Confession & Confession

Confession #1: I haven't posted in a while (but you already knew that!). Had end of the school year stuff to do, plus I'm getting ready to teach some summer courses (to other religion teachers in my area) on morality and scripture, plus I was helping a friend move, plus I have frequent bouts of laziness :-) So I'm scavenging a post I made on a mailing list I belong to in the hopes that it'll help me put my butt in gear and start posting again:

Confession #2: So here's the post on . . . confession! :-)

In the early Church we had two of what Catholics now call sacraments: baptism & Eucharist (the agape meal). During the persecutions in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, we had many Christians who lost their lives because they would not publicly offer sacrifices to pagan gods. We also had many Christians who saved their lives by offering these sacrifices in full, public view - saving their lives but not exactly placing them in good standing with the rest of Christendom who had lost parents, spouses, sibling and children to arrest, torture and death because they wouldn't sacrifice.

When the persecution ended and following Jesus was no longer punishable by arrest, torture and death, there was a clash - Christians who had willingly sacrificed to pagan gods wanted full membership in the church. Those who had lost friends and loved ones to the persecution argued that they should not be a part of the Church - they had worshipped fasle gods.

After some negotiations, a compromise was reached - each person that had worshipped false gods was to stand before the whole community and confess their sin (worshipping a false god). They were then to do one to three years of penance - fasting, studying Scripture, praying, receiving religious instruction, etc. At the end of this time of penance, they were received back as full members of their respective Christian communities.

In time this practice was applied to sins that were public, grave and scandalous. It was still a once-in-a-lifetime practice, though - it you murdered the mayor and were also a deacon of the church, you had one chance for this public repentance and lengthy penance. If you did something really, really bad again, that's it - one strike and you're out - you were no longer a member of your Christian community.

During the 4th and 5th centuries in Ireland, monks began the practice of daily confessing their faults to another monk, usually a superior of their order, but sometimes to a fellow monk. It was part of their spiritual practice, and still not considered a sacrament of the church. The regular way of making a sacramental confession was the public ritual established a few centuries back. However, something had happened in the span of time. Christian communities, from being small and localized (often meeting in people's homes) had grown large - so large that when a person wanted to confess some serious sin it was too much of a challenge to bring the whole community together. The community, therefore, established the rule that instead of confessing to the whole gathered community, the penitent would speak privately to the pastor of the community - the priest. That priest would then do the normal things associated with the ritual - listen to the confession, enroll the person in the list of penitents, and walk with that person from one to three years until they became reconciled with the community.

The practice in Ireland coincided with the rise of personal confession - by the 6th century the Church was naming confession a sacrament, and the practice of individual confession to a priest had replaced the standard form of confession to the community.

In current theological thought, then, celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation (casually referred to by most people as "going to confession") has a long history in Christianity. The first part of this is then that first and foremost reconciliation takes place between the individual penitent (confessor) and the community (the priest being the link between the penitent and the community). The notion that sins are individual actions that don't affect the rest of the community is laid to rest in this theological view - we affirm that our sins - even sins that no one else knows about - have a spiritual dimension that tears down the body of Christ. Like ripples in a pond our individual sins spread out and hurt the people around us - they make it harder for us to live lives that follow Christ, and they also make it harder for others to live out Christ-centered lives. The reality of the "body of Christ" is brought home in this view of sin.

However, since we look to the sacrament of confession as a sacrament (a moment where the grace/presence of God breaks through into our world), we also believe that it is a healing of the ruptured relationship we have with our God - a rupture brought about by sin.

We also, as those first Irish monks did, look on it as part of our spiritual growth - we regularly meet with our priest/confessor to talk about our sins - we start to develop a relationship with our priest - it becomes spiritual direction, where we receive comfort, aid, instruction and prayer on our Christian walk.

As with many things that are good and helpful for us in our Christian journey the Church tends to legislate - we must go to confession at least once a year. But that's because of the intense spiritual fruits that are brought to fruition by this practice. I tell my kids, whenever we talk about confession, that Mother Theresa would spend several hours each Saturday in solitary prayer, away from the eyes of the world and even her own sisters. Part of that prayer time was devoted to the sacrament of reconciliation . . . every single week she found the need to talk about her own spiritual journey with another person. Our previous Pope would confess every week as well. They recognized that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God - the sacrament gives us an avenue through which we can talk about this sinfulness with another person, heal our ruptured relationship with our community, and heal our ruptured relationship with our God.

As a quick aside, I find that confessing my sins to a priest, especially a priest that I know and who knows what I do for a living, is hard . . . very hard. But it's a help to me in my growth *because* it's hard - on a purely psychological level it's a brake for me - it helps me stop and think when I find myself tempted to sin - I know that at some point I'll need to talk about what I've done/not done/thought/said/etc.

If we know something by its fruits, than the spiritual, prayerful practice of reconciliation is a good thing - it brings a person closer to Christ, helps them become more faithful followers of the Word made flesh, and helps each of us build up - not tear down - the body of Christ.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo