Where There's Smoking, There's (Hell)Fire

If the image of black lungs cant quell your urge to smoke, perhaps the chance to nab a speedier ticket to heaven will do the trick. On Friday, the Vatican released an updated manual on indulgences, with several additions to the acts of faith that lessen a Catholics time spent in purgatory - the heavenly holding pen outside the pearly gates. The pope announced the church will now give "partial" indulgences to parishioners who quit smoking, even for a day. (A full indulgence is achieved when the self-restraint is accompanied by confession and communion.) The money that would have been spent on the cigarettes should be donated to the needy, the manual intones. But besides enlarging charity coffers, what sort of spiritual good is done by a parishioner who stops smoking? Catholic officials call smoking, like drinking, "a mortification of the flesh," and maintain that when a believer denies himself the pleasure of satisfying an addiction, he is committing penance for his sins.

Indulgences have long been a source of curiosity and controversy for the Catholic church. Martin Luther famously broke from St. Peter's to protest in part the tradition of exchanging indulgences for cold cash. Centuries later, a more subtle and democratic set of rules emerged, according to TIME religion correspondent David Van Biema. "An indulgence is a much more complicated thing than it used to be," says Van Biema. "Now, instead of just handing over some cash to shave years off your time in purgatory, you enter into a healing process with God after confessing to a sin." So tossing those cigarettes now qualifies as a spiritual act? Van Biema acknowledges that the Vatican anti-smoking edict may "elicit a few giggles," but he believes it could be a boon to the Vatican. "If the curiosity surrounding this new proclamation calls attention to the processes of confession and receiving indulgences, the church will have been successful," he says. Still unanswered: Does this mean that Catholic smokers who live longer because of giving up their "mortifying" habit get to heaven later or earlier than their equally worthy but cancer-ridden friends who couldn't kick the habit?