Confession : A Sacrament for Today

Address to the Council of Priests of the Diocese of Dunkeld, Pitlochry 20^th March 2007 

Bishop Logan and Fathers,

Thank you for asking me to be here with you today and to address you on the subject of the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. 

When I was a seminarian and young priest in Rome in the 1970’s, I used to hear scary stories from fellow-students from other parts of the world about the demise of the Sacrament of Penance in their countries. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was not so in Scotland. And, indeed, when I came home in 1980 and was appointed as an assistant priest to a large city parish in Glasgow, I found that people were still coming in good numbers to confession. But 25 years later, the stories of my companions from other countries has become our story, a story of a gradual retreat of lay faithful and priests from the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.  

This may not be entirely a story of failure. We can possibly point to a more considered and adult use of the sacrament. We can point to a more nuanced sense of moral responsibility. We can point to a greater understanding of collective sin and of communal responsibility for social and global injustices.  

But, when all the talking stops, I believe most people think we have a problem which needs to be addressed. I wonder if you agree with Fr. Francis Marsden writing in the most recent edition of The Catholic Times:  “If the sacrament of Penance is a key indicator of Catholic seriousness about living a truly spiritual life, then the Church in the UK is in deep crisis. My estimate, for what it’s worth, is that perhaps one half of all practising Catholics occasionally frequent the sacrament, many of them only at Lent and Advent communal reconciliation services.”   

So how can we make the sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation, which was a pillar of Catholic spirituality in the past, a sacrament for today? This question has been given an even greater immediacy by the recently published Post-Synodal Exhortation on the Eucharist Sacramentum Caritatis in which Pope Benedict XVI writes: “The Synod recalled that Bishops have the pastoral duty of promoting within their Dioceses a reinvigorated catechesis on the conversion born of the Eucharist, and of encouraging frequent confession among the faithful” (SC 21). This is a pastoral duty the bishop shares with the priests as ministers of the sacraments and as his closest co-workers. Is frequent confession a realistic pastoral and spiritual ideal for the church to day? It is fitting that the Council of Priests should consider this important aspect of the life of the local church.

Faith, Spirituality and Pastoral Planning

1.  Pope John Paul II produced a prodigious amount of published teaching. One of his finest documents for the spiritual life of a diocese or a parish, was the Apostolic Letter Novo Millenio Ineunte (6 January 2001). His call to start afresh from Christ was just what I needed to hear and it gave me fresh impetus for my pastoral work. In that document he sets out 7 pastoral priorities, one of which is the Sacrament of Penance. But the other priorities the Pope lists in a certain way provide the vision of the Christian mystery and the spiritual atmosphere in which in which the whole care of souls can be advanced. He mentions holiness, the primacy of grace, listening to and proclaiming the Word of God, the Sunday Eucharist, and prayer.

This is an immensely spiritual agenda. What it taught me is that Confession can only be promoted in the context of an approach to pastoral life which privileges the supernatural, the primacy of grace, prayer, the Word of God preached and heard, and the mystery of the Eucharist. These elements exist in a kind of perichoresis of the pastoral life. They co-inhere and create together the holy Church, sancta et semper reformanda, in which people will see the need for the Sacrament of Penance.

 2. The demise, almost to the point of disappearance in some places, of the Sacrament of Penance is a sure sign of the internal secularisation of the Church. We talk about the problem of the secularisation of our culture which makes evangelisation so difficult today. External secularisation has become internal secularisation. In an Official Report published last March by the Theological Commission of the Bishops’ Conference of Spain on the Advance of Secularisation since Vatican II, the Commission identified 4 theological tendencies or trends on the back of which the internal secularisation of the Church has taken place: rationalism in the matters of faith; the reduction of the person of Jesus Christ to suit the secular humanist view of Jesus as an enlightened liberal reformer; the reduction of the mystery of the Church to its sociological elements; and the rise of moral relativism.

If we are honest, all these things have damaged the Sacrament of Penance: If Jesus is not really the Saviour of the human race, then who needs his forgiveness? If the mysteries of faith have no objective truth, then there is no sense to discourse on supernatural grace in the sacraments. If there is no objective wrong, there is no sin and no need for forgiveness. If the Church is just an aggregation of believers subject to the same rules of social development as any other grouping, then it is not really a sacrament of communion with God and with all humanity. To the extent that these tendencies have gained ground within the consciousness of priests and faithful, to the same extent has the Sacrament of Penance has suffered. So the renewal of the sacrament will also be part of larger spiritual, doctrinal, and theological renewal.

No wonder Benedict XVI, in his ad limina discourses to some of the European Conferences of Bishops in recent months has said that the Sacrament of Penance has to be re-learned. So I would say that you cannot simply re-launch the Sacrament of Penance by well-intentioned administrative moves. It has to be part of a renewal of faith. It could spearhead and focus that drive for renewal, but it has to be part of something broader and deeper.

3. Every Catholic, whether or not Confession plays a large part in their life, appreciates the centrality of the Mass to the life of the Catholic Church. Even if their practice is irregular, they know the Mass is big for the Church. It may be that a broader renewal of faith might begin with the Eucharist as the major lived activity of the Catholic community. This may also be the place to locate a catechesis on the Sacrament of Penance. This is actually a matter raised by Pope Benedict XVI in his post-Synodal Exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, published last week, where the Holy Father makes the following observations (SC 20):

 (i)“We know that the faithful are surrounded by a culture that tends to eliminate the sense of sin and to promote a superficial approach that overlooks the need to be in a state of grace in order to approach sacramental communion worthily. The loss of a consciousness of sin always entails a certain superficiality in the understanding of God’s love.” This is a remark which merits serious reflection. 

 (ii) “Bringing out the elements within the rite of Mass that express consciousness of personal sin and, at the same time, of God’s mercy, can prove most helpful to the faithful.”

 (iii) “Furthermore, the relationship between the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation reminds us that sin is never a purely individual affair; it always damages the ecclesial communion that we have entered through Baptism. For this reason, Reconciliation, as the Fathers of the Church would say, is laboriosus quidam baptismus (a laborious baptism); they thus emphasised that the outcome of the process of conversion is also the restoration of full ecclesial communion, expressed in a return to the Eucharist.”

 The importance of the Sunday Eucharist to the life of the Church, then, could be a context within which to locate a catechesis on the sacrament of Reconciliation.

4. I am nearly certain that the confusion surrounding the use of Rite 3 with General Confession and Collective Absolution caused a lot of damage to the practice of individual confession. There was a point when it was wrongly thought that Rite 3 might be introduced as an ordinary means of celebrating the Sacrament of Penance. In anticipation of this development, Rite 3 was introduced by some in an experimental way. However, even experimentally it was very often used abusively, without reference to the bishop and without making the faithful aware of the conditions for validity attached to its use.  Its misguided and wrongful use can severely compromise individual confession in a deanery or pastoral area.

Subsequently it has been made clear in authoritative statements (most notably the Code of Canon Law, the Catechism, John Paul II’s 2002 document Misericordia Dei) that Rite 3 is not for ordinary pastoral use. This is repeated by Pope Benedict XVI in his post-Synodal Exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, when he says: “I ask pastors to be vigilant with regard to the celebration of the sacrament of Reconciliation, and to limit the practice of general absolution exclusively to the cases permitted, since individual absolution is the only form intended for ordinary use (SC 21).”

I do not think it is helpful to engage in hair-splitting argument on the validity of Rite 3 if you did happen to use it on your own initiative. I think we should accept that it not permitted for ordinary use, and I would include as ordinary use, penitential liturgies before Christmas and Easter, before funerals and all other normal pastoral circumstances. I would add too that Rite 2-and-a-half which may include individual absolution, but without integral confession of sins or with limited confession of sins, should be avoided as another piece of pseudo-sacramental smoke-and-mirrors. There are, I think, better pastoral options for offering larger numbers of the faithful the grace of sacramental forgiveness. In any case, the local bishop is the one who must ultimately set the tone on this matter.

5. In commending the Sacrament of Penance to the faithful in homilies or instructions, I am sure it is helpful to say that you, the priest, go to Confession and that you find this experience spiritually uplifting and nourishing. Evangelisation is more about witness than about words, and if we can give a sincere and authentic account of the value of the sacrament of reconciliation for ourselves, this will carry weight with our people.

 Positive Pastoral Experiences

 1. In the parish where I was parish priest we had Confessions from 10.00am-11.00 am on a Saturday morning. I grew really to value that hour. It started after the 9.30am Mass. The first penitents would have been at Mass and they were seizing the opportunity to go to confession. They were killing two birds with one stone. Typically they were devout confessions of a more routine nature. This would go on until about 10.20 am. Perhaps there would be a lull. I would say my Office. Or I would read over the Sunday readings and, if |I had not already done this, scribble down the outline of my Sunday homily. Then a new group of people would start to arrive. People who had deliberately chosen to come to confession. I was always surprised about the number of adult males in this group. This would be fairly constant for about 15-20 minutes. Then there would be a final few penitents just catching confessions before the hour finished at 11.00am. Occasionally I may not get out until about 11.10am. Typically I would hear about 20-25 penitents in that hour. Many times I got no opportunity to pray my breviary or do any other reading. This weekly experience taught me 3 things:

-         the value of a set time for Confession, from a clear start to a clear finish;

-         not to exit the confessional during the set period;

-         if they know you are there, and are not in hurry to go somewhere else, they will come; if you are not there, or seem to be in a hurry to do something else, or cannot sit patiently and wait for them, they will not come.

 2. It was Good Friday. There was a period of Confessions from 10-11am. Busy. At 11.30am we had a children’s liturgy of the Passion, lasting about 45 minutes. Many adults were also present, mostly young parents. Just as well, really, because it meant the 3.00pm Liturgy was just full without being a crush. At the end of the liturgy, they could all come forward to venerate and kiss the cross, and having done that they could exit the Church in their own time. As I watched the columns come slowly forward to kiss the cross, on an impulse, I said: “If anyone wants to go to Confession, I will go into the confessional.” These were nearly all young parents – not the people who go to Confession regularly. I went into the box while the kissing of the cross went on. An hour later I got out. That experience taught me 3 things:

-         the importance of the kairos, the moment of grace;

-         the importance of improvisation;

-         the importance of  not restricting unduly times of confession.

  "Confessors, who are instruments of divine forgiveness, must be patient, never hurrying penitents, or, as sometimes happens, restricting the number of sins they can confess. Parishes should guarantee scheduled times for Penance or, when pastoral need recommends it, make the Sacrament available to the faithful before Mass. Advent, Lent and the days of the Sacred Triduum are especially appropriate times for evoking conversion and celebrating the Sacrament of Penance" (Pope John Paul II to American Bishops on Ad Limina Visit, published in L’Osservatore Romano 6^th May 1993).

 3. I cannot say I take the credit for this third experience. I found in my diocese – and I have encouraged it most warmly, and participated in – that in the days before Christmas and Easter, the deaneries organise a full day’s confession. In each deanery they choose a church. The dean or someone else draws up a programme. The priests of the deanery undertake to hear confessions all day or for as long as suitable. Before Christmas, in our largest deanery, Confessions were available from 9.00am – 9.00pm. I took a turn from 7.00-8.00pm, and I could hardly get Evening Prayer said during that hour. They told me that they had to get 5 priests to hear contemporaneously over the tea time period. On 28^th March, I am scheduled to hear from 5.00pm-6.00pm in St. John’s, Port Glasgow in the context of a deanery day of Confession in Inverclyde. I am sure they will invite me to take my turn in the Cathedral on Friday 30^th March. This experience taught me 4 things: 

-         the value of a copia confessoris in one place / different places over several hours on the same day;

-         the value of a diocesan witness to the sacrament of penance;

-         the value of such a sign of the commitment of the presbyterate to the ministry of sacramental reconciliation.

-         the value of readily useable confessionals in the Church. In this regard I notice that Pope Benedict XVI makes the point that “it is important that the confessionals in our churches should be clearly visible expressions of the importance of this sacrament” (SC 21).

Practical pastoral initiatives may not be able to happen in the same way in every diocese, but it is an approach that is capable of adaptation. (For instance in a diocese in the USA, I believe, they arranged to have Confessions in every parish in the diocese on a certain day of the week at the same time over a number of weeks.)

4. In his post-Synodal Exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI mentions a practice which probably does not play the part it once may have done in the spirituality of the Catholic community in Scotland. He says: “Finally, a balanced and sound practice of gaining indulgences, whether for oneself or for the dead, can be helpful for a renewed appreciation of the relationship between the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Just in case we need reminded of what an indulgence is, the Pope explains: “By this means the faithful obtain remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has been forgiven” (SC 21). I did say that the renewal of the Sacrament of Reconciliation would have to be part of a broader renewal of faith which privileged the supernatural and the primacy of grace and of spiritual realities. Perhaps we need to put some effort into recovering the practice of gaining indulgences in a spiritually helpful way for the present age, as a practice, which to quote SC21, “can effectively sustain the faithful on their journey of conversion and in rediscovering the centrality of the Eucharist in the Christian life.”

5. And let me leave the last words on the pastoral practice of the Sacrament of Reconciliation to Pope Benedict XVI: “All priests should dedicate themselves with generosity, commitment and competency to administering the sacrament of Reconciliation.” I cannot say better than that.

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 SUMMARY OF PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

1. Make the Sacrament of Penance a pastoral priority;
2. within a broader programme of renewal of faith.
3. with a Eucharistic/Mass focus;
4. including a new catechesis on the reality of sin
5. Collective absolution is not for ordinary pastoral use;
6. Priests need to witness to the grace of confession in their lives.
7. Serious and careful planning of confession in parishes with clearly defined times for the sacrament.
8. Readiness of the priest to be available for confession.
9. The value of the place for Confession : confessional “box”/penitential room
10. Diocesan or deanery days or events for the sacrament of Reconciliation
11. A witness to the sacrament by the Presbyterate as a whole.
12. A new focus on indulgences in relation to the sacrament of penance.

Philip Tartaglia

Bishop of Paisley