Ecumenism and two divisive issues

Although I usually think of myself as a catholic Christian with broad ecumenical sympathies, the following Zenit reports are indicative of two issues on which I have never been able to comprehend the Roman Catholic position: "New Plenary Indulgence to Mark Year of the Eucharist," and "Faith and Reason Aid Each Other, Says John Paul II." The very notion of an indulgence would appear to diminish the work of Jesus Christ, while the 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio would appear to posit too extrinsic a relationship between faith and reason.

Of course, as everyone knows, the 16th-century Reformation had its beginnings with Luther's protest against the sale of indulgences. I am unaware of anything remotely similar to the doctrine of indulgences in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Perhaps someone like Gregory Daly would be able to enlighten me further on this issue from the Roman perspective.

As for faith and reason, these should be understood, not as "two wings" or two dialectically related epistemic faculties, but as what might be called the fideic and logical aspects of a single human cognitive capacity. As such, there is no such thing as faithless reasoning. All reasoning is rooted in faith of some sort -- either a true faith or a false faith, but a faith nonetheless.