Forgive us our sins: but how?

For the past twelve years, I served as the pastor of a large parish in the heart of Chicago. Because the parish was in the downtown area (where there were more than four thousand registered dwelling units and hundreds of visitors each week) we were available for the sacrament of reconciliation about ten hours a week. Some of my experiences were rich sacramental moments--moments of real conversion, truly graced moments--in which people returned to the church after many years.

In addition to offering many opportunities for individual auricular confessions, twice or three times a year the parish offered the opportunity for communal services of forgiveness. These services regularly drew seven or eight hundred people (some parishes in our archdiocese had even more people). They were prayerful gatherings, which generally lasted more than an hour and followed Rite III of the Rite of Penance, which was promulgated in 1974. After the service, priests were available to anyone who wanted to talk about particular issues: "I'm having a hard time forgiving my husband who committed adultery." "I'm so angry with God for the way in which he allowed my son to die." "I've been away from the church for a long time and I'm just so glad to feel accepted again." The people who came to talk did not want to go to confession again. They had experienced forgiveness. They wanted to talk about something that needed further elaboration. Subsequently, we found that a number of these people would return for individual auricular confession. It was no longer so frightening to them.

Pastorally, the communal rite of forgiveness enriched people's experience of the sacrament. As far as I know, there is no place in Scripture where Jesus asked people to "name their sins in kind and number" before he forgave them. Forgiveness was freely and generously given. A church that needs to control forgiveness is not being faithful to Jesus. (As one pastor said, "We keep talking about cheap grace. The very nature of grace is not that it's cheap--it's free!")

Vatican II, speaking generally about the sacraments, noted that "whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active participation of the faithful, it is to be stressed that this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, as far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and, so to speak, private." The council said very little directly about the sacrament of reconciliation, except that "the rite and formula should be revised so that they may give more luminous expression to both the nature and the effects of the sacrament." But a sharp decline in practice was apparent soon after the council. The National Opinion Research Center conducted extensive surveys of Catholics in 1965 and again in 1975 and the change was easy to detect. In that interval, the number of Catholics who reported going to confession monthly dropped from 38 percent to 17 percent, and the number of those who almost never went rose from 18 percent to 38 percent.

In the mid 1980s, a University of Notre Dame study found these trends firmly in place even among "core Catholics" (defined as those who were most active in their parishes). In that group, more than 26 percent said they never went to confession, while 35 percent reported they went only once a year. Many parishes have cut back the hours for individual confession, because of both the shortage of priests and the scarcity of people approaching the sacrament. By far the most significant factor in the decline of confessions was the change in the understanding of the nature of sin. Together with a broader understanding that sin may be collective as well as personal, people became more aware of "patterns of sinfulness" and saw these as more significant than confessing "kind and number." The very "matter of the sacrament" was changing.

Following the revision of the sacrament that was called for by Vatican II, Chicago's Cardinal John Cody promulgated the new Rites of Penance and (to his great credit) recognized that there were times when all the rites were appropriate. He also distributed the study texts from the bishops' committee on the liturgy. Even in 1975, the bishops wrote:

   Penitential practice has changed for many reasons. The constant repetition
   of the "same old sins," the impersonalization of the confessional, the
   all-too-frequent short shrift given to the penitents in the confessional,
   the new sense of freedom among Catholics, all are factors in the change of
   climate and status of the sacrament of penance. But perhaps the most
   important element has been the understanding given to the notion of
   "serious" and "mortal" sin. The obscurity of meaning surrounding the idea
   of sin is closely tied to the decrease in confessional practice, and to the
   evolution of both moral consciousness and moral theology.

Theologically, there is no reason that the sacrament needs to be limited to individual auricular confession. Over the centuries, the history of the sacrament of penance is replete with change. In the first century and a half of Christianity, there is no history of a ritual of reconciliation. Then, around 150, Hermes indicates that a sinful Christian should receive ritualized forgiveness only once in a lifetime and the rite was a public one. Publicly known sins such as apostasy, murder, and adultery were the more common sins that required this form of reconciliation. Other publicly known sins were at times also included, but these changed from region to region. Furthermore over the centuries, the sins that people were expected to confess changed.

As time went on, the ritual and the length of the penances which were given also changed. By the year 700, the sacrament became so odious to the laity because of the length and the severity of the penances that reconciliation was deliberately postponed and became--more often than not--a sacrament of the dying. Bishops continued to urge the reception of the sacrament, but the laity did not respond. (Sound familiar?)

We should also note that in England and Ireland, the public ritual was never used. There is no record of any form of reconciliation in the early documents. Among the Celtic monastics there was a form of spiritual direction in which the monks and the nuns discussed both their sinfulness and their need to reform. When the monks came to the continent in the later part of the sixth century, this form of private and frequent confession became popular and gradually was considered the normal rite. Note however, that the "minister" of the sacrament was initially not the priest but the monk or nun who was the soul mate or the spiritual director of the penitent. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council officially adopted the Celtic form of reconciliation. The scholastics developed the theological base for this form of private reconciliation. After the Council of Trent, the scholastic--rather than the patristic--understanding of the sacrament became common, and frequent confession was encouraged. Individual, auricular confession in which all mortal sins were confessed "in kind and number" became the norm. (It should be noted that this was never an absolute norm. Anyone who has administered the sacrament in a hospital setting knows that there are times when "kind and number" are not required, for example. More and more, it is my experience that even in individual, auricular confession, people do not confess in "kind and number.")

It is clear from this brief historical overview that the nature of the sacrament, its frequency, the nature and duration of the penances given, the ministers of the sacrament, the sins that needed to be confessed, and the words and sacramental sign have all changed over the centuries. Could we conceive, then, that the sacrament might need further change to respond to the needs of our own time?

Some would argue that we need to maintain exclusive use of individual auricular confession because the priest acts as a judge, and that to judge accurately, he must have access to the facts. These include the precise sin, its frequency, and any extenuating circumstances. Thus, the need for individual and specific confession. I would suggest that this argument misses the nature of what it means to say (if we must say) that the priest is a "judge." The priest is not a judge in the sense that he determines who deserves forgiveness; rather, he is the one who proclaims the presence of God's mercy: who prays the prayer of remembrance ("God the Father of mercies through the death and Resurrection of his son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins") and then proclaims God's continuing activity ("through the ministry of the church may God give you pardon and peace and I absolve you from your sins ...").

   What about canon law? Canon 961 clearly states that general absolution may
   be imparted if a serious necessity exists, that is when in the light of the
   number of penitents, a supply of confessors is not readily available
   rightly to hear the confessions of individuals within a suitable time so
   that the penitents are forced to be deprived of sacramental grace or Holy
   Communion for a long time through no fault of their own.

In my opinion (and I am not a canon lawyer), there are many circumstances in the current dispensation of priests in which the number of confessors necessary to hear the confessions of a large group is not "readily available" and even if we could get ten confessors for our communal services of forgiveness, how long would it take to hear the confessions (even given a couple of minutes for each penitent)? Are we seriously talking about hearing seven or eight hundred people in a "suitable time"? It seems to me that if we read the law in a benign way (and law should always be read as benignly as possible), it is clear that the bishops could grant permission (as Cardinal Cody did) for the use of Rite III. In granting this permission, Cardinal Cody quoted the September 24, 1975 letter of Bishop James S. Rausch to the American bishops: "It has been left now to individual ordinaries, in consultation with their brother bishops and with their diocesan officials, to determine when the conditions for general absolution are verified in their local pastoral situations."

I want to conclude with two final observations: When we talk about the use of general absolution we recognize that this rite manifests most fully the ecclesial nature of the sacrament as well as the divine initiative in the mystery of reconciliation. It should be clear that Rite III is not the same as what has long been known as "general absolution in an emergency situation." The rite of which I am speaking involves an entire liturgical service, which is in accord with the liturgical norms of Vatican II.

I also want to reaffirm that I am not talking about an either/or approach. There are times when pastoral care will demand a more individual one-on-one approach, for example at times of retreat or at times of vocational transition (before marriage, during times of sicknesses). We ought to be able to use whatever rite will be helpful pastorally.

One thing we can be sure of is that our understanding of sacramental reconciliation tomorrow will not be what it is today. The fact is, despite our best efforts to revivify the sacrament--whether by homilies, the use of the reformed rite, providing reconciliation rooms, and by instructing people as they go through the RCIA process--our people do not come to individual auricular confession. This is also the experience of much of Western Europe and Latin America. Given that this is so for the church in much of the world, the time has come to give serious thought to what the people of God are saying to us. When we look honestly at the facts, we see that there is no liturgical, theological, pastoral, or canonical reason that would keep the bishops from granting permission for the use of general absolution. The only reason that they will not do so is that Roman authorities oppose it. In his recent apostolic letter Misericordia Dei, Pope John Paul II makes it clear that he intends to effectively suppress the use of Rite III. He maintains that the practice not only is unfaithful to God's plan for the sacrament, but also causes serious harm to the spiritual life of the faithful. My pastoral experience would lead me to say that when Rite III is properly celebrated, the opposite is the case. People are telling us something about the sacrament of reconciliation, and we would do well to listen.

Robert E. McLaughlin is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and recently became the pastor of Mary Seat of Wisdom Parish in Park Ridge, Illinois.