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Why do I have to confess my sins to a priest? Michael A. Get FREE articles and audio teachings every week in my discipleship emails! Your email address will not be published. Don't subscribe All Replies to my comments Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Confession of your sins to a priest is dead wrong. One would wonder why Jesus would give the Apostles the power to forgive sins if not to make use of that power for the salvation of souls? Particularly when this seems to align with the opinion of the Early Church. You shall not make a schism, but you shall pacify those that contend by bringing them together. You shall confess your sins.
You shall not go to prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of light. I think that the weight of the opinions of the disciples of the Apostles falls heavily in line with the Catholic doctrine of Confession, and that this is worth taking into account when discussing the truth of any doctrine.
Some of the difficulty is that we have lost the understanding of what confession and repentance mean and how to do them, and also what forgiveness entails. With a proper understanding of these words, I have no problem with saying that the apostles could forgive sins, or that you and I can as well! I see. In an effort to find out the actuall meaning of those words, lets take a look.
This seems doubtful as the intention of Christ. At the very least, his wording indicates that this is a real power, not simply an innovative way to proclaim the gospel. I will also leave you with two more Early Church quotes to maybe shed a little light on how they viewed these terms. Their consciences have been branded as with a hot iron. Pour forth now that power which comes from you, from your royal Spirit, which you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and which he bestowed upon his holy apostles.
I realize these are not as early as the prior citations. However, they still predate the formation of the cannon of the books of the New Testament, so it is these opinions that would be passed down and used to even determine Holy Writ.
Thanks for the quotes. Again, the first two have to do with confession and repentance, which is different than forgiveness. Even then, these are English translations, and so I would need to read them in the Greek or Latin to see what words they were using. No, I would not say that. Even then, there is once-for-all forgiveness offered by God to everyone, no matter what, and there is fellowship-forgiveness which is for people already in relationship with one-another so that they can continue in fellowship.
During the first centuries the reconciliation of Christians who had committed particularly grave sins after their Baptism for example, idolatry, murder, or adultery was tied to a very rigorous discipline, according to which penitents had to do public penance for their sins, often for years, before receiving reconciliation.
From that time on, the sacrament has been performed in secret between penitent and priest. This new practice envisioned the possibility of repetition and so opened the way to a regular frequenting of this sacrament.
It allowed the forgiveness of grave sins and venial sins to be integrated into one sacramental celebration. Confession refers to the act by which we tell our sins to the priest. Reconciliation refers to the goal of the celebration by which the sinner is reconciled to God and the Church see CCC The ritual for the sacrament is called the Rite of Penance, but is fitting to refer to it with any of these titles.
The sacrament consists of three actions on the part of the penitent:. It is also important to examine for sins of omission. Related: Examination of Conscience. There are two types of contrition: sorrow over hurting one we love called perfect contrition and sorrow over getting caught or over the punishment that comes because of sin imperfect contrition.
We should ask God to help us achieve that perfect contrition in which we are sorry for having wounded the God who loves us and whom we should love in return. When we are truly sorry for our sins, we regret having ever done them. That leads naturally to our trying to remedy the damage caused by sin and to having a firm purpose of amendment to avoid that and other types of sins in the future.
The Church says that all grave or mortal sins must be confessed as soon as possible CIC A mortal sin involves an action whose object is grave matter that is committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.
Grave matter is generally understood to be something that violates the Ten Commandments. This is why it is so important for mortal sins to be confessed to a priest as soon as possible. Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment.
Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God; it does not break the covenant with God. Jesus is the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world Jn He healed the sins of the paralyzed man and of the woman caught in adultery Mk ; Jn He taught us how to be brutal toward sin, instructing us in the Sermon on the Mount us that it would be better to rip out our eyes or cut off our hands if they were leading us to sin than to do nothing and lose our bodies and souls forever in Hell Mt He taught us to pray to the Father to forgive us our sins and to bring us to forgive the relatively smaller debts of those who sin against us Mt ; Confession of our venial sins shows our hatred of all sin because even venial sins are against the love of God and neighbor.
No, you should stay at home and wait for your canonization papers to arrive! The person should, however, mention that forgotten sin in the next confession to receive advice and a proper penance. If this is a routine occurrence, it is probably an indication that one is either confessing too infrequently or not fully aware of the true horror that is a mortal sin, because one should not forget mortal sins easily. The Church recommends that Catholics receive the Sacrament of Penance frequently.
The Sacrament of Penance is a spiritual resurrection bringing us to life again after we were dead through mortal sin Lk
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