How the church has learned to say, "I'm sorry"--.

Third in a 10-part series on church history

Appearing before South Africa's ruth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an apartheidera police officer faced the survivors of families whose murders he had ordered. "I can never undo what I have done," he said. "I have no right to ask your forgiveness, but I ask that you will allow me to spend my life helping you to rebuild your village and put your lives together."

The TRC was delighted with the officer's offer to make reparation to his victims. The commission members, after all, were unaccustomed to seeing their vision of reconciliation articulated by those seeking amnesty in exchange for public disclosure of their wrongdoings. Most witnesses grudgingly told "the truth" to receive their pardon; too few expressed contrition.

Reconciliation is a hot item on the international market, as states and peoples moving away from authoritarian regimes into an era of freedom, democracy, and (one hopes) peaceful coexistence, ponder the requirements of "transitional justice." How do people who have spent years fighting one another begin to live together like the neighbors they are? South Africa, Germany, Chile, and Northern Ireland are among the nations that have established or are considering establishing commissions to implement structures of "restorative justice"--measures to heal wounds, make reparations, and build up the will to offer and accept forgiveness.

These very public efforts to foster social harmony through painful soul-searching are meant to complement, not replace the courts that assign the punishments that constitute "retributive justice." The Old Testament continues to make way for the new.

Indeed, the truth and reconciliation crowd draws explicitly on Christian themes and Christian experiences of penance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The seal of the confessional has been broken, however: God knows we have much to apologize for--and, now, so does everyone else. Christian leaders have gone "public." The 3,500-page final report of the TRC, chaired by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is available on the Web, for example, and Pope John Paul II has repeatedly publicized the Catholic Church's sense of sorrow and repentance for its various crimes against humanity (see inquisition.com, slavery.org, etc.).

These public displays of contrition enjoy historical precedent. The New Testament notion of the church as an ecclesia, or open assembly transcending ethnic and class divisions, foreshadowed and called forth in the Christian community (and, eventually, in the state itself) a more developed idea of what today we call "the public sphere." No "right to privacy" or "radical individualism" curtailed one's responsibility for and accountability to the ecclesia.

"Public-ity" was considered an essential part of penance for sins by the third century. When thousands of Christians offered sacrifice to the Roman gods rather than face persecution, hard-liners among the faithful argued that their apostasy was "the unforgivable sin." Less rigorous Christian leaders, who helped develop the sacrament of Penance, were not exactly bleeding-heart liberals. Penitents were required to crop their hair, wear hair shirts (goat hair, not their own), practice celibacy, and prostrate themselves before the bishop, who would literally walk over their backs on his way into the church for Mass.

In the churches of Asia Minor and other points east, according to the historian Thomas Bokenkotter, penitents were classified according to the gravity of their sins and were assigned special stations in the church. The heavy-duty sinners, or "weepers," had to remain outside the church, where they implored the faithful. The less offensive "hearers" were positioned near the door and required to leave after the reading of scripture and the homily, while the "kneelers" groveled inside the nave and were banished prior to Communion. The mere "standers," presumably the under-achieving sinners, were permitted to remain for the whole Mass but were denied the Eucharist.

It has been argued that the harsh public penance reflected strains of a Manichean or neo-Platonic dualism in the early church--in particular, the idea that humanity could be divided into airtight categories of "the righteous" and "the fallen." Such dubious assumptions promoted an overzealous and legalistic attitude toward sin, repentance, and reconciliation.

So, too, did the development of canonical penance, a procedure governed by conciliar decisions and episcopal directives that in time acquired the force of church rules or canons. In the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire, bishops acted as judges in civil suits. Because their decisions had legal force, their rulings in matters of church discipline came to be regarded as spiritual laws.

The actual practice of canonical penance varied by location, but the general procedure did not. As the historian Joseph Martos describes it, the sinner confessed his sin and asked his bishop what he had to do to be forgiven. If the bishop decided that the sin was serious enough to warrant public repentance, the person was enrolled in the "order of penitents," setting him apart from the community and excluding him from the Eucharist. For a designated period he performed penitential works prescribed by the bishop and was watched, counseled, and prayed over by other members of the congregation. Eventually, the penitent resumed full communion with the church in a public ceremony--a ritual of reconciliation where the bishop imposed his hands on the penitent or anointed him with oil, both acts signifying the forgiveness of sin and the reception of the Holy Spirit.

By the fifth century, the length of assigned penances was three to five years, and occasionally stretched to 10 years. No one who entered the penitential "process" was allowed to hold public office. Priests who were caught in or admitted to serious sin were stripped of their clerical status, and the most egregious sinners, even after receiving absolution, were required to live as monks. The sinner had only one chance to repent; backsliders were cast out of the church.

The rise of penance in "the public sphere" changed Christians' attitudes toward sin and reconciliation. Whereas the earliest generations of Christians had understood sin primarily as an act that threatened or actually broke the bonds of mutual love and trust uniting the believing community, now it was cast as the violation of a divine commandment or church law. Repentance, in turn, Martos points out, was no longer seen primarily as a reconversion or change of heart, but as a penalty imposed for violating the law. Increasingly, participation in the process of canonical penance earned the penitent the scorn of his fellow Christians rather than their support of his attempt to reform.

In short, the publicization of penance moved the church closer to a model of justice that emphasized retribution for sin as much as the restoration of relationships and reconciliation with the broader community.

It was not a popular system. Most people tried to avoid canonical penance. The majority of Christians sought the remission of their sins through prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and attendance at Mass. Like many of the apartheid-era perpetrators who chose not to appear before South Africa's TRC, many people preferred to take their chances and hope for final forgiveness on their deathbed. Others waited until old age before enrolling in the order of penitents. Still others avoided the problem altogether by refusing Baptism until the end of their life.

Eventually a new model of repentance and reconciliation emerged with the popularity of the "spiritual guide," or "confessor." It featured private, repeated confession combined with continuous works of penitence. The trend gained momentum with the spread of Christianity to regions where the church--and thus the hierarchy necessary for public penance--was underdeveloped. From the time of Saint Patrick (d. 461), Ireland became the site for this new approach to reconciliation centered around monastic norms applied to rural life. The monks' successful "privatization" of Confession influenced sacramental practice.

So, too, did their decision to ensure uniformity of practice by developing and consulting manuals containing lists of sins and their appropriate penances. Irish and British monks eventually carried these manuals to the schools, churches, and monasteries they founded in France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and northern Italy. By the late sixth century, Christians were seeking forgiveness many times over the course of a lifetime. Confessors consulted their manuals, perfected the charism of discernment, and earned a reputation for discretion.

Canonical penance did not immediately or entirely disappear. Today's advocates of restorative justice might well take note of an irony, however. At its most effective, "public repentance" was used sparingly and for egregious sins. Moreover, it was frequent, private Confession that restored the possibility of genuine reconciliation with the community, precisely because the penitent "worked out his or her salvation" away from the glare of the public spotlight. Legalism did not disappear; it waited its moment to arise again, within the confessional model. But the ordinary mass of believers, who were also an ordinary mass of sinners, were best served by the presence of channels of grace and forgiveness that did not require them to become a doormat for anyone.

By R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.