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By Betty Schoenbaechler
Special To the Bulletin
ATLANTA—People often ask why Catholics must go to a priest to
confess their sins. Since only God can actually forgive sins, why can’t
believers just pray for forgiveness on their own? And why are they encouraged
to go to this sacrament often?
The groundwork for the sacrament of penance, sometimes called
reconciliation or confession, is rooted in Scripture. And while the
administration of the sacrament today differs greatly from that of the early
church, two essential elements remain, according to the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. First, individual conversion is through the work of the Holy
Spirit, and second, God’s forgiveness comes by intervention of the church
through its clergy.
The reason Catholics go to a priest for confession is because this
power to forgive sins given by Christ to his apostles was passed along through
Peter to all succeeding popes, bishops and priests.
“We often get the question of why people should go to a
priest, especially from converts,” said Father John Howren, pastor of St.
Gerard Church, Fort Oglethorpe. “I think the fundamental answer lies in
our understanding of the church. When we sin, we sin not only against God, but
also against the church—that is the baptized—all the body of Christ.
We damage our relationship with God and with the church.”
Father Howren explained that the priest serves several roles in
the confessional. First, he is there in a pastoral capacity, as a designated
leader of the church who nurtures the faithful and assures them of God’s
divine love and mercy. Second, he is there as a representative of the church.
He is one of the baptized against whom sin was committed and toward whom there
needs to be reconciliation.
“When we have sinned we have broken relationships: our
relationships with God and with one another,” said Father Howren.
“This sense of being broken hurts. It causes a certain amount of spiritual
pain, and to hear words of pardon and peace is very healing. That’s when
we recognize the power of God’s mercy and are touched by his divine
healing.”
Father Kevin Peek, parochial vicar at Holy Trinity Church,
Peachtree City, said that Jesus prescribed the sacrament of penance and
reconciliation because of his love for and knowledge of people.
“Jesus knows the human person inside and out, totally and
completely. In the last 100 years we have begun to better understand the human
psyche and its needs,” he said. “Many of the same people who are
afraid or suspicious of confession will run down to spill their guts to a
neighborhood bartender or call their best friend. People have a need to be
unburdened, to speak it out loud to another person. There is a certain release
when someone has unburdened himself.”
“When our sinfulness begins to build up, we want to hide it
from the world,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to see our inner
self and this leads to a feeling of being unloved. But coming to confession is
coming to the Lord. A representative of Christ looks at you, eye to eye, and
says, ‘I have heard you at the worst of your reality and I accept you. I
love you and I believe in you.’ What more beautiful experience is there?
What freedom to know that someone knows me at my worst and still believes in me
and loves me.”
“We all need to hear the words, ‘you are
forgiven,’” Father Peek said. “We’re spiritual and physical
people. We need healing of both body and soul.”
Father Hugh Marren, pastor of St. Benedict Church, Duluth, also
addressed the issue of confessing one’s sins to a priest. “It’s
funny, but they only ask this of the sacrament of penance. It’s not a
unique sacrament at all in terms of what happens. At baptism, we are baptized
by another person. The same is true of the sacraments of Eucharist and
confirmation. In marriage, it is the couple who administers the sacrament of
marriage to each other. It’s all part of the great consistency of God
working through people, to people.”
Father Marren said going to confession or speaking directly to God
through prayer is not an “either-or” situation, but a
“both-and.” “Yes, you should talk directly to God, but it has
always been the church’s teaching that all serious sins must be
acknowledged to a priest,” he said.
One’s sins can get in the way of understanding the need to
participate in the sacrament of penance, said Father Richard Lopez, teacher and
chaplain at St. Pius X High School, Atlanta.
“While nobody complains about going to a priest for Holy
Communion, they complain about going to a priest for absolution because of
pride and laziness in grappling with their sins. If you believe Jesus operates
through the priest when he says, ‘This is my Body,’ what’s the
big deal in believing it is Jesus when he says ‘I absolve you?’ The
problem is pride, and that is the first and worst sin.”
According to the Catechism, Catholics are required to confess
serious sins at least once a year. If one is aware of having committed a mortal
sin, he or she should not receive Holy Communion without first having received
sacramental absolution. Children must go to the sacrament of penance before
receiving Holy Communion for the first time.
“As Catholics, we’re required to go once a year as a
minimum to recognize we are sinners and fall short of the glory of God,”
said Father Howren. “This is the bare minimum. Venial sins are forgiven as
we do the penitential rite at the beginning of the Mass and the healing power
of the Eucharist also forgives venial sins.”
However, he said it is still a good idea to confess even venial
sins in order to experience the healing presence of Christ. “Personally I
think it’s important to our spiritual journey to invite God into all areas
of our life that need healing. In the sacrament of penance we open to God those
dark areas within us that need conversion. This allows him to bring about in us
true change of heart and change of life.”
This kind of conversion takes place slowly over a person’s
entire lifetime, and often people may repeat the same sin. “We all have
certain weaknesses and tendencies to commit certain sins,” said Father
Lopez. “It takes a lifetime of grace to work on them. I am always grateful
that I do not add new sins that often, but I constantly struggle with the old.
I do believe that discouragement is the biggest thing the devil can use against
us, and if we stop going to confession because we see no progress he is
delighted. Who knows the progress of grace? It is something that God does in
us—not that we do in ourselves—and he has a different timetable than
us. We need absolution because we need grace.”
Going often to the sacrament of penance and reconciliation does
not reflect how sinful those people are, rather it shows how much they desire
to seek God’s healing grace and guidance in their lives.
“Mother Teresa went and Pope John Paul II still goes to
confession everyday, not because they were bad people, but because they
don’t want to become bad people,” said Father Peek. “If
we’re really trying to make headway—if our goal is holiness—the
sacraments are going to be our greatest tools on the journey. In a culture
where we can hardly remember what we had for breakfast, how are we ever going
to remember what our sins were from the past month or year?”
“If we don’t do something often, we don’t become
very sharp at it,” said Father Marren. “However, if we come regularly
to confession, it helps us develop a keener conscience and better awareness of
sin ... Any gardener knows that if you’re going to have a good harvest of
vegetables, you have to weed your garden continuously. When we come to
confession we visit the garden of our souls and pull out all the weeds. We hope
they won’t grow again, but experience tells us they will. The sacrament is
the means we have to weed out the sins of our life and produce a garden of good
virtue.”
“The sacrament has two purposes,” said Father Mark
Fischer, FSSP, pastor of St. Frances de Sales Church, Mableton. “One, it
forgives us of sins, and two, it gives the grace necessary to stop committing
the sins. Over time we tend to forget our sins and we become lax if we
don’t go to confession often.”
Throughout the years, the sacrament has been called different
names, said Father Fischer. “It was called confession in that we must
confess our sins as an integral part of the sacrament. It was called
reconciliation in terms of the penitent’s relationship with God and the
effect of the sacrament on them. It was called penance in terms of what the
penitent is asked to do in trying to make up for sins,” he said.
“Penance is a sacrament of healing,” said Father Howren.
“We trust the love of God and his power over sin. It’s like bathing
in the mercy of God. The first time we were bathed was in the sacrament of
baptism. We made promises of how we would journey in faith. Sometimes we may
break those promises. The sacrament of penance is more than just confession. It
is a real experience of the presence of Christ. Some people refer to it as the
sacrament of reconciliation, but actually we are reconciled to God and the
church at Eucharist. I had a priest friend correct me once. He said the true
sacrament of reconciliation is Eucharist because that is when we are one with
God. So the sacrament of going to confession is really the sacrament of
penance. Most church documents refer to it as the sacrament of penance.”
The way the sacrament is carried out has changed dramatically from
that of the early church when serious sin could only be confessed once or you
were excommunicated. Serious sin was considered murder, adultery and idolatry.
Also, the penance given then would seem drastic by today’s standards.
“In the early church, when people became a Christian it
represented a major change in their lives,” said Father Fischer. “At
baptism all the previous sins they’d committed had been forgiven but they
were only allowed to confess serious sins once. Many would wait until their
deathbed to be baptized. Also, penances were very hard. In the old days you
could have penances that would last for years—the punishment would fit the
crime. Finally, in the early church people had to do the penance before they
could receive absolution.”
“For the first three centuries of the church there were many
persecutions of Christians, and out of fear many people left the church,”
said Father Marren. “When the persecutions were lifted many of those who
had left Christianity wanted to come back again. The people who had remained
faithful didn’t want them back. So the church’s solution to bringing
them back without upsetting the ones who had remained was to allow them to come
back only once. What happened then was that people became reluctant to come
back and would wait until their deathbed to make a confession. This became
known as the ‘second baptism.’”
In Ireland the church developed an entirely different spirituality
and people were encouraged to go to a spiritual counselor or confessor often,
explained Father Marren. The idea was that you could go as often as you needed
as long as you made satisfaction for your sins. So people would go to the
sacrament on a regular basis and they were given a penance to try and make up
for their sins. As more people were baptized and the church spread through
Europe, the two forms of confession met on the continent and clashed. Finally
the church in Rome agreed the form of the sacrament used by the Irish monks was
correct.
“We have the Irish to thank for things becoming easier,”
said Father Fischer, who said that the types of penance given at that time
would still be considered harsh today. “For example, for using medicinal
herbs to conjure an incantation you would receive 20 days penance of bread and
water. For perjury, one would have 40 days of bread and water and two years of
another penance. For speaking ill of one’s parents the penitent would
receive 40 days of bread and water the first time, but for the second offense,
the penance was three years. For striking one’s parent, the person would
receive a seven-year penance, and for expelling one’s parent from his
life, the person would have to do penance for as long as the separation
continued.
Today, penitents have the choice of speaking with the priest
face-to-face or in anonymity. Many Catholic churches have penance services
during Advent and Lent where members of their parishes can come together in a
communal celebration to prepare for confession before individually meeting with
the priest.
In times of war or grave emergencies, the church allows for a
priest to give a general confession and general absolution, but this is very
rare. According to the Catechism, “absolution takes away sin, but does not
remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised from sin the sinner must still
recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for
the sin: he must make satisfaction for or ‘expiate’ his sins. This
satisfaction is called penance.”
Father Peek said penance is to take one of, or all three forms of
prayer, fasting or almsgivings, and is designed to help the person with the
process of conversion and of mending his life.
He gives an example of how penance can heal. “A child runs
through the living room and breaks a valuable lamp—a prized family
heirloom,” he said. “There is no way the child can make up for the
loss of the lamp, but he goes to his room and brings some small object he
prizes to his parent and says, ‘Please take this. I’m sorry.’
The heart of the parent is sufficiently touched and the heart of the child is
sufficiently seen. Penance has that effect.”
A person’s confession is private and kept confidential. In
most cases, it’s also forgotten. “It’s forgotten in the mind of
God so there is no way it should be held in the heart of a priest,” said
Father Howren. “That’s part of our faith in the mercy of God. It is
to be remembered by no one.” |
