The Church was founded for sinners. Sinners are her reason for being. The early Church was so aware of the human failings of the closest followers of Jesus, and the efficacy of prayer, that it took a long while for the names even of the Apostles to be included in the Canon of the Mass.
Some time ago, the mother of a student I was helping was diagnosed with cancer. She asked me through her son to make an appointment with a specialist in Sydney whom she visited some weeks later. His diagnosis agreed with the specialist in her home country, and he recommended similar treatment. Within a few weeks, she was off to another country to see a doctor there. This diagnosis was the same/ Still she was dissatisfied. She was not looking for a doctor who could treat her problem; she was looking for a doctor that would tell her that she didn’t have a problem.
I’m sure that all the doctor whom she consulted would have liked to tell her what she wanted to hear. They could have sent her away happy by telling her that the diagnosis was wrong: but her happiness would have been short-lived. They knew that she would never be rid of the disease, until she admitted that she was suffering from it. Fortunately for her they were too professional to allow their feelings to interfere with their medical judgement.
We are not at all unlike he gentle and loving lady who found it difficult to face up to her physical condition. We are all prone to sin – and in moments of genuine self-knowledge, can see the direction in which our actions or thoughts are taking us, and may seek help. More often then not, however, if our sins are serious, we look for excuses and try to play down the harm that our actions or omissions have done to us and to others.
Physical not the only or worst evil
Cancer is not a moral blemish – it may, if undetected or untreated, destroy the body; it can’t destroy the soul. Serious sin on the other hand has the dubious distinction of always contaminating the soul, if it be freely willed; and occasionally even of killing the body. Less serious sins can impair the soul’s ability to function well and cumulatively predispose us to more serious lapses.
The Catholic Church has always taken sin seriously. Sin has never held surprises for her. Her love for sinners, however, is inexhaustible. She wants only that they turn from their sin.
The Church was founded for sinners. Sinners are her reason for being. The early Church was so aware of the human failings of the closest followers of Jesus, and the efficacy of prayer, that it took a long while for the names even of the Apostles to be included in the Canon of the Mass.
They were prayed for, as were all the other dead, that their sins might be forgiven and that they might have ‘everlasting rest,’ because as Origen (185-253) says ‘not even the Apostles have yet received their joy’.[1] Justin Martyr (100-165) and Irenaeus of Lyons (120-165) thought that even the martyrs should be prayed for at Mass. Sinners, amongst whom we all are numbered (the bishop at Mass calls himself Our Lord’s ‘unworthy servant’) belong by right to the Church which was founded to offer us salvation.
The Cinderella Sacrament
Among the seven special channels of Grace let to us by our Lord, Penance may well be the Cinderella Sacrament. At least these days, when sin is often glossed over, if not positively marketed, and confession and absolution are regarded by cynics as hang-over from a time before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the post WWII all-pervasive influence of the social sciences and the media.
Perhaps the reason for the gradual neglect of Penance is as much due to the privacy that we have become accustomed to associate with it, as to the hardship that some people experience when trying to approach it; along with the fact that too few priests dared speak of it positively, or encourage its use in those heady days post Humanae Vitae and the sexual revolution of the 60s. Confessing sin made little sense when sin was flaunted as ‘liberation’ and ‘maturity,’ and ‘Flower Power’ was the catch-cry of the acidheads and drop-outs. LSD, and the drug culture held the stage, and few had the ability to question their dominance and their popularity.
We know better now. Alone among the Sacraments Penance is celebrated without fanfare, usually when on is by oneself with the priest. Because it is concerned with personal sin, and therefore with personal weakness and imperfection, penance may be considered by many who attach undue importance to what others think of them, to be hardly an occasion for celebrating. Our Lord takes a contrary view: ‘There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents then over ninety-nine just whoa have no need of repentance’.[2]
If there is joy in heaven, don’t we have cause to celebrate here on earth? There is no shame in admitting we are sinners. The shame arises when we don’t.
Our ancestors confessed their sins to a priest in public, kneeling in the church while the priest held a wand in his right hand, with which he would touch then heads of passers by who knelt to ask, for his blessing. These wands are still to be seen in the confessionals of the Basilicas of Rome. Churches would have little plaques with Peter’s tiara and Peter’s keys above the bench where the priest sat, to demonstrate that the priest was acting by our Lord’s authority, and that it was God, not the priest, who granted absolution.
There were the days, before TV and the electronic media generally, when people’s awareness of sin was more heightened, and their willingness to admit their need more uninhibited. These days many people have been encouraged to play down the existence or even the possibility of sin, and as a result have been and are still proving incapable of dealing with its effects on their lives.
If help is finally to be sought, it is more likely to be from their local doctor, or a psychologist or psychiatrist, or in naturopathy or herbal medicine. Instead of an escutcheon bearing Peter’s crossed keys, the authority for the help that is offered is symbolised by the various University Testamurs hanging from the wall of the psychiatrist’s clinic. Others again may seek the anonymous balm of talk-back radio or turn to surfing online.
We will be asked by determinists, materialists, pragmatists and utilitarianists and their ilk: why seek forgiveness from Christ through his priest in the Sacrament of Penance for something over which we have no control?
Clearly the Sacrament of Penance makes sense only to a person of Faith, who believes in God, and in Jesus as Redeemer, accepts the authority of the Church, and takes responsibility for his actions. This implies theological and philosophical positions that may be unpopular and neglected today, but whose foundations were laid on Calvary and have stood the test of time.
How unwise those are who neglect Penance for whatever reason, can be gauged by a simple analogy. Someone bitten by a poisonous snake or spider wouldn’t hesitate to appeal for help to find an anti-venene quickly, before the poison spread throughout the whole body and killed it. No one with a life-threatening complaint like gangrene would hesitate to submit to surgery, even amputation of the affected part, if this were necessary to save one’s life. So why procrastinate about seeking help when one’s spiritual life is in disorder?
Sin is addictive; denial is a common ploy
Some would answer that not all sinners see their way of life as disordered. While this is true, and St Thomas adverts to a similar mentality in his own day (the thirteenth century) this by no means obliges Christians to agree with the sinner. Any more than a doctor need agree with a smoker who claims that smoking is harmless; or with an alcoholic or drug addict, who insists that their addiction is doing them no harm. There is a curious story told in the life of St Corbreus, an Irish bishop who died in 899 on March 6, now his feast day, that warns against this temptation to self-deception.
One day, after the bishop had sung the Mass he had a vision of a horrible spectre with a fiery collar around its neck and a mantle in tatters around its shoulders. The vision said that it was Malachy, formerly kind of Ireland (he died in 860 after reigning 16 years) and that he was being punished in Purgatory for his neglecting to do good when he could have. When Corbreus asked him ‘Did you not do penance for your sins’] he replied: I did not do sufficient; and that was due to the weakness of my confessor whom I bent to my will by offering him a gold ring’. Both the king and his confessor begged the prayers of the saint, who along with his priests prayed for both of them, and obtained their release form their torments and entrance into heaven.
Sceptics may well smile at the ingeniousness of the bishop and his Cathedral Chapter, but both the king and the bishop led well-documented lives, and the account of the vision is given soberly by the Bollandists, who are not known for their gullibility, in the 64 volumes of their Acta Sanctorum.[3] Political correctness notwithstanding, Catholics have too many incontrovertible examples over the past two thousand years not to take seriously the possibility of losing oneself through sin in any one of its myriad forms.
Sin is addictive – and like all addicts, sinners have a plethora of excuses and bolt-holes to which they have recourse when the subject of confession is raised. As sin is a disorder it is hardly surprising to find sinners arguing against the need for treatment. Nor is it surprising to find the media on the side of the sinners. A sympathetic and understanding priest whose own life is lived as far as possible in the Presence of God, ca work wonders in such circumstances.
I have heard people argue against the need for confession on the grounds that it makes people neurotic. Yet from my experience I should think that more people become neurotic by trying to justify their disordered behaviour, and by arguing against the existence of sin, or their disordered behaviour, and by arguing against the existence of sin, or the need for Confession, than do so by submitting their sins to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and healing.
Frequent confession heals and renews. It reconciles the penitent to himself, to others and to God. And like any important aid to good health, physical or mental, our spiritual health will improve the more often we approach the Sacrament. Go to confession at least once a month, and if you don’t see signs of improvement, seek advise from a wise and understanding priest.
Carl Jung, no friend of Catholicism, has pointed out that moderns have lost all the medieval (Catholic) ancestors and set up in their place the ideals of material security, general welfare and ‘humaneness’. ‘[I]t takes more than an ordinary dose of optimisim,’ Jung adds, ‘to make it appear that these ideals are still unshaken’.[4] Shaken, undoubtedly they are, but still standing like lighthouses beckoning to fearful travellers, and guiding them out of the maelstrom.
Large numbers of people throng Catholic Churches over Easter to attend the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and priests are, more often then not, asked to hear confessions before offering Mass daily in public churches here in Australia. This gives the Church and the whole country cause for ‘more than an ordinary dose of optimism’ that Jung’s judgement may not apply to all ‘moderns’. Given adequate sympathetic catechesis in parishes and schools, the Cinderella Sacrament may well find itself the Sacrament of the Third Millennium. Certainly, by its means, we can face an otherwise uncertain future with renewed faith, hope and realism.
This article previously appeared in Annals Australasia, issue 2, March 2019. Reproduced with permission of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Australia.