Posted on 07/17/2003 6:52:47 AM PDT by yankeedame
Sure.
If the priest absolved him of the mortal sin, being let's say a sympathetic and very liberal priest, even if the sinner only confessed his sin but was unrepentant, then would the priest have the power to absolve the unrepentant sinner if he so wished?
If the sinner was unrepentant, the absolution would be as inefficacious as the Eucharist was to the sinner in the first place. One cannot receive the grace of any sacrament without the minimum disposition necessary.
On the flip side, what if the priest decided not to absolve him of the mortal sin, relying upon his own authority to 'retain' the man in his sins, having perhaps judged his confession insincere. This sinner, being unrepentant in his heart and his priest not having absolved him, then takes the eucharist. Has he then eaten and drunk irrevocable damnation?
No damnation is irrevocable as long as the future possibility of repentance is present.
But in the instance you've given, his decision to take the Eucharist despite not being absolved is another mortal sin compounding his already deep guilt.
Let's say the unrepentant sinner goes to a defrocked priest but one which still holds the priesthood since Rome holds that any conferral of priestly power is irrevocable even by Rome. So the corrupt, drunken pedophile ex-priest hears the insincere confession and absolves the still insincerely repentant sinner. Has this loosed the sinner from mortal sin and damnation?
No, for three reasons. First, the sinner is not truly repentant. Second, he has sought absolution from someone who is no longer permitted to grant absolution. Third, the only circumstances under which a defrocked priest's absolution can be validly given is if the penitent is believed to be on their deathbed.
Let's say this good priest knows the man is in mortal sin and knows that he has not made a confession. But the man comes for communion and the priest, knowing full well this unrepented mortal sin against the sinner, gives him the Eucharist deliberately and thereby give him damnation to eat and drink. Is that unworthy and damning communion in a state of mortal sin irrevocable? Has the priest, in effect, sent that sinner directly to hell by letting him take communion unworthily? Can the sinner ever repent again?
It is not irrevocable, but it is, as before, yet another grave sin superadded to the other sins.
That priest has committed a grave sin himself by helping the sinner to desecrate the Eucharist. But the priest did not hold a gun to the sinner's head forcing him to take the Eucharist - he's brought his own sin on his head.
The sinner can repent again. Christ never abandons anyone who turns from sin in a true desire to follow Him. The Church cannot deny a truly repentant individual the sacraments.
An Orthodox child receives communion from infancy. Once he is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong and to understand what sin is — probably when he is six or seven — he may be taken to receive another sacrament: Repentance, Penitence, or Confession (in Greek, metanoia or exomologisis). Through this sacrament sins committed after Baptism are forgiven and the sinner is reconciled to the Church: hence it is often called a ‘Second Baptism.’ The sacrament acts at the same time as a cure for the healing of the soul, since the priest gives not only absolution but spiritual advice. Since all sin is sin not only against God but against our neighbor, against the community, confession and penitential discipline in the early Church were a public affair; but for many centuries alike in eastern and western Christendom confession has taken the form of a private ‘conference’ between priest and penitent alone. The priest is strictly forbidden to reveal to any third party what he has learnt in confession.
In Orthodoxy confessions are heard, not in a closed confessional with a grille separating confessor and penitent, but in any convenient part of the church, usually in the open immediately in front of the iconostasis; sometimes priest and penitent stand behind a screen, or there may be a special room in the church set apart for confessions. Whereas in the west the priest sits and the penitent kneels, in the Orthodox Church they both stand (or sometimes they both sit). The penitent faces a desk on which are placed the Cross and an icon of the Saviour or the Book of the Gospels; the priest stands slightly to one side. This outward arrangement emphasizes, more clearly than does the western system, that in confession it is not the priest but God who is the judge, while the priest is only a witness and God’s minister. This point is also stressed in words which the priest says immediately before the confession proper: ‘Behold, my child, Christ stands here invisibly and receives your confession. Therefore be not ashamed nor afraid; conceal nothing from me, but tell me without hesitation everything that you have done, and so you shall have pardon from Our Lord Jesus Christ. See, His holy icon is before us: and I am but a witness, bearing testimony before Him of all the things which you have to say to me. But if you conceal anything from me, you shall have the greater sin. Take heed, therefore, lest having come to a physician you depart unhealed (This exhortation is found in the Slavonic but not in the Greek books).
After this the priest questions the penitent about his sins and gives him advice. When the penitent has confessed everything, he kneels or bows his head, and the priest, placing his stole (epitrachilion) on the penitent’s head and then laying his hand upon the stole, says the prayer of absolution. In the Greek books the formula of absolution is deprecative (i.e. in the third person, ‘May God forgive…’), in the Slavonic books it is indicative (i.e. in the first person, ‘I forgive…’).
The Greek formula runs: ‘Whatever you have said to my humble person, and whatever you have failed to say, whether through ignorance or forgetfulness, whatever it may be, may God forgive you in this world and the next ... Have no further anxiety; go in peace. ’
In Slavonic there is this formula: ‘May Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, through the grace and bounties of His love towards mankind, forgive you, my child [name], all your transgressions. And I, an unworthy priest, through the power given me by Him, forgive and absolve you from all your sins. ’
This form, using the first person ‘I,’ was originally introduced into Orthodox service books under Latin influence by Peter of Moghila in the Ukraine, and was adopted by the Russian Church in the eighteenth century.
The priest may, if he thinks it advisable, impose a penance (epitimion), but this is not an essential part of the sacrament and is very often omitted. Many Orthodox have a special ‘spiritual father,’ not necessarily their parish priest, to whom they go regularly for confession and spiritual advice (In the Orthodox Church it is not entirely unknown for a layman to act as a spiritual father; but in that case, while he hears the confession, gives advice, and assures the penitent of God’s forgiveness, he does not pronounce the prayer of sacramental absolution, but sends the penitent to a priest). There is in Orthodoxy no strict rule laying down how often one should go to confession; the Russians tend to go more often than the Greeks do. Where infrequent communion prevails — for example, four or five times a year — the faithful may be expected to go to confession before each communion; but in circles where frequent communion has been re-established, the priest does not necessarily expect a confession to be made before every communion.
Exactly. No good can come of such mean-spiritedness. I'm inclined to question the Christianity of any 'priest' who would be so cruel.
Hopefully it is a parish in very close proximity to Hell.
Holy Confession is the same Holy Mystery in both the Eastern and the Western Church. However there are some differences in the way we approach it. For one thing there are no confessional booths. Priest and penitent stand side by side - often the penitent will kneel. The penitent faces the Icon of Christ, or the Holy Gospel which usually lies on the table in front of which the Confession takes place. This table is on the right side of the Church near the front.
It is the right side when one is facing the west, i.e. when one is standing facing the congregation from the Altar, which represents God's Holy Presence in the Temple. This reminds us that the way to the right hand of God - recalling the Parable of the sheep and the goats by which Jesus described the Great Judgement - is by PENITENCE, i.e. by continually turning *away from* all that is evil, wrong and/or imperfect *towards* all that is good, right and true. We turn away from darkness towards light, away from alienation from God *towards* this loving Father Who awaits us to receive and bless us.
This is our attitude towards the Holy Mystery of Confession/Penance. There is no formula such as "Bless me, Father..." The priest stands beside the penitent as a witness of his/her penitence as well as an instrument through which the Lord Himself will cleanse, forgive, heal and guide. The practice in the Ukrainian Church is to use a form of absolution in which the instrumentality of the priest *is* underscored - this is not the case in the form used by the Greek or Antiochian Churches in which it is only the forgiveness of Christ that is noted. However the formula also emphasizes the weakness of the priest as a fellow-sojourner on the path of salvation/theosis for it states: "I, an unworthy priest, by His authority given to me...."
As to the detailed nature of the Confession, it depends upon the penitent as well as upon the priest. Because most Confessions are done around the time of a liturgical celebration and there is little time, they often - in my experience at any rate - are simply expressions of repentance and forgiveness to all who have sinned against the penitent (for if we do not forgive God's forgiveness can not reach us as it ought).
Some of us are fortunate to have, besides the priest before whom we express our repentance, a spiritual father/mother/director or as I prefer to call it FRIEND, a fellow-sojourner, before whom we can be completely frank and who can listen sympathetically and offer counsel and support. This is an immense blessing. We should pray that God reveals/sends such a friend to us and look to see how this prayer is answered. And we should also be patient with this friend and realize what a great gift it is that one who shares the same weaknesses and temptations we do takes the loving risk of walking in the valley of the shadow together with us.
We must *all* confess and admit our faults to someone. We cannot do so before all the world - although at the Last Judgement the whole world *will* hear and see. We can prepare for that dread moment by our confession here and now. There is also the possibility - and that is how it *ought* to be! - that by our confession and penitence that moment of judgement will show how the falls and errors were but the opening pages/chapters to a story that moved on to victory, to justice, to wholeness, to holiness because the sinner just would not stop repenting, rising up from his/her falls over and over, no matter how discouraging the process was - until that *rising up* and not the falling down became the norm! May God grant this to be the case for each and every one of us!
Very Rev. Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org
We are not so much hung up on Jesus on Christ as on Jesus after Resurrection....priest explain to me because in West when empire fell much suffering and death and barbarians but in East where empire alive, easier life.
What does Confession have to do with whether or not a deranged priest should be condemning the soul of someone to hell, in public?
I don't think he should, or that he has a clue as to the disposition of this poor man's soul.
In addition, he's rude as hell, and needs to be taught some manners.
He's apparently already be reassigned to another parish by Archbishop Sheehan who is,no doubt, embarrassed as hell by this selfish cretin.
Good heavens, what a memory! I don't even remember mentioning that here.
Yes, it's true. I once did the funeral of a fellow I'd never met, with whom I had to acquaint myself by talking with family and friends. I used the skills I'd honed as a private investigator, trying to get a feel for him and his personality, and the impact he had on those he knew and who loved him.
The more I heard, the less there was to give me any assurance that he had genuinely known Jesus Christ as his savior and Lord.
But I had already settled in my mind that, in conducting funerals, it was neither my ability nor my responsibility to preach the deceased into our out of Heaven. It wasn't my call to make; and I was (and remain) perfectly at peace with that. I didn't know what the young man's eternal destiny was; it wasn't my place to know, or to render an opinion. I don't know the hearts of the living, much less folks who had died strangers to me.
So what I did was to give a eulogy for the young fellow, which his family and friends found comforting. Then I preached Christ. I couldn't do a thing for the fellow who'd died; his judgment was sealed and settled. I couldn't preach Christ to him. But I could to them, and I did, moved by great passion and conviction, coming from John chapter 11, the death (and raising) of Lazarus. I preached Jesus, who is the Resurrection and the Life, the only one who had conquered death, and who will conquer it in case of all who believe in Him.
Dan
Biblical Christianity web site
Well, I must say the guy has a certain way with words. If this chap had said that about my parent, I would have unplugged his mike, and announced that the service was being terminated because the priest had been unexpectedly consumed by the devil, which was why hell was so on his mind, and that the funeral would be rescheduled. I would then direct the pall bearers to get the freaking coffin the hell out of the sight of the possessed demonic priest.
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