In my journey of becoming Catholic, I've had to seriously ask myself if my critical views of the sacrament of Reconciliation/confession are accurate. From what I read on some interesting Catholic blogs, and from what I hear at RCIA, the correctness of the Protestant "stereotypes" of Catholic confession is scarily accurate.
They are accurate in the sense that many (but not all) Catholics do indeed fall into the trap/habit of thinking that they retain their sins until they go to confession. I tremble when I think of all of the Catholic mothers who won't believe that their kids are spiritually off the hook until they go to confession... or the individual Catholics who continue to feel guilty for their sins until they can have them absolved. Even though the Bible does blatantly tell us to confess our sins to ONE ANOTHER, I guess I must have missed the part where we're told that we're not spiritually whole until our sins are "absolved."
In the course of salvation, absolution within itself is neither here nor there. If a person so wills, he/she can put on a good-enough show that the priest, on faith, absolves sins that are not even forgiven. Therein, what's the point of confession?
I do, though, think it's funny that even Catholics are afraid of laying out all of their sins to a priest. This should be the easiest step if they are truly repentant for their sins.
The practice of public confession of sin was prevalent in the first centuries of the Church--as was the practice of restricting how often one could confess! Penances were extreme, and lasted for years.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, the practice of confession to peers persisted, and was finally abrogated because of abuses.
You have some cool insight. One of the things I have heard about how public confession came to an end was that Christians were afraid of what their hearers would think -- and how those hearers would treat them in society, probably much like you have in mind when you said, "The practice of confession to peers... was finally abrogated because of abuses." :)
ReplyDeleteClamburger, as I'm sure you know, it has changed over the course of the centuries and continues to change. At one time, it was a once-in-a-lifetime sacrament, for the sin of apostasy. Almost like another baptism for people who had apostasized out of fear of Roman persecution. My understanding is that it only became a regular practice after the influence of the Irish monks, who believed in having a spiritual director who regularly helped you in your quest for sanctification. After Trent came the legalistic model, categorizing sins by number and degree and making the distinction between mortal and venial. I think this is the image that still sticks in the mind of popular culture and in the minds of Protestants as well, but really, this has been out of vogue for many decades now outside of very traditional and conservative circles. Now the sacrament is called Reconciliation and the healing aspect of it is recognized, not the scouring away of mortal sins. We recognize like the prodigal son that the Father has moved first - He is looking for us, and waiting for us to turn to him. A Protestant once showed me an article by reformed professor Robert Reymond, who said that a lot of Catholics these days are crypto-Lutherans. I don't like Reymond, but I thought that line was pretty good. You see, after Vatican II, we did in fact reform ourselves to a large degree. When you look in the dropoff in the practice of this particular sacrament, it isn't all because of ignorance and laziness. A lot of us do believe in Divine Mercy. We know we can't earn our way in. A lot of us do believe we are saved by faith.
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