Indulgences

I'm about to reveal my ignorance in a big way here - and those of you familiar with my religious upbringing and liberal arts education will probably be shocked:  I honestly thought that indulgences were something belonging to the Catholic church's ancient, sordid past, with the likes of the Inquisition and Crusades.  I remember learning in my Lutheran confirmation class (or maybe even in earlier Sunday school years) that Martin Luther spoke out against the Catholic church selling indulgences to followers who believed that forking over cash to the church would get them into heaven.  The idea of having to pay money to get into heaven seemed ridiculous to Martin Luther, to my 13-year-old self, and to me now (obviously).  One of the key Bible passages that Luther used to argue against indulgences was from Romans chapter 3:

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Just as the Catholic Church has evolved from many of its earlier ways (again, the Crusades, the Inquisition), I guess I assumed that indulgences were a thing of the past.  But then today I saw this headline in The Onion:  "Pope To Reduce His Twitter Followers’ Time In Purgatory"  I know, it's The Onion, right?  Fake, funny news.  But this was in The Onion's "American Voices" section, which is actually real stories accompanied by fake (and often hilarious) commentary.  So, I had to go find a more informative news article about this, and indeed, the Vatican is offering indulgences to people who follow the pope's tweets live from Catholic World Youth Day.  Granted, this is nowhere near as unscrupulous as the ancient selling of indulgences for greedy amounts of money.  And I'm sure that Catholics, including my friends and probably some of my in-laws, would argue there is nothing unscrupulous about this at all - it is simply a way for the church leadership to reach out to young followers and better engage them in the Catholic faith and its teachings.  I understand this, but - sorry if I offend or disrespect - indulgences are ridiculous and stupid and Biblical unsound (although not as ridiculous and stupid and Biblical unsound as many other aspects of the Catholic faith).  Of course, my knowledge of the Bible is pretty damn poor, so please comment away if you'd like to take issue with this.  The quote above is pretty much my main argument!