Catholic theologian taught crude “salvation for sale.” That would be unfair.
The stronger criticism is this: even if the official doctrine made careful distinctions, the public practice often blurred those distinctions badly. Indulgence preaching could make spiritual grace appear commercial. It could lead people to trust in an external certificate instead of true repentance. It could exploit fear of purgatory. It could burden the poor. It could turn pastoral care into a fundraising machine.
That is why the controversy mattered so much.
For Protestants, indulgences became a symbol of a larger problem: a Church system that had placed too many mediating structures between the sinner and the mercy of God. For Roman Catholics, the later response was to defend the doctrine while admitting the need to reform the abuse.
But historically, the criticism was not imaginary.
The sale and preaching of indulgences created a real crisis of trust. It damaged the credibility of Church leadership, confused ordinary believers, and helped ignite one of the most consequential religious upheavals in Christian history.
The issue was not merely money.
It was the fear that the things of God had been made to look like they were for sale.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1471–1479
https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_two/section_two/chapter_two/article_4/x_indulgences.html
Council of Trent, Session 25, Decree Concerning Indulgences
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/twenty-fifth-session.htm
Martin Luther, 95 Theses
https://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html
Pope Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina
https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_01011967_indulgentiarum-doctrina.html
Christian History Institute, “Selling Forgiveness: How Money Sparked the Protestant Reformation”
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/selling-forgiveness-sparked-protestant-reformation
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Johann Tetzel”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Tetzel