An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven" (Indulgentarium Doctrinanorm 1). Indulgences in no way forgive sins. They deal only with punishments left after sins have been forgiven. For more information on this - see also the Purgatory section.
One never could "buy" indulgences. The scandal around "Buying" indulgences, the scandal that gave Martin Luther an excuse for starting the reformation, involved alms-indulgences in which the giving of alms to some charitable fund or foundation was used as the occasion to grant the indulgence. There is a big difference.
Pope Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, which established new norms for the use of indulgences. This document introduced the classification of indulgences as partial or plenary—a simplification of an earlier system of reckoning how many "days" of penance an indulgence represented that led some to suppose that an indulgence represented getting a certain number of days "off" their time in purgatory.
Partial indulgence: Granted by the Church to "the faithful who at least with a contrite heart perform an action to which a partial indulgence is attached." These individuals "obtain, in addition to the remission of temporal punishment acquired by the action itself, an equal remission of punishment through the intervention of the Church" (ID, norm 5).
Plenary indulgence: "It is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfill three conditions: sacramental confession, eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the supreme pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent" (norm 7
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