DEGRADATION IN THE CONFESSIONAL
The Catholic Church has priests forgiving sins on God
’s behalf as if they were the one offended, as if they were God!No trace of this doctrine can be found in the Bible. Jesus told the apostles that if they forgive the sins of any they are forgiven and if they keep anybody in their sins they are kept in their sins. He is only saying that if the apostles forgive God forgives too. He is not saying they are deciding who God must forgive and they are not forgiving as if they were God.
As a result of the doctrine that priests have to forgive sins, the Church requires that the priest hear your confession of sins. This is necessary so that he can decide whether to pardon you or to keep you in your sins. He needs to know if you are really being honest and are repentant.
Confessionals would be acceptable if there was no pressure. The Church tells people who have serious sins that if they do not confess they will go to Hell forever if they do not repent. This is bullying. It is extremely damaging to children. The Church needs to be stopped from demanding that children be sent to a priest to confess their sins.
The Catholic Church orders priests to act as if they never heard what they were told in confession.
If you tell your counsellor that you intend to abuse your child sexually he or she is obliged to tell the police. Some would say this isn't right. Confidentiality, though important, shouldn’t go that far. It is more important to stop the crime than to keep the client’s secret. The Catholic Church has the nerve to agree with all this so far. But it wants a legal exception. This exception is that priest must never be legally compelled to reveal what was told to him in confession even if it necessary to save a city from a nuclear attack. You need proof to justify such an extreme position. If the Catholic Church gets such a privilege what is to stop some new religion from arguing that it is a sin for it to report its clergy to the police for child-sex abuse?
Roman
Catholics are bound by Church law to confess their sins to a priest at least
once a year. The Third Chief Commandment
of the Church is, “To go to confession at least once a year.”
Confession
is supposed to have been sanctioned by Jesus when he told the disciples that
any sins they forgave would be forgiven and any they don’t forgive would not be
(John 20:22, 23). It is reasoned that if
they have to decide what sins to forgive or retain they have to be told the
sins. This logic is deliberately false
for forgiving and retaining can only be based on whether the person is sorry or
not and not on them telling their business.
Catholicism does occasionally permit absolution without confession. This shows that she believes that you don’t
have to know sins in order to pardon or retain them. Telling sins does not mean you are sorry.
Catholics see confession as a valuable deterrent to sin. Some would say they were put off many shameful sins for they couldn’t bear having to go and tell the priest that they did them. But if I could commit say, child sexual abuse, if I didn’t have to go to confession then I still wish I could commit the sin and have a shameful sin to tell. It is the heart that counts not the actions in morality. I would be more likely to commit the abuse when I have committed it in my heart anyway. Thus, you see that instead of deterring sinners, confession makes them keep their sins inside so it only looks like they were deterred.
What about people who feel that God will forgive them no matter what they do? These people might think God forgives them all the time even if they are not sorry so that they can do what they like. They believe in God so they will say they repent and ask God for forgiveness sometimes. Or they might believe that God will save them on their deathbed and they can repent and make peace with him then. The Church says that it is a sin to believe you can do what you wish and presume on the mercy of God. It says you need to repent meaning you wouldn't commit the sins again and you need at least resolve to make up the damage you did. In other words, you need to repudiate the bad things you did and resolve never to do them again. The promise to change is taken to be okay and you don't have to do the making up first before God will pardon you. The silly thing about this is, the person has proved that he or she takes advantage of mercy and here we have God forgiving the person without waiting until the person proved their sorrow first. Actions speak louder. Actions not words would speak in such a case. The person is being rewarded for their taking advantage and mockery of mercy.
The Church advises that you tell the priest
about your bad desires that you cannot help. It commands that you tell the
priest your bad desires that you entertain. When the filthy desire has to be confessed one will see that one might as well
carry out the desire so confession encourages sin. And if some do not behave as if it does it
does not prove they were not encouraged.
Over
time Catholics get used to telling shameful things knowing that the priest has
heard it all before from others or they can go to a stranger what who thinks
they don’t care about. The Church does
its best to prevent confession deterring for priests are not allowed to turn
nasty in the confessional.
If
you avoid sin because you don’t want to describe your sins to the priest then
that is selfish. You avoid the sin not
for God but for yourself. It is not the
sin you hate but telling it. This
attitude makes you as bad and guilty as if you committed the sin because you
would commit it if you did not have to go to the priest. Catholics would say that that is fine if one
of your motives is the avoidance of sin for the love of God. But if you really loved God you would cast
away the other motive. So, it is not
fine. You won’t be perfect for God so
how can you really love him? The
deterrence argument for confession probably is the reason Catholics can believe
in confession but it is incorrect. It
denies that sin is to be hated for the love of God. Jesus would not authorise anything as a
deterrent.
Confession
is often endorsed because of its alleged therapeutic value. This is fraudulent for it does not justify
forced confession.
Some
Catholics praise the confession system for it enables the priest to give advice
and educate on spiritual matters. This
can be done without the system.
Catholics
always start their confession by saying how long it was since their previous
confession and Church law binds them to.
This should not be compulsory unless the once a year rule is broken.
I commit a mortal sin and go to confession.
The Church says that some mortal sins are worse than others. I can commit adultery. You may do exactly the same. But if I intend more evil and malice than you did, my mortal sin is worse than yours. So outwardly the evil is the same but inwardly my evil is the greatest. Circumstances decree exactly how malicious the sin was. Clearly if confession is worth going to, detail about the sin has to be gone into. It is not enough to say, "I committed the mortal sin of adultery." The person must state any factors that may increase or decrease culpability. For example, adultery with your friend's wife is worse than adultery with a stranger's wife. Then you have two mortal sins - one seriously betraying your friend and adultery.
Catholics
are instructed to give the disgusting details about their sin to show what its
level of gravity is but only when it is necessary. But if it is unnecessary and
when they want to they are told to do it.
Catholics are not expected to answer the priest when he asks a question
that is unlawful – that is, one that serves no useful or relevant purpose. They are to mention all their mortal sins and
state as accurately as possible the number of times they committed each type of
mortal sin.
Religion
admits the importance of consistency because you can’t really believe in a
doctrine if you repudiate something that flows logically from it. If we have to confess our mortal sins then we
have to go into all the relevant details.
Since
circumstances which extenuate or increase the gravity of an individual mortal
sin have to be recounted then people have to describe their sexual sins in
salacious and explicit detail. Take
adultery. Each sexual act employed in it
is a separate mortal sin in itself. And so
is every second of time. Every second
you maintain a mortal sin is a fresh mortal sin. The sins have to be described in full detail. How you felt during each one has to be
mentioned plus the temptations and physical responses it awoke in you for you
are tempting yourself which is a sin.
You have to say what you wanted to feel and wanted to do next. If it is right to be vague on any sin or to
leave it out then confession is pointless.
The
sincere priest will ask filthy questions to help the penitent unburden herself
or himself only if she or he has confessed sexual sin and needs to tell
more. It is the penitent’s business to examine
her or his conscience so otherwise the priest isn’t supposed to ask
questions. The priest will know that a
person who hasn’t been at confession for a while must have some sexual sins
even if he or she hasn’t mentioned any.
God commands whatever reduces the likelihood of sin being committed for
sin is the worst evil so it is the priest’s duty to ask the penitent if he or
she has done this and that in a gentle way to encourage her or him to
talk. He has to do this to discourage
bad confession or to remove a person’s fear of confessing such things in case
it forces her or him not to tell it.
It is a mortal sin not
to get cleansed of mortal sin as soon as possible which requires running along
to the parish priest who may know or suspect who you have committed your sexual
sins with when you confess them. No true
Catholic would wait to go to a strange priest for they would not be as readily
available. Confession is such a curious
practice that one wonders why the papal Church really commands it. It is possible that some priests use it to
glean information to pass on to the
The
Church says we all have a psychological need to go to confession (Confession:
Why We Go?, page 9, Faith Pamphlets, Surrey, 1975). Go to confession? Really?
There are other ways to confess if you don’t want to have anything to do
with a priest.
Confession
is degrading because it is a man telling you God says you must change your life
or rot in Hell forever and that man cannot prove that you deserve Hell or even
that there is such a place and still he says you do. You must be very bad if you deserve that and
worse than a murderer so you need very strong proof before you can let anybody
treat you like that.
How
could you feel good that a man who feels that he is out of the danger of Hell
is absolving you from Hellfire? We like
to feel as good as everybody else and don’t like people who parade their
virtues in any way.
The
priest cannot absolve unless he judges first.
It is all right for him to judge you as deserving Hell. It seems so smug. The priest has no right to put people through
the ordeal of confession and the feeling that if they die they should go to
Hell forever. To go to confession is to
assist in the priest’s self-conceit and in his self-aggrandizement at your
expense. Don’t do it.
The
ashes dished out on Ash Wednesday and which are placed on the heads of
penitents in Church by the priest are a sign of penance and repentance and the
priests put them on the heads of people they know who are living in sin or
whatever and have no intention of giving up their sin. The priest could announce that only people
who are sincere can come up and if anybody is considered insincere they will be
refused and have only themselves to blame for they were warned.
The
Council of
Allowing
confession without absolution which has happened in the
The
real reason the popes allow absolution without confession in mission countries
is because their rules about priests having to be unmarried males who follow
the mind of the pope completely means that only a tiny number of dysfunctional
men can become priests so there aren’t enough to go round to listen to all the
sins. They know this looks bad so they
pretend to care about allowing the forgiveness of sins to be provided. The power of controlling these men and making
sure they have nothing in life to mean anything to them but the Church is too
much for the popes to resist.
So
we see the priest has to spend ages with each penitent trying to judge their
guilt, the degree of guilt and the sincerity of their sorrow. When you sin it is only a symptom of many
other sins. For example, if I confess to
an act of adultery, a mortal sin, with a woman who is not my wife. It is not enough to confess that. I have to confess the first time I felt the
attraction when and why I decided to do something about it. The less temptation I had to sin the worse the sin
is. So I have to discuss every temptation. I have to confess
what it was like when I first kissed her and what happened
after for there is a whole series of sins surrounding it. Normally small sins that I commit to
encourage the adultery to happen are thereby turned into mortal sins for
adultery is a serious matter. So if
Jesus meant to start a sacrament based on confession and absolution we reach
some ridiculous conclusions. It means
that the apostles and their delegates who he commissioned to preach the gospel
first and foremost were to be bogged down with this sacrament in those
precarious and difficult early days. The
absurdity of Jesus doing this proves that the Roman Catholic interpretation of
the verse from the John gospel is wrong.
It
gets a hundred times worse when one realises that the idea that venial sin
exists is foreign to the Bible which says that even sins that do little or
almost no harm are still serious hell-deserving offences – mortal sins.
The
Catholics believe in venial sin which is not serious and which is not turning
away from God and in mortal sin which is.
Mortal sin is the rejection of an infinitely good God so it is intending
an infinite insult. Venial sin is
limitedly bad.
Catholics
don’t have to confess venial sins if they don’t want to (Catechism of the
Catholic Church, 1458) but if they deliberately refuse to confess a mortal sin
the absolution they get will be invalid and they will be obliged to confess all
their mortal sins all over again including the sin of making a bad
confession. Concealing a mortal sin in
confession is a mortal sin in itself.
The Church says that it is lying to the Holy Spirit which can provoke
God into killing those who commit it (Acts 5:1-11).
Jesus warned that anybody who fails to forgive will not get forgiveness from God. Rome requires that you forgive others before you go to confession. No effort is made to check in the confessional if this is mature forgiveness. For example, I have a confidential work secret. I break confidentiality to a friend who soon tells everyone. I will be angry and resentful at my friend. If I start saying, "I forgive you for it is my own fault for I shouldn't have told anyone" that is pretending that it is all your fault. That is not mature forgiveness. It is bad forgiveness and should not be honoured by God or the Church.
The Church believes that if you die in a state of unrepented sin such as abortion or heresy or murder or adultery - to name a few examples - you will go to Hell and there is no chance of escape. Though these sins are deserving of Hell according to the Church, it is unrepentance you are really damned for. Unrepentance then is far more serious and dangerous than the sin itself. The longer the delay in repenting the worse your sin of unrepentance is. Catholics were never asked to state how long they neglected to repent of their sin in confession. They are never asked to say what took them so long. The duration and reason for the sin have to be stated otherwise there is no point in confessing the sin for it is only being half-confessed. The Holy Spirit forgot to inspire the Church to require that showing that confession is a human institution. Catholic confessions are invalid. It is obvious that the Church for some reason in the past only wanted sins confessed to get information of some sort. Confession seems more like a system to get gossip than a system of spiritual healing.
The
doctrine of probablism developed by the Jesuits and
which was first taught in
Confession only helped those who were conditioned to need to tell their sins. But they should not have been conditioned to have this need in the first place. Confession does not really help anybody. I saw how crafty the priests were in presenting it as a form of therapy! Confession is too brief for that. Feedback and follow-up sessions do not take place. The deceit of the priests is appalling.
For some, confession is about getting relief from a guilt that should not exist in the first place for the person has been manipulated to experience it. And this relief should be temporary for the guilt is irrational. Confession is not anything like therapy. Moreover, its purpose is absolution not psychological transformation. It is about theory not fact. It is about religion.
Those who can bear to go to confession may see it as the priest wanting to save them from what sin does and can do to them. In fact, the prime concern is getting the sin forgiven. It is about that. Even if it is hoped that this forgiveness will help and change you. that is not the purpose. It is really about pleasing God. The Christian faith is not about making others happy and caring for them for their own sake but for God's.
Sin and the destructiveness of sin are not one and the same thing. They are separate and distinct. The flu is not the same as its symptoms.
Love the sinner and hate the sin if possible would mean that you hate the sin because you love the sinner.
But people are fooling us. They won't admit what they really mean by all that. To each of them it means, "I love the sinner and hate their sin for their sin hurts and will hurt them." That is really hating the damage not the sin. They lie that they hate the sin.
Do they hate sins that are committed and then immediately repented of? The only damage such sin does is that the person temporarily becomes more bad.
And sin can be repented and forgiven and still be doing damage.
Hating the damage tells us some things.
One, it makes me wonder who you think you are to judge how much my sin damages me? An adulterous person could be very unhappy but maybe the unhappiness is down to depression and not so much the sin? The person may even blame the sin and be wrong!
Two, to judge the damage is good training for starting to judge me and a short step away from it.
Three, you will think that the more you love someone, the more you will care what sin might do to them. The more you will care about the bad choices they make and you can't be critical of somebody's choice without being critical of them. You are attacking them - period.
Four, many people will feel insulted or under attack because of your attitude and your "love". They will be unable to separate their own self-worth from their choices that hurt them.
Five, LGBT people will be unable to separate their own self-worth from their sexual choices that do not hurt them any more than any other choice does. If you see what they do sexually as sin even when it does little or no harm how can you possibly pretend you are not attacking and judging them? And if you consider their sexuality and activities as intrinsically disordered as the Catholic Church would say, you are saying it is not their true nature. You are saying their sexuality is inauthentic for it is not 'who God made them to be.' You certainly say they are lying should they say their sexuality is an essential part of their nature.
Thinking a
behaviour is destructive and hating it is not the same as thinking a behaviour is
sinful hating it.
It is hard if not impossible to love the sinner because the term sinner itself
is defining a person by their sin. It refuses to see that there may be
persons who sin but that is not the same as saying they are sinners as if there
is nothing else to them.
To really, actually love a person, you have to have a grasp of their feelings and motivations, of their values, of what they hold important and why. This knowledge is the kind people most strenuously try to avoid when it comes to their enemies. If people hate your sin and love you, they will have sat down at length and talked to you and spent time with you to find out what kind of person you are. To teach love the sinner and hate the sin is to urge hatred against others and especially against sinners who you don't know that well.
I
made my first confession in 1978.
At
the age of seven, I was introduced whether I wanted to be or not into this
astounding practice. Mortal sins have to
be confessed on pain of everlasting damnation and even possibly death at the
hands of the Catholic God. There comes a
time when one has a sin one finds impossible to tell even to a priestly
stranger no matter how weak in the head one is in relation to one’s
religion. In my case, it was the alleged
sacrilege of stealing a communion wafer to have Jesus in my house in 1984. The burden this caused was tremendous and my
nights were filled with the terror and dreams of eternal damnation and I
developed a complete lack of self-esteem.
The sin merited automatic excommunication which worsened things. The self-disgust and the fear and the guilt
drove me to contemplate suicide but I wouldn’t have done it for I thought then
that my everlasting damnation was assured.
I had to settle for dragging my jaw on the ground and wishing I had
never been born. Abusive mother Church
stole the best years of my life from me.
Now, she would tell me that she did not and that I was lying in a bed of
thorns of my own making. But the fact
that Catholicism is a cult of unsupported and needless faith proves that she
would be falsely accusing me because it is not right to harm anyone directly or
indirectly for the love of guesses.
The
thought of dying without confessing to a priest scares every Catholic for it
makes salvation more likely. I saw the
Church destroy the relatives of suicides like she had destroyed me with her
doctrine of auricular confession. Yes,
I was taught the difference between contrition and attrition. Contrition meant repenting sin for it was simply bad and against the love of God. Attrition meant refraining from sin because of the danger of punishment or in the case of mortal sin, everlasting damnation. Contrition forgave sin instantly provided you intended to go to confession. The Council of Trent stated: "though it sometimes happens that this contrition is perfect and that it reconciles man with God before the actual reception of this sacrament, still the reconciliation is not to be ascribed to the contrition itself apart from the desire of the sacrament which it (contrition) includes". With attrition, there was no forgiveness unless one got absolution from the priest. I realised that attrition was not real renunciation of sin. The person is only worried about the punishment not the sin. I saw then how evil the confessional truly was. I saw how it is just a way of condoning the evil done by those who use it with attrition. I saw then that the Catholic faith thrives on hypocrisy.
CONCLUSION:
Confession is demeaning and is nonsensical.
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