Everything old is new again

I feel like I should do some outreach here. But rather than catalog the many minor inaccuracies and distortions in yesterday's front-page New York Times article about the practice of granting indulgences (it's not "absolution"; the practice never really went anywhere; this particular indulgence has been available since June, and not just locally; etc.), may I just point you to the relevant post at dotCommonweal? By coincidence, we talked about heaven, hell, purgatory, etc. in our RCIA group this week, so I've been doing a lot of research and reading on the topic. Googling has been a depressing activity since this article surfaced (and became the "most e-mailed" on the NYT site! For two days now!): so much misinformation, so many nasty remarks about those backward Catholics out there in the blogosphere. But the discussion at dotCommonweal has been lively (and mostly good-natured). Believe it or not, there are intelligent people who take this idea seriously, and some of them even have a sense of humor about it! Why not indulge your curiosity? (See what I did there?)