Whistling In The Dark

But it's an understandable conflation -- for most lay people, indulgences refer back to the medieval practice of selling indulgences for gold. While the modern system's an attempt to bring... well, a modern sense of bookkeeping to the process of reducing the burden of venal sin, essentially, and doesn't actually involve indulgence for cash, that's what a lot of people will believe when they first hear the term.