The Practice of Confession and Reconciliation
Part II of III - History Outline

 
History Outline
 
History:  Who, What, When, Where?    ** WHY? ** -- as important as details might be, purpose is an essential aspect in telling a story
 
Confession & Reconciliation have changed form through ages due to needs of culture and condition – Sitz im leben – but purpose is golden thread that holds the tapestry together
 
Sin offerings in Leviticus – for UNINTENTIONAL sins against God – and in Lev. 16: Yom Kippur (10^th day of 7^th month): Day of Atonement.  Purpose: Well-being of the people, the community, was understood to be threatened by sins committed as a people AND as individuals – sins of priests, sins of rulers, sins, of family leaders, sins of the ordinary people.
 
Ten day period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is a period for healing – Awareness => Repentance => Restoration – between people and between God and creation.
 
CANONICAL PENANCE (Early Church thru 4^th century)
 
1^st Century– Binding and loosing (Jn 20) – a rabbinical tradition – Jesus clearly intends ‘loosing’ as end outcome…

• Baptism was primary sacrament for forgiveness
• “Gross” sin after baptism was addressed by a form of expulsion/shunning followed by restoration to community on repentance

2^nd – 4^th Centuries:

• Sinners expelled into sub-community of penitents – extra prayer, fasting, confession, joined by full congregation at period of confession
• Bishop determined when sufficiently reformed
• Lay on hands
• Pronounce forgiveness and restoration
• Receive into communion
• Could only occur once in lifetime => deathbed confession & baptism

Emphasis on horizontal – effect of individual sin on community as a whole.  As small, persecuted church became empire approved and privileged, this changed radically.  Needed to handle large groups of converts…
 
MONASTIC PENANCE (5^th – 11^th Centuries)

In 5^th century, by papal order, monks sent out from monasteries to convert pagan Germanic tribes migrating into Roman Empire.  Monks from Ireland especially had practice of confessing sins to another person.  They extended this practice of private, individual confession to their converts and others picked up on the practice as means of assuring people of God’s love.  Opposed by Bishops (stepped on their prerogative of pronouncing forgiveness after public penance) it none-the-less made confession readily available and was widely established by the 7^th century.
 
TARIFF PENANCE (9TH TO 20TH CENTURIES)
 
Middle Ages (12^th – 16^th Centuries)
 
Order in society maintained by “tariff justice” (wrongdoers must pay the price, that is, a “tariff,” for what they have done)  affected notions of sin and reconciliation.  It was no longer enough to experience God’s forgiveness through an encounter with a confessor; now one needed to make amends (pay the price) for one’s sins.  To that end, private penance was contracted between the penitent and the priest after the confession of sins.  The priest’s role became one of “absolver” and “judge” (with “the power of the keys” given to Peter in Matthew 16:19 to release people from their sins) rather than “reconciler to the community” as was the role of the bishop in canonical penance.
 
Evolution of confession/reconciliation

• Long period of penance was reduced to nil: confession/forgiveness/communion
• Acts of reconciliation (e.g. restoring twice what was taken) became proper restitution where possible accompanied by recitation of prayers
• Assurance of God’s love and forgiveness evolved to pronouncement of absolution by priest (leading most people to understand forgiveness as dependent on the priest)

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned…”  Does ‘Father’ refer to God or to priest?
Emphasis on punishment…

• Mortal vs. Venial Sin
• Perfect vs. Imperfect Contrition
• Temporal (Purgatory) vs. Eternal Punishment

Manuals of Confession (one for priest, one for people)
Indulgences (scrip to raise money to build St. Peter’s in Rome => abuses => trigger for reformers)
 
16^th Century:  Reformation, Council of Trent
            Roman Catholics assert necessity of INTEGRAL CONFESSION (connected to communion) – remained in effect until 20^th century (annual confession/annual communion until Pius X encouraged frequent communion start of 20^th century)
 
20^th Century
            Frequent communion assumed frequent confession – retained concept of integral confession;  Sense of obligation/duty
 
Vatican II
 
Council sought to reconcile the sacrament of reconciliation to its own history, particularly to the foundational periods of the early church and canonical penance while maintaining the pastoral value of spiritual guidance offered by a confessor in a one-on-one sacramental encounter, which monastic and tariff penance provided.
 
1973 rite of penance offers three options:

• Rite 1: For the reconciliation of individual penitents (for example, the Saturday afternoon confessions)
• Rite 2: For the reconciliation of several penitents with individual confession and absolution (for example, the Advent and Lent penance services)
• Rite 3: For the reconciliation of several penitents with general absolution (only allowed in exceptional cases in the United States)

SUMMARY OF HISTORY
 
Theologically, the 1973 rite of penance seeks to retrieve the horizontal dimension of sin and reconciliation.
 
Church is an organic reality – grows and adapts to needs of each age because of pastoral instinct at the heart of the church.
 
We see this in our review of the history of the sacrament of reconciliation.  The church restructured the way the sacrament was celebrated to meet the concrete needs of the people of God in every age.  When those needs were no longer effectively met in the way the church celebrated the sacrament, the ritual was adapted.  But each period of the sacrament's history has taught the contemporary church something about reconciliation:

• Sin affects not only one's relationship with God (vertical) but also one's relationship to the Body of Christ, the church (horizontal).
• Therefore, the sacrament is not merely about the forgiveness of sins (a personal experience between a penitent and God); it is supposed to celebrate and effect reconciliation, which is a communal, structural reality that graces us with the ability to be the Body of Christ more effectively.
• However, the sacrament must be able to bring about a personal encounter with God, mediated by a spiritual mentor (priest-confessor), that furthers a penitent's lifelong conversion.
• While the privacy of confession to a priest is important, the dynamic of reconciliation is a public reality since it involves the church community in some way.
• The rite of penance has to be a liturgy that genuinely expresses how a parish recognizes itself as a reconciling community in which every member is a sinner in need of God's mercy and all members are responsible for bringing the mercy of God to bear on one another's lives.

John Burton
July 16, 2006

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