It seems some Protestant churches are offering confession to their faithful. Here’s the report from London’s Daily Telegraph.
Before I became a Catholic I can remember a good Protestant lady once saying to me, “Well, you know those Catholics just go and confess their sins, and then turn around and do the same thing again and again.”
I paused for a moment and said, “But isn’t that what you do too?”
I hope more of our separated brethren do start practicing confession, I also wish more of our Catholic brethren would do the same.
The most important thing about confession is that, by definition, (unless you’re lying to yourself) the mere act and fact of confession means that you’ve admitted that you’re not totally right about everything, you’ve got it wrong, and as soon as you get to that point you are able to receive grace, learn something and make some progress. Within the confessional other worlds open. Grace is huge and eternity beckons.
Head for the confessional! Like the stable in Narnia, it’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
One of the uncomfortable aspects of Catholicism is salvation. The supernatural grace neccesary for a soul to live in heaven dissipates when it encounters mortal sin.Paul said, “…I drive my body and train it, for fear that after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27).and “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name? Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers'” (Mt 7:22-23).I prefer to keep the seat in the confessional warm. Those who adopt a more casual sense of salvation have a death wish. I am not advocating paranoia, but how can you love the Lord with everything you got if you are so casual about offending Him?
I find the priest ‘middle man’ a bit of a flaw in the whole confessional thing. The priest I confessed to, I later discovered to my cost, was a con-man, liar and abuser – so how was he fit to ‘intercede’ between me and God? In fact how could someone like that turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ? I can only conclude that he could not.
The Protestant pastor (and his Dad who was also a pastor) had an affair with another woman, but he still had a good influence on me, was a good preacher and a decent man.That’s why the Catholic Church teaches that the sacraments operation are not reliant on the sanctity of the priest. There’s two aspects to this: of course priests should be holy, but then, which of us could be worthy? Not one.
So either God choses men of weak moral fibre to perform the miricale of transubstantiation or, as the protestant believe, transunstantiation is a myth created by a patriarchal autocratic church.Now I know there are good, honest truthful priests but in my expereice priests lie and mock and ignore those in need so they are not to be trusted.