31 July 2019, The Tablet
Why we still need to confess
Every parish priest will be aware
that Saturday queues for the Confessional – which were a routine part
of Catholic parish life a generation or more ago – have gone, possibly
for ever. Every parish priest will also be aware that 90 per cent or
more of attenders at Sunday Mass will go forward to receive Holy
Communion. In other words, the old link between Confession and
Communion, one being a condition of the other, has been broken.
That may be a good thing, and the link made between the two may have been faulty theology and an over-legalistic interpretation of the rules. But nothing has really replaced it. And that is a loss. A channel of divine grace has been allowed to dry up, as the distinguished canonist Ladislas Orsy described in a widely-discussed article in The Tablet last month. Fr Orsy advocated a thorough renewal of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the name by which Confession is now officially known, and it is obvious from the response that that need is now widely recognised. He suggested that the sacrament could be administered in a much richer liturgical context – in other words, in a special service of prayer and penance, designed to emphasise the reconciliation between God and the individual penitent that the sacrament brings about.
There is another connection between Confession and Communion, however, that might also be fruitfully explored. The language of the Mass itself is heavily loaded with pleas for God’s merciful forgiveness, from the Kyrie to the Pater Noster and the Domine, non sum dignus. It is hard to believe that God refuses every one of them. Holy Communion itself, humbly and properly received, contains its own absolution from sin – though Catholic teaching since the Council of Trent has been that grave sins wilfully committed must be confessed to a priest first. But the criteria for such mortal sin has shifted to the point where it requires the deliberate and wholehearted rejection of God – something the average parishioner may never be tempted to in a lifetime.
This suggests, therefore, that a thorough examination of the theology behind confessional practice needs to relate it to the other sacraments through which God’s mercy is made available, particularly the Eucharist. And it needs to embrace Pope Francis’ reminder that sins may be social as well as individual, including sins against the environment, and to take seriously Pope John Paul II’s concept of structural sin, which widens the scope for individual complicity in social injustice. The old penitential approach to an examination of conscience through breaches of the Ten Commandments may need to be widened to include the failure to exercise the virtues, such as courage, prudence, justice and moderation.
None of this diminishes the importance of individual reconciliation with God through the sacrament, which can lift a crushing burden of past wrongdoing that, left unhealed, can be cancerous to one’s spiritual and emotional health. But spiritual medicine has more than one purpose. It is to help people to become who they were designed by God to be, by promoting their integral human development. The role of a revised Sacrament of Reconciliation in that process could become central to it.
That may be a good thing, and the link made between the two may have been faulty theology and an over-legalistic interpretation of the rules. But nothing has really replaced it. And that is a loss. A channel of divine grace has been allowed to dry up, as the distinguished canonist Ladislas Orsy described in a widely-discussed article in The Tablet last month. Fr Orsy advocated a thorough renewal of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the name by which Confession is now officially known, and it is obvious from the response that that need is now widely recognised. He suggested that the sacrament could be administered in a much richer liturgical context – in other words, in a special service of prayer and penance, designed to emphasise the reconciliation between God and the individual penitent that the sacrament brings about.
There is another connection between Confession and Communion, however, that might also be fruitfully explored. The language of the Mass itself is heavily loaded with pleas for God’s merciful forgiveness, from the Kyrie to the Pater Noster and the Domine, non sum dignus. It is hard to believe that God refuses every one of them. Holy Communion itself, humbly and properly received, contains its own absolution from sin – though Catholic teaching since the Council of Trent has been that grave sins wilfully committed must be confessed to a priest first. But the criteria for such mortal sin has shifted to the point where it requires the deliberate and wholehearted rejection of God – something the average parishioner may never be tempted to in a lifetime.
This suggests, therefore, that a thorough examination of the theology behind confessional practice needs to relate it to the other sacraments through which God’s mercy is made available, particularly the Eucharist. And it needs to embrace Pope Francis’ reminder that sins may be social as well as individual, including sins against the environment, and to take seriously Pope John Paul II’s concept of structural sin, which widens the scope for individual complicity in social injustice. The old penitential approach to an examination of conscience through breaches of the Ten Commandments may need to be widened to include the failure to exercise the virtues, such as courage, prudence, justice and moderation.
None of this diminishes the importance of individual reconciliation with God through the sacrament, which can lift a crushing burden of past wrongdoing that, left unhealed, can be cancerous to one’s spiritual and emotional health. But spiritual medicine has more than one purpose. It is to help people to become who they were designed by God to be, by promoting their integral human development. The role of a revised Sacrament of Reconciliation in that process could become central to it.
I agree with the author's statements about expanding the breadth of the Sacrament, because to me he is bringing out not merely the individual nature of sin and forgiveness, but also the social as well as communal nature.
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