Did the Roman Catholic Church Pioneer UDI-ism?

However, in fact, one could argue that a market was available to use real money to obtain some of these other-worldly checks when medieval churches granted Indulgences to individuals in return for alms giving. The practice of Indulgences may be interpreted as an ingenious market mechanism to turn a spiritual asset into money. Under the Roman Catholic doctrine, sinners, after receiving forgiveness, are required to do temporal penance, such as saying a number of prayers over a number of days, or doing some public acts of penitence. This doctrine created a demand. The Church also claimed to have a treasury of spiritual good, through the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. This provided a supply. Indulgences may be granted by the Church to offset temporal penalties because of its abundant treasury of good work. This created an instrument for delivering the product from the supplier to the consumers. It is interesting to note that the Indulgences were denominated in a quantifiable number of days, equivalent to the days of temporal penances. Quantification enabled rational trading. Furthermore, this market achieved a useful economic function. The Church was the primary provider of social work and alms-giving was a mechanism for sustaining the public good. People can receive Indulgences by giving donation to the Church for various purposes. Thus, the trading of financial support for the good work done by the Church followed sound economic principles. Religion had in essence introduced an other-worldly system of incentives which at one time was tradable in the secular market. That practice was criticized by the Protestant movement and subsequently minimized. It is interesting to note that Indulgences are now denominated only as Plenary (full) or Partial with the latter value only known to God.

However, this “experiment” deserves consideration as we continue our exploration about UDI-ism because it was an attempt to connect between public good and self interests through a monetization of some previously unquantifiable attribute, and it applied the market concept.

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"An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain defined conditions through the Church’s help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints" (Paul VI, Indulgentarium Doctrina 1).