Fr Don’s Blog: Confession
| Saint Augustine of Hippo (ancient city in modern-day Algeria) was famous for his great mind, remarkable conversion, and deep faith. His classic fifth century autobiography, Confessions, is less about his sins (though he reveals plenty) and more about God’s loving mercy and grace. In other words, he confesses that God is God and we are not, that we suffer from what psychology calls the human condition or what the church calls original sin. When we grasp our relationship with God, we get frozen in a state of awe in the divine presence. But many of us, out of shame, guilt, discomfort, laziness, mental blocks, fear, or apathy, turn away from the divine presence as best we can; it’s too much for us. |
| The Catholic Church institutionalized the Sacrament of Confession in the thirteenth century and introduced confessional boxes, dark, veiled, and private, as the standard venue for confessing in the sixteenth century. But the origins and intent—as well as the ecclesial practice for most of our church history—were very different. Like other rituals we inherited, the church reshaped it. Its roots are in the Jewish tradition of atonement (at-one-ment or being one with God and others). The Gospels present John the Baptist and Jesus with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin, which flows from ancient Jewish rites of purification and cleansing. |
| Originally, the future sacrament was to be received only once in a lifetime because, through baptism, our sins are already forgiven—we have been washed clean by the salvific act of Christ. The four Gospel accounts offer various versions about the authority to forgive sins. While Mark and Luke reserve it to Jesus, Matthew and John record Jesus giving explicit authority to some disciples to bind and loose or forgive the sins of others on His behalf. In the early centuries of the church, grave or major sins were confessed in public arenas and penance was made in ways that the sinner’s community was impacted. In the sixth and seventh centuries, monks in Ireland introduced a private form of confession that allowed Christians to return and repeat their minor sins in exchange for additional absolution. |
| This private model began replacing the public system throughout Europe and the Christian world; this is where modern psychology would say we got off track. Offering this form of repetitive confession feeds obsessive-compulsive cycles of dysfunction by which penitents or patients are driven by anxious scrupulosity and relief dependency rather than by healthy vulnerability or a genuine desire to improve or convert. This loop of dark and secret confessing of the same sins can be helped by modern psychological techniques, like Exposure and Response Prevention, that assist those who suffer anxiety and uncertainty over addictive actions or other inadequacies to move through compulsive cycles and/or obsessive thoughts. |
| Saint Augustine called himself a “prisoner of habit” but overcame his imprisonment through a seemingly contradictory combination of willpower and admitting his powerlessness through reading God’s word, embracing intellectual truth, and patiently relying on God’s intervening power. He also removed himself from self-judgment or condemnation by realizing that there is only one judge and it is not him; rather the judge is Him in whose presence we stand in awe. Like Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century who suggested that we move nearer to God through an examination of consciousness, i.e., being consciously aware of how our actions bring us closer to God or drive us farther away, instead of through an examination of conscience that self-judges us to be right or wrong, acceptable or condemnable, Augustine accepted his human limitations. In doing so, he was able to both embrace and promote Christ’s divine message of love and mercy. |
| While some sacraments have moved in a positive direction over time, I don’t think this one has. Yet, periodically, a person—usually someone who has been estranged from the church or from God for a significant time or who has hit rock bottom and desperately desires a new beginning—comes forth to make a deeply spiritual, sincere, or radically life-changing confession. It is then that I am reassured of the value of the sacrament. Even if it gets abused a thousand times, it is worth it for those rare times of sacred enlightenment. |
