One of the greatest obstacles to presenting the Sacrament of Confession is exposing perfectly good Catholics to a worldview they are completely unfamiliar with.
I would like to look at the matter from a different angle. I don’t really want to focus on a biblical rationale for every aspect of the sacrament of confession, not yet at least. Instead, I’d like for us to ponder why it is fitting that God chooses to use priests in the forgiveness of sins through the confessional.
In my last column, we began covering the sacrament of confession by stating that modern Catholicism suffers from a crisis…
Why did future saints like Blessed John Paul II go to confession on a weekly basis, sometimes even more frequently? Why did Archbishop Fulton Sheen recall with delight how the nuns whose confessions he heard did not spare their venial sins in the confessional, even though Church law only requires the confession of mortal sins?
To the secular world, our celebration of Easter Sunday is an odd event. In their eyes, we celebrate a corpse rising from the dead, and they really can’t figure out why.
When the sacrament of baptism is discussed, much attention is placed upon the fact that we share in Christ’s offices…
Yet if the impulse is noble, then that means there’s a hint of truth to this. So why the emphasis on the smallest bits of liturgical discipline? Why nitpick? In short, we are trying to be like the just servants in the parable of the talents.
In addition to sharing in Christ’s priesthood in baptism, the Catechism also tells us that we share in Christ’s prophetic…
A very wise priest is fond of starting all his discussions on the sacraments with the following fundamental truth. When…
If there is one thing about the Holy Spirit, he loves to throw a curveball. When white smoke appeared, Fox…