One of the most iconic practices of the Roman Catholic Church that distinguishes it from other denominations is the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession.
Now, I've had fellow Christians who are Protestants tell me that they've seen Catholics use this as a "get out of trouble free card" that allows them to do horrific things and then confess them and walk away as if nothing bad had happened. I suppose that's a possibility, but it's clearly a misuse of it, and not in keeping with the clear intention of being healed from our sinful state so we can go and sin no more.
Of course, any good thing can be misused to do wrong - that's what sin is all about. But it doesn't change the proper role of that good thing when used for good. So, instead of focusing on how this sacrament may be misused, it makes more sense to me to clarify its proper use with some insights from my own journey.
Let me begin with a public confession of my own: When I was in first grade, I stole a handful of change from a change container in my parents' bedroom and spent it on candies and cheap toys in a store near my school. When my parents asked me where I got the goodies, I made matters worse by lying about it and telling them a friend had bought them for me.
Not that big a deal, right? Well, I had that on my conscience for over ten years before I admitted it to my parents, who immediately forgave me and said it wasn't a big deal. The problem was, it was a big deal to me, and coloured my self-image for an entire decade.
The matter is that sin is a great burden, and seeing oneself as being sinful can be a burden so heavy that it leads to other self-destructive behaviors as we try to avoid dealing with it.
An analogy I use for carrying burdens that are too much for us is from the filming of the movie Superman II which was released in the early 1980's. In the movie, actor Sarah Douglas played super-villain Ursa. In one scene, she was lifting and throwing a bus full of passengers. Of course, the human actor was not capable of such a feat. So for the filming the bus was being lifted and carried by a crane using a chain, while she was standing underneath acting as if she was actually carrying it. Then, suddenly, the chain unkinked, the bus dropped slightly, and she found herself pushing up against the full burden of the bus, thereby causing herself significant injury, because she was so in character that she'd forgotten that she wasn't actually capable of carrying the bus.
Whenever we try to carry the burden of sin ourselves instead of letting it go, we also do ourselves significant injury. And, while it's fine to say, "Oh, I'll tell God about it in my private prayer," we're not so good at doing that in a way that feels honest enough. Just like with the rest of our faith, we need to practice it with other people, not just alone with ourselves and God - hence the concept that we're all part of the body of Christ. An early reference to this fact that we need other people is in Genesis 2 beginning in verse 18, when God recognizes that humans need other humans - even a sinless Adam (before the fall) was not able to exist in communion with God alone, and needed human companionship.
But whom do you tell? If you tell a friend, they might gossip and the whole world will soon be judging you harshly for a stumble - or at least for admitting it. If you tell the person you've wronged, it might actually end up harming them more than if you'd kept quiet. (Obviously, failing to tell them when that causes more harm is in itself another sinful behavior.)
In fact, if you tell anyone who isn't sworn to silence on pain of a penalty so severe that they're bound to keep it quiet, you run the risk of making the consequences of your sin even worse.
Time for another story: during my first year of university, when I was still looking for a Christian community where I felt at home (being too far from St. Paul's Presyberian Church to attend it), I spent some time attending a Pentecostal church. I loved the sincerity about their faith, I appreciated the respectful display of gifts of the Spirit, and I learned and grew from the sermons. Eventually, however, I moved on - I think in part because the atmosphere felt just a little too scrutinizingly judgmental for my tastes. But perhaps one of the things that stuck in my craw most was one sermon on abortion.
Now, long before becoming a Catholic I recognized the value of human life from conception to natural death. After all, in Luke 1:39-45 when the newly-pregnant Virgin Mary visits Elizabeth, the six-month-pregnant mother of John the Baptist, Elizabeth tells Mary that the baby in her womb leaped for joy at encountering the mother of her Lord. That's as clear a statement as any Christian needs that these two unborn people were already recognizably living humans.
So, this particular sermon was on a topic I agreed with: the importance of valuing human life from conception onwards. However, the minister did something that shocked me: he told a story of two couples who had come to him for counselling after trading spouses and causing an unwanted pregnancy. They wanted to confess their deed, have an abortion, and then go and sin no more. To prevent them from having an abortion, he told them he would expose them in front of the entire congregation unless they relented and allowed the baby to be born, which they consequently did, and a happy, healthy child was born and all was well.
Now here's my problem with that: do you think either of those couples ever went to a minister for counselling or to confess a serious sin again? I have my doubts: their confidence was so badly betrayed that they were likely scarred for life. You could make the argument that saving this child's life justified it, and I can see how the minister may have felt compelled to act, but the fact is that, by immediately using the "nuclear option" instead of using powers of reasoning and gentle persuasion, this minister took away the future possibility of confidential confession of sins from both couples. And he likely made everyone listening to his sermon think twice about confessing serious sins as well.
So, when I have a burden of having done something I feel terrible about, whether it's something that no one else needs to know about, or whether it's something that requires some act of restitution to those affected, for the sake of my own healing and ability to stop carrying a burden too large for me, I can go to any Catholic Priest, genuinely confess and admit that I am sorry, receive absolution along with some act of penance such as saying the Lord's Prayer as part of my healing, and go about living my life knowing that my burden has been lifted and the Priest won't gossip about it to anyone else, on pain of excommunication if he did.
Of course, that means the Priest has to also be careful not to accidentally take my burden on himself, but rather act as an intermediary of grace, to avoid busting his own moral gut.
I have to say that, from the time I was a child until I joined the Catholic Church, every time I had to confess some burden of sin I had to be prepared for it making matters worse, and I had no consistent mechanism for such a reconciliation, so I had to think through my approach each time. Since joining the Catholic Church, I know I can safely be unburdened from any sin, without fear of making matters worse, by admitting it to God in the presence of a Priest, a fellow human I know I can trust to keep confidence. Then I can go and make good on any consequential matters as a moral act, rather than one compelled by an overwhelming burden of guilt.
(Copyright (c) 2011, Reg Harbeck, all rights reserved)
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