www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West General Absolution East and West

Esteemed group,

It is anathama to me to even consider the prospect of adoting an even greater usage of "general absolution". As has been mentioned here earlier, public confession was the norm in the early church. As churches grew and human nature gave way to scandel, such public forums were seen as more pejorataive and that private confession was the next best thing. The priest acting "in persona Christi" and as the ambassador or mayor of the faith community is there to reconcile the individual, who through sin, has separated himself from the faith community. The human element in our spiritual life requires a compuntion manifest toward God and man to whom he is a "living icon" of the Master. A general absolution nearly mitigates this human element. We, as a faith community, ARE our brother's keeper and as such are accountable to the faith community. To eliminate this accountability through general absolution leads us straight to protestantism which posits that my personal relationship with God is all I need. It is only a short trip from there that the whole sacramental life is found to be supurfluous.

Athanasius

With all respect, Lance (and usually agreeing with you), I must disagree with you on your position on auricular confession.

While I agree that have a spiritual father (in the Latin Church, a "regular confessor") is the context of the greatest benefit for auricular confession, even going to confession to an "anonymous priest" is helpful. The examination of conscience and the revelation of one's sins to another human being, who at the same time represents Christ, are immeasurably helpful. To have to face your sins head-on, contemplate the awfulness of that sin, and to develop the humility required to confess, are all, to say the least, beneficial, let alone the certainty of forgiveness upon hearing the words of absolution.

As the late Fulton Sheen said of confession, who knows what level of piety, of humility, of love, came from those anonymous grocery-list confessions?

One other thing...

In this day and age, in this society, should we really be demanding LESS accountability from the faithful?

I can see it now -

"I can go out and do anything I want, and on Sunday morning just before Mass, I'll get absolution - and I don't even have to face up to my sins!" (This is the sin of presumption, but that's not mentioned anymore either).

Y'know, it just ain't Christian to sow wild oats on Saturday, and then pray for crop failure on Sunday.

[ 07-30-2002: Message edited by: NDHoosier ]

Dear NDHoosier,

First of all, Big Guy, unless you are in favour of married bishops, I'm out of the picture for episcopal consecration even BEFORE I submitted my last post on this thread .

Secondly, I didn't make any positive affirmations about anything here. I'm only trying to make heads and tails of this issue.

Even the person who attends private confession once a month, and approaches Holy Communion every Sunday and more frequently, Gen. Absolution would be done at every Mass that person would attend.

And, assuming no one's a pure saint just yet, would that person's venial sins, and the righteous man falls seven times a day or so I've read somewhere , not be addressed in a General Absolution, and is this not the intention of those who promote this rite?

I say it would!

The issues of private confession and the impact this rite MIGHT have on its frequency, or current infrequency is another matter.

Alex

Dear Lance,

As always, we appreciate reading the posts of "Lance-a-lot!"

Thank you for your painstaking assessment and comprehensive review of this subject.

And I say that a "Deacon-to-be" is a "Beacon!"

I think the generalization that many Catholics don't attend regular private confession is a true one.

The Church's guidelines in this department for those who wish to attend Communion each Sunday is, as I believe, (and I don't wish to hurt my chances of becoming a bishop more than I already have here) once a month (?) although this used to be once every two weeks.

That's assuming one doesn't commit adultery or murder before the next monthly confession, of course .

My own view here is that the Canadian bishops may just be looking for a way out of a deteriorating situation in the Canadian church with respect to confession attendance records.

Perhaps they also feel that enforcing this "prying" sacrament may be what's turning people, especially sexually overhealthy young people, from the Church.

Rather than work against it, as I believe General Absolution would do since, if given a choice, everyone would do the General thing, I think the Mystery of Forgiveness needs to be reworked.

I personally think that the Orthodox form of confession, facing an Icon, with hand on the Gospel and a priest who could just have some sensitive training in this area, or else also possess (I'm really going out on a limb here) some behavioural training is the way to go.

We all have our horror stories with priests. This is mine.

The priest I was confessing to began to give me a lecture on how to arouse women, preferably only the one I was married to.

He was married with six children, and, at the age of about 80, he had lost nothing of his lust for, shall we say, life . . .

While in the seminary, he said, he had such powerful urges that he even laid down in a coffin and had the lid closed.

But even that experience didn't have a calming effect . . .

The confession lasted for half an hour with people getting concerned behind me.

After I left him, I wondered if I should still not go to confession one more time.

Now, if this happened to most other people, they might get turned off confession altogether.

But, then again, I'm not most other people . . .

I agree that we need much better trained confessors than we are getting and I now have a spiritual father who is rather traditional and conservative.

But I'm one of those for whom that's not a bad thing.

And I'll go to you for confession any time.

I think Gen. Absolution is one of those commercial, assembly-line type rituals that imitates the world.

That's definitely not the mandate our Lord gave us through His Church.

Alex

Dear Friends
I am sure that a lot of what I will say is known to you - please forgive me - I am not trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs - but it will also help me to get my thoughts in order for our meeting.

OK - here in my parish we have a Liturgy Group whose remit is to plan the emphasis for the liturgical celebrations for the year - ie our Parish Feast, the annual Mass for the Bereaved, Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter and so on. This group involves me as well .

Now cometh Advent and Lent we prepare the Parish Services of Reconciliation. But this is the problematical area for us.

In the Latin Church there are three Rites of Reconciliation
1 Individual Confession, and Individual Absolution
2 Communal Penitential Service with Examination of Consscience with individual Confession and Individual Absolution
3 Communal Service with a General Form of Confession and General Absolution.

Rites 1 and 2 are supposed to be the Norm and Rite 3 is only for use in times when people are in danger and it will not be possible to hear individual Confessions - yes Sept 11th comes to mind here and other such instances. But it is not supposed to be the norm. And this is where the problem really starts. Reconciliation is as we all know neglected by many, individual confession is seen as a stumbling block, it is often badly taught and people do not seem to be availing themselves of this wonderful Sacrament as often as they did in years past [ can't speak about the pre-Vat II practices as I am a post-Vat II convert ] , and so the practice has crept in by stealth that at the Communal Penitential Services which start out as Rite 2 there are not enough Priests to hear the Individual Confessions of so many people [ our Church can hold 1400 ! and it can be full for these Services] Therefore though a Service would be planned as Rite 2 because of a lack of Priests the people would be instructed that General Absolution would be given to those who wished to avail themselves of it but all serious sins must be Confessed individually to a priest as soon as possible and the penitent is supposed to mention that he has been at a service where General Absolution was given.

In our Parish it has become the norm to in practice prepare a service for General Absolution [ Rite 3] in Advent and Rite 2 in Lent. Once this custom is known then you get people from other parishes coming for Rite 3 Services as they know they will get General Absolution and then not go to individual confession. However this situation is an abuse and we realise that our people are going from one General Absolution to another the following year without going to individual Confession in between. As a group we have asked the Clergy [ and they are at our meetings ] to give teaching about this and it does not seem to happen. Last year our Bishops decided that the practice had to stop. So we managed at Lent and in planning the programme for this year's meetings we said rather emphatically to the Clergy that we were not happy preparing a Service that we knew would be taken as Rite 3. There was a lot of talk - and we were reminded that every celebration of the Mass had a form of Penitential Rite and people were therefore being given Absolution then. We seem to have hit a stumbling block - but 8 out of the 10 members are convinced that Rite 3 must not be used at Advent - our Parish Priest is sitting on the fence - bless him- our Senior Assistant made reference to the Holy Father's Letter to all Priests on Holy Thursday [ which reminded them that Rite 3 was not permitted]. The next meeting when this will be brought up again should prove quite interesting.

I would be most interested to hear how our Eastern Friends manage to give sufficient teaching about the comfort that this Sacrament gives and it's benefits. Can you suggest how we can bring our people back to the regular reception of Confession - we need help

I realise that most of what I have said pertains to the Latin Church .

On a personal note- I also have my own horror story about Confession - which happened a few months after I was Received - and I ran from the Confessional - a most unsympathetic Priest to put it mildly and I never went back to him. Now I do see my Spiritual Director face to face - and I can just about cope with Confession then.

Sorry about the length

Friends,

Please do not misunderstand, I am not advocating abolishing private auricular confession. However, in my opinion, the theology behind the idea that auricular confession is necessary is weak. It did not exist in the early Church as we have it now. Some Churches never had it and continue not to have it. What do we make of all this? Can we be positive be said that allowing general absolution will have a negative impact on private auricular confession? I don't think that the those who actually go to confession would stop if general absolution were offered. And as I said before it is God who makes the sacrament effective, so maybe the grace given at general absolutions might lead those who don't privately confess to do so. Again, just my thoughts and as a future deacon (God willing) I am bound to uphold the teachings of the Church. But I don't think it hurts to discuss things.

In Christ,
Lance

Dear Lance,

Thanks for mentioning this. It sorta explains why we have the custom we have. I'm glad it's not just laziness. :p Incidentally we do have private auricular confession, face to face with the priest, but it is usually done only in Lent, and perhaps a couple of other times a year. For most of the time, people just go to the priest before the Liturgy begins, and he prays the Hoosoyo over them.

I would tend to agree that the more serious sins should be confessed privately, while the lesser ones could be dealt with in a different way. Whether a general absolution would work toward this is something I do not know, as I would figure absolution in confession takes care of all sin, but if you don't confess the mortal ones, how would you be able to be forgiven of the venial ones as well? Yet, the Confiteor and Kyrie in the Roman Mass, while not taking care of "mortal sins", still forgives venial sins, and is thus a type of "selective general absolution".

I don't know. Chalcedon still confuses me. :p

At any rate, even though all of what I've just said doesn't even make sense to me, let alone anyone else (probably), I am enjoying the conversation. Keep it coming.

Perhaps we could do as St. John of Kronstadt did in his parish-have everyone in the church yell out their sins simultaneously and then move about the church placing his epitrakhil over them and absolving them individually -the best of both worlds.

No wonder he was a saint. And another reason to have churches without pews

[ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: Diak ]

***see replies to Lance below***
L:Given these facts, I find the current theology requiring private auricular confession pretty shaky.
What are we saying? The early Church was full of unforgiven sinners?
******interesting theme that would be interetsing to discuss
L:The Assyrians and Malabars
were wrong in not doing what the Latins and Byzantines did? Soldiers given general absolution on the
battlefield that get killed are forgiven but those who survive aren't.
******coming from a Roman Catholic interested in and attending ByzCCh: I was under the impression that RCs are expected to go to private confession as soon as possible after a (very rare) general absolution if they had serious sins to confess. This might not be correct at all - anyone with authoritative info please speak up. I don't know of an actual gen. abs. having taken place and what might have been said to the people in this regard, but this is my understanding. This is because the 'emergency' nature of the reason for having a genl. abs.

L:A lot of inconsistency here. And
this despite the fact that Trent affirmed that Holy Communion forgives not only "venial" sins but
"mortal" ones as well provided the recipient has "perfect" contrition.
******RC teaching (see Catechism of the Cath. Ch., but I can't give you page #s): Actually the Eucharist doesn't "forgive mortal sin" (it should already be forgiven before reception of the Eucharist); the point is actually and simply that one <could> theoretically receive communion while in the state of serious/grave/mortal sin if one has 'perfect contrition', but he is <required> to go to confession asap afterwards (this assumes there was some reason that private confession was impossible and the reception of communion was absolutely necessary as opposed to desirable - a rare case, I think), but it shouldn't be done in order to put off confession...would be applicable for soldiers in battle or for other serious reasons. The danger would be it is presumably rare to have truly perfect contrition, and the Church requires a person to be 'in the state of grace' (no mortal sin on ones conscience already or has received sacramental absolution for such sins) to receive the Eucharist; otherwise a sin of sacrilege is committed. Of course this 'loophole' obviously shouldn't be a temptation to avoid confession in order to receive communion. That is my understanding of the matter. I replied because I thought it was a serious misunderstanding of our doctrine. Thanks for the interesting discussion.

L:The same goes for Anointing of the Sick.
******true, but in this case the sick person does confess to the priest if able - thus he is forgiven. I think if he is unconscious or otherwise unable to confess, his sins are, so to speak, 'provisionally' forgiven, meaning that if the person had a desire to be forgiven/repentance when he had his faculties, then he would be forgiven through the anointing/prayers of the priest.

Dear Colleagues in Christ,

As an aside, I thought that Assyrian monastics were once quite numerous, especially in the tradition of St Isaac of Nineveh. Am I wrong?

The Assyrian monasteries are no longer around, as a result of persecution, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a rich monastic tradition, one that saw monks recite the entire Psalter daily, divided over the seven daily Hours with three "Marmeetha" or "Kathismata" per Hour.

Anyway, Lance is right and we are only discussing this topic.

The reason why this issue raises so many red flags for Catholics in Canada is precisely because of the fact that private confession appears to be falling off.

And no one wants to help that process by allowing people a General Absolution whereby they don't have to enumerate their sins etc.

What the Gen. Abs. does do is offer us a sense of the communal dimensions of sin, that sin is not just a private matter, it does do harm to the people around us, our community, society and the Church.

We seem to have lost a sense of penance overall, a sense of our own inclination to sinfulness and the fact that our nature is "diseased" with the effects of Original Sin.

Perhaps the answer lies in the Eastern view on human nature and sinfulness.

There has been much nonsense written and spoken about sin in recent times.

The notion that sin is only a sin if "we feel it to be a sin."

The fact is that we can break a commandment of God and not feel it to be wrong at all. Does that make it any less of a sin?

And then there is the notion that once we confess our sins then our "slate" is wiped clean and we are "perfect."

In fact, we know that our human nature is sinful and inclines toward the "law of sin" or rebellion against God.

This is why the Fathers teach that we must pray "Forgive me a sinner" until our dying breath.

So I believe a main "block" if you will against the very notion of us even having personal sins (so much can be explained by social/cultural negative influence to make our personal responsibility null and void) is that we think there can even be a time when we are outside the weakness of our human nature that inclines toward sin.

And we cannot be.

That so many of us feel we haven't anything to confess only indicates that we have already given ourselves our own form of personal exoneration/absolution in advance.

And that is not good for anyone's spiritual development.

Alex

Angela,

It's a difficult situation when layfolk have to convince the clergy of their own theology! Funny thing is that it DOESS seem to happen most around the Most Neglected Sacrament.

The one or two times when we had a big ol' penitential service where folks expected to also have the opportunity to confess, we borrowed priests. I've seen this done in RC churches, too. It works beautifully - there are enough priests available, folks who want to go to someone they know can, and folks who want to confess to a stranger can too.

Would that be a possibility for you?


Sharon

Sharon Mech, SFO
Cantor & sinner
sharon@cmhc.com

Yes, I understand a RC church in Florida has a "speedy" drive through confessional for seven sins or less.

Sharon - how true that statement was - about convincing the Clergy I mean. We will continue to quietly nag and eventually thanks to the new [young]Assistant and the Senior Assistant I think we will win through.

Yes for the Rite 2 Service [ general Exam. of conscience built in to a Parish Penitential Service with Individual Confession etc ( you know - the permitted one ) ] we have "imported" Priests from other parishes but found another snag - all the Parishes left their Penitential Services in Lent as late as possible and this has sometimes been a problem - though I have to say that when the word spread round the City that you did not get general Absolution in our Parish for Easter - well you can imagine - the numbers dropped off

I have to say that when it is said that the use of General Absolution will bring people back to Individual Confession, I am far from convinced. And I say that as someone who was very guilty of using/misusing it. It took me a very long time after my horror experience to be able to approach a priest.

But the fact still remains we have to be able to teach our Parishioners about it - and how to - well that is a problem. I don't like being legalistic and quoting Cannon of the Church - or CCC paragraph numbers [ and yes I have the necessary 'bits'] I wonder sometimes how we can do it - I know what finally made me see what a joy Confession was - a short paragraph in Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love - where Mother Julian was discussing how a child who has done wrong turns to it's Mother and hides their fac in her as they say they have done wrong - and of course a mother will always forgive her child.
I remeber turning to my Director after reading that section and saying - "Aah now I begin to get it - " and he just quietly smiled. Maybe this is what we should all be teaching - I don't know - but there are times when individual Confession is a 'must'

Ooh forgot to say to MikeC - don't know about 'drive through' but I did hear of people suggesting Confession over the Internet :p

[ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: Our Lady's slave of love ]

Angela,

There's a WONDERFUL booklet you might want to get ahold of - I know that in our own Hieromonk Elias' parish they give them to the parents of all kids approaching their first Reconciliation - it's called "Kiss of Christ" and it's a collection of Catherine de Huek Doherty's sayings/writings on confession. Just wonderful stuff. I know it comes out of Combermere, ONT Canada - if I had a source I'd grab you one...

But yeah, catechesis and conversion of heart are necessary.

Sharon