Confession

[yrieithydd]

Auricular confession raises Protestant hackles as soon as it's mentioned. `Christ is the only Mediator; we do not need to go through a priest to be forgiven', they say. And yes, that's all true, but it completely misses the point. It's not about having to go through a priest to be forgiven, but a gift from God, a Sacrament, for our benefit. We don't have to go through a priest to be forgiven, and indeed that is not quite what is happening. We are confessing first to God, then to our Lady and the Saints and then to the priest. It's almost as though the priest is eavesdropping on what we are saying to God. Then he's there to offer advice and insight and the pronounce the absolution (the power to do which was given by Christ). The trouble with confessing one's sins to God secretly is that it is so hard to get them into proportion and one can be tempted to be unclear and unspecific `because God knows already'. With sacramental confession, the priest can put things into proportion and one has to be specific because he doesn't. Actually, the person who needs to be specific is the penitent, it is she who needs to acknowledge the specifics of what has happened, or how can she `truly repent'?

God gives us the sacraments and who are we to despise his gifts? We are human beings, enfleshed spirits who know each other and ourselves only in relation to one another. God does not save us from these things, but through them in the sacraments.

This brings me on to an aspect of sacramental confession that I had not really considered until someone talked about it at the CUC Discussion Group about the Salvation Army* and pointed out that as well as rightness with God, there is also reconciliation between the penitent and the Church and that the Church is represented in the priest.

Yes, the sacraments can be abused and treated mechanically, but that doesn't stop them being wonderful gifts.

*This basically became a discussion of sacramentality and how vital (or not) it was in Christianity.

Comments

[curig.livejournal.com]

Yes. It reminds me of that bit in Angela's Ashes where the priest finds Frankie distraught before the statue of St Francis. Frankie says he can't go to confession because there are too many things to say, and the priest says why not just tell St Francis and he'll just listen. Then he pronounces absolution and gives penance. I'm not describing it very well, but I think it's a great moment.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

IT sounds it. I must read Angela's Ashes

[caliston.livejournal.com]

I think I agree. Though it does put a strain on the priest to be able to contain the confessions he has heard. I wonder whether issues of abuse come out of different views of the Church: Protestant post-Reformation "The Church is fallible: let's try to cut it out as much as possible", Catholic "The Church is inherently good, though it gets things wrong at times". The former seems to be the prevailing culture in much of my (Protestant-leaning/secular) experience.