By Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan

This is the sixth of a series of articles written by the archbishop to assist the people of the Archdiocese of Atlanta in an understanding of the fuller worship in which they have been called to participate.

VI. Sacraments of Healing: Penance and Anointing of the Sick

At one stage of the Council’s debates on the use of the vernacular in the Sacraments, some wanted to keep Latin for the actual form, “I baptize you...I absolve you, etc.” An African bishop begged that this restriction not be imposed. “If we change to a strange language at the very heart of the Sacrament, our people will think we are using magic.”

Has this idea of magic poisoned contemporary Catholics in our Western society? Do we consider confession in a mechanical way; -- tell our sins, get our ‘penance,’ say the act of contrition, get forgiven? Quid pro quo? Has the push button mentality of today invaded even our use of the sacraments? It is to restore the idea of reconciliation that the Church is now designing new words and actions for the sacrament. Our sorrow and honesty were presumably heartfelt; the priest’s devotion to his role of judge and father was unquestioned. What is aimed at now is a better expression of what is going on.

Our confession of sins, our sorrow of heart, and our will to be converted to a life of grace -- all are brought together in this sacrament to be formed by Our Lord’s healing power. The priest’s words are: “May Our Lord Jesus Christ forgive you...and by His authority insofar as I am able and you require it, I forgive you.” But if our Catholic people forget the sign of the sacraments and remember them only as causes, with the Church guaranteeing the result -- this looks like another mechanism. As Diekmann puts it, “despite our protestations to the contrary, it sounds like magic.” This was the chief causes of the Protestant revolt in the sixteenth century.

But the sacraments are really signs of Christ’s presence. They cause grace because they are His actions. When our sins are forgiven, it is Christ who heals. In the new prayers and rites, Christ’s actions will be made more apparent.

It is difficult to see how the term “Extreme Unction” was ever understood. The two words are heavily Latinized, and “Extreme” surely sounds ominous. Now the sacrament is “more fittingly called the Anointing of the Sick.” And these points are noted:

1. It is not only for those at the point of death.

2. It should be administered as soon as the person begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age.

3. A continuous rite will be provided when the three sacraments are given together; first, confession, then anointing, then viaticum.

4. The number of sense organs anointed varies with the convenience of the occasion; the prayers will vary with the different conditions of the sick.

Every sanctification of man is at once a worship of God. But, as Diekmann observes, to how many of our faithful would it nowadays occur that receiving the sacrament of penance is worship? We all need a review of our theology. Each sacrament is social in nature, yet it is a part of our excessive individualism that we ask first, “What do I get out of it?” Here too we need to brush the dust off our thinking. The sacraments are signs of salvation, but that salvation is in and through the Church. Even in the secrecy of the confessional or on the lonely sickbed, we are sanctified as members of Christ’s Mystical Body. Not by ourselves.