The Sacrament of Penance, also known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a Sacrament most Protestant churches don’t know. The exception to this rule are some Lutheran churches. What is this Sacrament and where does it come from? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Penance is a sacrament of the New Law instituted by Christ in which forgiveness of sins committed after baptism is granted through the priest’s absolution to those who with true sorrow confess their sins and promise to satisfy for the same. It is called a “sacrament” not simply a function or ceremony, because it is an outward sign instituted by Christ to impart grace to the soul. As an outward sign it comprises the actions of the penitent in presenting himself to the priest and accusing himself of his sins, and the actions of the priest in pronouncing absolution and imposing satisfaction. This whole procedure is usually called, from one of its parts, “confession”, and it is said to take place in the “tribunal of penance”, because it is a judicial process in which the penitent is at once the accuser, the person accused, and the witness, while the priest pronounces judgment and sentence. The grace conferred is deliverance from the guilt of sin and, in the case of mortal sin, from its eternal punishment; hence also reconciliation with God, justification. Finally, the confession is made not in the secrecy of the penitent’s heart nor to a layman as friend and advocate, nor to a representative of human authority, but to a duly ordained priest with requisite jurisdiction and with the “power of the keys”, i.e., the power to forgive sins which Christ granted to His Church.

It sounds impressive, so to go short, you discover you sinned against God, go to court, accuse yourself and get punished by a priest. Why on earth would someone do that? Isn’t that weird? Isn’t it a tool that the Catholic Church uses to suppress the people. You have to do this or be eternally damned? To me and a lot of other Protestants, the very existence of this Sacrament in the Catholic Church was solid proof that the Church aims at controlling everything in people’s minds, where the Bible says that you’re freed out of slavery by following Christ. And now the Catholic Church puts you back in slavery again. Why would someone accept that?

And this wasn’t the only problem I had with this practice. To me, Catholics were confessing their sins to a priest and that the priest in his turn would forgive them after ordering them to say three Hail Marys.  It’s also required to confess your sins, therefore I thought that by denying people to confess to God directly, and requiring to confess to the priest, the Church establishes absolute power over the conscience of the people. Of course the Bible tells you to confess your sins, but isn’t confessing your sins to Jesus enough?
This also implies that as long as you tell your sins to a priest, do the three Hail Marys, you can continue sinning afterwards, just go back in do the three  Hail Mary thing again and you’re done. Right? You see it in all the movies and when you read for example the Catholic Encyclopedia briefly, you get confirmed you are right. Plus Jesus never said to His apostles they should sit in a Confessional and hear Confessions, so the whole Sacrament is invented by people anyway. Why even call it a Sacrament? Jesus didn’t even institute it.

As you know, I’m now a Catholic and went to Confession, so something in my way of thinking changed. And I never change my opinion to fit in. My peers are almost all Protestant, so changing my mind wasn’t even an attractive option. What I did was delving deeper into history by reading the Bible and the earliest Christian Writings. That led to some interesting insights I want to share with you here.

The first thing that struck me was that the earliest Church Fathers, so the disciples of the Apostles, mention explicitly that sins have to be confessed to ‘presbyters’. So to priests and bishops. And they point to differenet sources in Scripture to back that up. They mention lots of texts I never associated with this, but when you put together the whole picture, it actually makes sense.

First, Jesus teaches stuff to his disciples apart from the crowds. Sure he preaches to the crowds, but he also takes the disciples aside and teaches them other kind of stuff. And later on he sends them out on journeys to tell the good news to other people. He doesn’t send random people, but always some of his Twelve Disciples. So they are different from the crowds. In the Gospel according to John we read how Jesus gives them the power of forgiving to those asking for forgiveness. Remind that Jesus was rebuked by the Pharisees earlier by forgiving sins, because only God is able to forgive sins. And now Jesus gives that power to the Apostles. And he also gives them the Holy Spirit. Later, in Acts we see the Apostels doing similar stuff Jesus did: raising people from the dead, healing the sick and other things. So it’s clear Jesus gave special powers, including the forgiveness of sins to his disciples, and from history we can see that the disciples passed that power on to their disciples creating one long chain that leads to your priest sitting in front of you in the confessional. So that was quite shocking for me to discover.

But how about confessing your sins to a priest? Aren’t you suppose to confess to Jesus? After all, you’ve damaged your relationship with Jesus by sinning, not the relationship with your parish priest. Why do we need the priest to hear our confession. I learned that Catholics don’t confess to their priest, although it may look like it on the first hand. They confess to Christ indeed. The priest is merely sitting there as mediator. I’m a psychologist and I like this idea, because it’s actually what I would do in relationship therapy. You invite both parties to talk about their conflict and listen to them. You may give advice on how to deal with the situation and you even give them homework in order to learn avoid getting into that conflict again. Psychologists aren’t around since the dawn of civilization, the academic field only exists since the 19th century. But apparently in the Catholic Church this very system is already in use for at least 2000 years. I was really stunned to learn that!

So basically what Confession is, is a short relationship therapy between you and Christ, with the priest serving as a negotiator/mediator in the conflict. After Confession, the conflict has been solved and both you and Christ are at peace again, so you can join His table and receive him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. And it feels really good to be reconciled with Christ again!

References:

• Scripture Catholic - Sacrament of Confession of Forgiveness of Sins
• Catholic Encyclopedia - The Sacrament of Penance
• Fisheaters - The Sacrament of Penance
• Documents of the Vatican - The Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Catholic.org - A Guide for Confession