The Church’s healing gift

In a perceptive column last week, our writer Sarah-Leah Pimentel proposed that Catholics make use of the sacrament of reconciliation as a part of an interior spring-clean. She described confession as “the gift the Church gives us to approach Christ in childlike trust and know that all things will be made new in the light of God’s love. It is a place where we can let go of the past and look forward with hope to the future.”

 

The sacrament of reconciliation is indeed one of the Church’s great gifts to the faithful. Properly conducted, by confessor and penitent, it is a grace-giving ritual.

Over time, alas, confession has been invested with an ambiguous reputation. By some it is regarded as an anachronistic obligation imposed by the Church, rather than as a means by which to restore and deepen one’s relationship with God.

As a consequence it has come to be seen by many as an optional extra in living the Catholic faith.

Pope Francis understands this. Earlier this year he broke with papal tradition by publicly going to confession, a practical but also symbolic demonstration of the truth that even a Holy Father is a sinner in need of God’s mercy.

To those who believe that they do not need an intermediary to obtain God’s mercy, the pope said: “God, in his sovereign mercy, forgives everyone, but he wanted those who belong to Christ and his Church to receive forgiveness through the community’s ministers.”

Doctrinal requirements and spiritual restoration aside, confessing one’s sins can have therapeutic benefits. The burden of feelings of shame or guilt over sinful actions, sometimes endured over years, can be psychologically and even socially damaging.

The sacrament of reconciliation is a restorative mechanism: reconciling one’s relationship with God broken by sin, healing one’s conscience, and providing the foundation for repairing one’s relationship with others.

The sacrament can also facilitate conversion, a means of repudiating a sinful life to make a new start. It can help us to forgive ourselves for our trespasses, and others for theirs.

Many Catholics continue to misunderstand the purpose of confession. The sacrament of reconciliation should not be seen as an obligation to over-scrupulously enumerate a list of venial sins.

It may well be, of course, that a penitent feels that a minor sin has created a breach with God or otherwise weighs on the conscience. In this case, such a sin should be brought before God through the mediation of a confessor so that healing can take place. It is not necessary, however, to bring before God minor transgressions only to have something to say.

In fact, a good confession need not involve a list of sins at all. It can take the form of a conversation, with the confessor offering advice, rather than simply issuing penance.

It does not help that in catechism, children are often encouraged to take the “shopping list” approach, being given a catalogue of lapses in good behaviour that are supposed to assist them in examining their conscience (sometimes such lists include acts that aren’t even intrinsically sinful).

Surely it would be more fruitful to teach children how to appreciate the sacrament not as a punitive measure designed to palliate an angry deity, but as a way of achieving grace from our loving God. They should be encouraged to discuss with their confessor the state of their conscience, rather than to rattle off an inventory of minor mischiefs. It is a lesson even some adults may benefit from.

An obligation also resides with the confessors. Pope Francis rightly said that a priest who lacks in empathy and is unable to “sow hope in the penitent’s heart” should rather not administer this sacrament until he changes.

Of all the sacraments, that of reconciliation must place the heaviest burden on the priest. The unbreakable seal of the confessional locks these secrets between confessor, penitent and God. The shocking confessions which many priests inevitably hear, and in some cases their inability to act on unjust situations, must be most difficult to live with.

As Catholics, we must keep the confessors in our prayers.