Ask Father: Why Private Confession?
My diocese has a teen oriented website called, RealFaithTV (see the link on my sidebar), and one of the features of that site is a “Ask Father” section where the teens can send questions. I am one of the people who answers these questions. Here is my response to one of these questions, recently sent to me.
This question is from: Peggy
I was watching Fr. Groeschel one Sunday evening on EWTN and was confused about something he was talking about. He said that if we do not “shout it out” from the rooftops about our sins, that these sins will be revealed to others. My question is: Why bother with a confession that is done privately? Will our sins be revealed to others in the afterlife even when we have been to confession?
It is difficult for me to answer this question directly, because I am not sure what Fr. Groeschel was speaking about. We do need to “shout it out from the rooftops” that Jesus Christ, through His Passion, Death and Resurrection, has redeemed us from our sins. Elsewhere in Scripture it is written, “For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Lk. 8:16). Jesus says those words in His teaching about not lighting a lamp and then putting it under a basket. The Good News of Jesus Christ can not be kept as a private, secret part of our life. By our baptism we are all called to publicly witness to Jesus – really we should help people encounter Jesus so that they too can develop a personal relationship with Him.
I am not sure how Fr. Groeschel related this to the sacrament of confession, so let me just briefly discuss the development of this sacrament. It is very important to keep in mind the spiritual reality that the Holy Spirit teaches us, particularly through the letters of St. Paul, that all the members of the Church form the Mystical Body of Christ Jesus. We are all parts, or members, of one Body. Jesus remains incarnate through His Church. We are His hands and feet and eyes and ears. When we commit a sin it has an effect on the entire Body of Christ. My sin does not just damage my relationship with Jesus, but on the supernatural, spiritual plane it damages everyone.
Throughout the Gospels Jesus speaks about forgiving sins, and caps it off with His words at the Last Supper when He takes the cup of wine and says, “This is my blood, the blood of the New Covenant, to be poured out in behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt. 26:28). Jesus passes on this power to forgive sins to the Apostles (the first bishops, and bishops are the fullness of the ministerial priesthood), on Easter Sunday night when He says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound” (Jn. 20:22-23).
In the early Church, because they strongly emphasized the Mystical Body of Christ, the sacrament of penance was done publicly. Penitents would approach the bishop on Ash Wednesday to confess their sins, often in front of everyone in the church. Then they would be given a public penance, usually this entailed wearing a special garment which identified them as a penitent, which they would perform during Lent, and the bishop would reconcile them on Holy Thursday, welcoming them back to the Table of the Lord to receive Holy Communion. In the Fifth century, Pope St. Leo the Great wrote a letter to bishops that confirmed the practice of private confession of sins. So both public and private confessions existed for several centuries in the Church. Starting in the Seventh Century, with Irish monks, the practice of private confession became much more the norm in the Church. On the one hand, the privacy encouraged many people who were too embarrassed to confess their sins publicly to receive the grace of Jesus’ sacrament of Divine Mercy. On the other hand, it also encouraged more honest confessions. Sometimes, even today, people think that they can hide their sins by staying hidden in the crowd, but we really cannot hid our sins from God. If we do not humbly and honestly confess all of our sins, utterly throwing ourselves into the merciful hands of God, then our sins are not forgiven. Not because God is mean or unable to forgive our sins, but because He will not force His love and mercy on us against our will. If we are unwilling to confess our sins, that means that we are holding on to them and not giving them to Jesus to have them redeemed by His Holy Cross.
