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October 25 Fr. James T. O’Connor: The Creed:… the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body  

Broken Keys by Ian Wolfe — October 21, 2009 And when [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on [the disciples] and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” John 20:23 The church has given to her ordained ministers through the gift of the Holy Spirit the power and authority to exercise the apostolic ministry to bind and loose sin.1 Traditionally Luther’s Small Catechism included a section on the Office of the Keys, although not written by Luther himself.2 I note...

One of the harsh realities facing the Catholic Church is the fact that many of her members no longer receive the sacrament of Confession on a regular basis. For one reason or another, many Catholics don’t feel the need to go to Confession. Let’s look at some of the common objections and discuss why the sacrament of Confession is still as relevant today as it was when Jesus instituted it 2000 years ago.“I confess my sins directly to Christ. Why do I need to go through a ‘middle man’?” This may come as a surprise to some, but the Church...

A discussion from a comment on the post Bare Minimum for Salvation Lena: I just want to say that Jesus did in fact die for the sins of mankind. No matter what “works” you do it is not enough to get you into the kingdom.BFHU: AMEN!Lena: Thankfully though, there is hope and you can have that hope. God offers His grace as a gift for the taking, should you so choose to accept it. How do you accept this gift? You have to BELIEVE that Jesus died for you—and yes—He paid the WHOLE price!BFHU: Protestants do not believe in...

DON'T LOOK BACK AT 'SODOM' ONCE WHAT YOU'VE DONE HAS BEEN CONFESSED, CLEARED When we convert -- when we actively go to Jesus -- we leave worldliness.  We leave transgressions. The spiritual blinders lift. We see "backstage" in the dynamics of life and there is no going back -- or shouldn't be. Too often, however, a part of us remains stuck in history. Are you hung up on the past? Do you spend time hovering over what you once did (before conversion) -- past mistakes? Do you have trouble forgiving yourself (even after correcting the impulse that led to...

Pope: There's an Answer to Empty Confessionals Explains St. John Vianney's "Virtuous Circle" Secret VATICAN CITY, JUNE 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is urging priests to not become resigned to empty confessionals, but to help people rediscover the beauty of the sacrament by deepening their understanding of the Eucharist. The Pope stated this in a letter to the priests of the world, on the occasion of the Year for Priests, which begins Friday in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Mary Vianney, the Curé d'Ars. The saint "taught his parishioners primarily by the witness of...

Pope Benedict XVI has raised the alarm over the decline in confessions, urging priests not to become "resigned to empty confessionals" but rather to help the faithful rediscover "the beauty of the sacrament", which answered "a deep and humble longing for forgiveness".

Hours after detectives arrested Vincent Smothers in a suburban Detroit alley in the spring of 2008, they say, he came out with a stunning confession: "I don't have a profession," he allegedly told an investigator. "I kill people for money." Then, police say, he laid out details of how each of eight hired hits happened. He stalked his victims before shooting them at close range. He killed some while talking on his cell phone and fired on others even when they appeared to lay lifeless on the ground. Even in Detroit, which had more than 300 slayings last year, Smothers'...

Father Timothy Mockaitis knows full well that hearing confessions is one of the most important things about being a priest. This week begins the Year of the Priest, 150 years after the death of St. John Vianney, who was known to spend hours on end in the confessional. But the seal of the confessional — the absolute confidentiality of the sacrament — was driven home to Father Mockaitis when a confession he heard of a murder suspect was surreptitiously tape-recorded. A legal battle ensued, with a court declaring that the recording had been done illegally. The tape has never been...

Confessing in the Catholic church has long provided material for Hollywood screen-writers, with a dark wooden booth, a priest's stern silhouette glimpsed through a screen and the uttered phrase "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." But, according to the Vatican, real life confessions are in danger of turning into cosy counselling sessions, which is why priests are to be issued with a handbook instructing them to give their flocks a sharp reminder of what sin is all about. Explaining the initiative, an official at the Vatican office on clergy told Vatican Radio that the declining number of churchgoers who...

The Seal: A Priest's story, recalls the true story of an outrageous violation of religious liberty which created an unprecedented rift between the powers of Church and State. The story explores uncharted legal territory in this first impression case involving a priest, a penitent, a district attorney and the Catholic Church. Supported with a compelling Foreword written by Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, Fr. Mockaitis relates in both a very personal and public style the first time a violation of the seal of confession was alleged in a capital case in the United States, and the first time an...

Compared with previous generations, the youngest of today's adult Catholics are less likely to have celebrated the sacraments that provide the foundation of the faith. A growing minority of self-identified Catholic adults haven't made their first reconciliation, received their First Communion or been confirmed, according to research from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. The sacraments are at the heart of what it means to be Catholic, said Mark Gray, a CARA researcher. If fewer parents are anchoring their children in Catholicism through the sacraments, the result could be a smaller church. "To the...

NEW YORK - Sinners, take heed: There's a product available now in parts of New York that will leave you with that "almost baptized feeling." It's called SoulWow , with the cleansing power of confession.

NEW YORK — Holy Week is the culmination of Lent, a time to repent, confess and come to Easter renewed. U.S. dioceses have been offering increased opportunities for the “confess” part.The Cathedral of Saint Patrick Young Adults in New York is one of them. With the Archdiocese of New York, it sponsored 24 Hours of Confession at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and 20 Manhattan parishes on the first Friday and Saturday of March. “Thousands upon thousands of Catholics line up to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday each year,” said Mario Bruschi, the co-director of the young adults group. “Imagine if these...

Of all the objections to the sacrament of reconciliation, the one most often voiced, particularly by Protestants, and sometimes by Catholics is:  “I don’t need to go to confession to a priest! The priest is just another human being! All that I need to do is to confess my sins directly to God, and that is enough!� This objection is flawed on a number of counts: • Jesus com­mis­sion­ed forgiveness through his apostles. Jesus ask­ed believers to ap­proach God for forgive­ness through the apostles who were com­missioned to act as his agents. Jesus told Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth...

“Frequently Asked Questions about an Infrequently Used Practice” (Confession)Often when you go to a website or read a pamphlet about an organization, a company, a product, or a service, you will find a page called, “FAQs.” “FAQs” are “Frequently Asked Questions,” questions people usually have when they start to consider whatever it is that’s being talked about. The FAQ format is a helpful way to introduce a new or unfamiliar organization, product, etc. Tonight I’m going to use the FAQ format for this message, because tonight I’m going to introduce you to a church practice that may be new or...

" For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will, is present...

STAMFORD, Conn. — The day after Msgr. Stephen DiGiovanni was installed in June 1998 as the pastor of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church here, he walked through the quiet sanctuary, appreciating the English Gothic grandeur and tallying all the repairs it required. One particular sight seized him. The confessional at the rear of the pews had been nailed shut. The confessional in the front, nearer the altar, was filled with air-conditioning equipment. And these conditions, Monsignor DiGiovanni realized, reflected theology as much as finance. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, the Catholic Church...

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 Arthur Fonzarelli, affectionately known as The Fonz on the 70s TV show "Happy Days," would never admit that he was wrong. According to The Fonz, he was never wrong. One episode shows him practicing in a mirror trying to say the word "Wrong" but he just can't do it. To my knowledge he never did admit he was wrong. We're like that. Confession is good for the soul, but boy is it difficult to do...

Rome, Jan. 16, 2009 / (CNA) -- The Vatican congregation in charge of overseeing the Sacrament of Reconciliation as well as the granting of indulgences has just finished a conference in Rome. The aim of the meeting was help people recover “the joy of the personal experience of the mercy of God” and to encourage priests to make this a priority. According to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the event, which took place January 13 and 14 was, in the words of the head of the Apostolic Penitentary, Cardinal Francis Stafford, an occasion “to offer to the men and women...

Rome, Jan 16, 2009 / 08:36 pm (CNA).- The Vatican congregation in charge of overseeing the Sacrament of Reconciliation as well as the granting of indulgences has just finished a conference in Rome. The aim of the meeting was help people recover “the joy of the personal experience of the mercy of God” and to encourage priests to make this a priority. According to the L’Osservatore Romano, the event which took place January 13 and 14 was, in the words of the head of the Apostolic Penitentary, Cardinal Francis Stafford, an occasion “to offer to the men and women of...

How should I tell the priest about my sins? Is a feeling of repentance indispensable during confession? After confession, should one expect a feeling of spiritual relief, or lightness of soul? These beginners’ questions often remain troublesome even for very experienced parishioners. Many of us are too fainthearted to “waste a priest’s time” with such “simple and insignificant” questions. In order to fill in this gap about confession, such “simple and insignificant” questions were given by our NS correspondent Dmitry Rebrov to the highly-respected Protopriest Valerian Krechetov, the senior father-confessor[1] in the Moscow Diocese and head priest of the Church...

CAIRO - Egypt's Coptic pope has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in, a newspaper reported on Friday. "Confessions over the telephone are forbidden, because there is a chance the telephones are monitored and the confessions will reach state security," the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted Pope Shenuda III as saying. The leader of the Coptic minority also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read by websurfers. "A confession over the Internet does not count as a confession, because everybody can look at it...

Dear Friends in Christ, We the People have spoken, and the 44th President of the United States will be Barack Hussein Obama. This election ends a political process that started two years ago and which has revealed deep and bitter divisions within the United States and also within the Catholic Church in the United States. This division is sometimes called a “Culture War,” by which is meant a heated clash between two radically different and incompatible conceptions of how we should order our common life together, the public life that constitutes civil society. And the chief battleground in this culture...

God have mercy on your people. I'm not praying for the world. I'm praying for Your people in the world. Innocent babies are slaughtered every day & people follow blindly after vileness. We stand firm in our convictions to the end. Have mercy on our souls & on the lives of our children & grandchildren. Wash the blood of those innocent babies off the hands of those who have stood firm Lord, because they resisted the determination of lost people to slaughter human souls. We have lost a great battle tonight. We are consumed with disbelief & anguish. The will...

Comment by Lori McMaster October 27th, 2008 at 10:12 pm Hi Greta, A confession from an Obama supporter sarah p Says: October 27, 2008 at 5:04 am Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out. I work for a campaign and can’t wait for this week to be over. I was doing it for a job. I was not a fan of any candidate but over time grew to love HRC. The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you. We...

ROME, SEPT. 2, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university. Q: Could you please comment on what appropriate and adequate penances might be in the sacrament of reconciliation. I tend to stay to the traditional Our Fathers and Hail Marys, but I feel at times they are inadequate. A colleague gives much more "difficult" penances: e.g., the Stations of the Cross, two or three rosaries, reading certain psalms or other Scripture texts. Many of his penitents come back later not having been able to complete their penance and are...

In one of the more engaging, convincing and easily understood presentations I've ever seen, Prof. James Duane of the Regent University School of Law explains why even angels devoid of the slightest moral blemish should never speak to police officers, tax collectors or other law-enforcement agents investigating crimes.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - At most outdoor festivals the longest queues are generally for the portable toilets and bar but at World Youth Day in Sydney, the Catholic Church's version of Woodstock, one of the biggest queues is for confessing sins. ADVERTISEMENT With some 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims attending WYD from July 15-20 the Church is staging the world's largest confessional, with more than 1,000 priests at anyone time hearing sins and dispensing penance at 250 locations. "The notion in Sydney was to decentralize the celebration of reconciliation (confession). The groups received reconciliation in over 250 locations throughout greater Sydney," said...

Protestants don’t see why Catholics who come to disagree with essential teachings of the Church don’t just leave. Adult conversion to Catholicism involves more than adding a few new beliefs. It means a whole new world and life view. No ingredient in that new perspective was more of a shock to my old Protestant sensibilities when I became a Catholic than the idea that the God-man is really present in, and not just symbolized by, what appears to be a wafer of bread and a cup of wine. It seemed scandalous! It has ceased to scandalize me, though it has...

Q. When did confession to a priest start?A. Confession is a sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ Himself in John 20: 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven… From the early writings of the Church fathers below you can see that the sacrament of confession has always been a practice of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.In the early Church confession was not done in private to the priest but to the whole gathered...

Q. Why do Catholics have to confess their sins to a priest instead of praying straight to God?A. In obedience to Christ. John 20:19-23 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!� 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.� 22...

As best as I can determine, my same-sex attraction began in reaction to my father, who was a violent alcoholic. He often drank, came home to throw things around the house and abuse my mother in addition to threatening me and my brother. I thought he hated us. Consequently, I didn’t want to be anything like him. In my sorrow, I started looking for the love of my father in thearms of other men. At age 17, a predator took advantage of me under the teacher/pupil dynamic and I became completely mixed up about human sexuality. Over the years, one...

FRiends, tonight I went to mass with my family, and one of the scriptures was the story of "The Road to Emmaus." The monsignor's sermon was on that topic, and it was excellent. He started out by asking why Jesus would allow the disciples not to recognize Him until He broke bread for them, and his thought was that Christ wanted us to look for Him everywhere, to remember that He said "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me" so that we would realize though we may not recognize Him...

Today fewer people are going to church to confess their sins, and instead taking to the Internet to atone and repent. A number of Protestant and evangelical churches are embracing the Web as a way to revive the ancient ritual of confession, but the trend is not without its critics. The Rev. John Siebling, of The Life Church in Memphis, Tenn., runs a Web site called endthesecret.com, where people pour out their stories of cheating on boyfriends, hiding debt from spouses and drug abuse. "It's really a tool that will hopefully bring a first step as people begin to interact...

I do a lot of freelance writing for non-profit organizations and, frequently, while attending brainstorming sessions, I will hear the phrase "We need to 'Think Outside the Box' on this one.""Thinking Outside the Box" has become a mantra for Americans. It means to conceive ideas that are not commonplace; to one-up the competition with original creativity; to find a new path to profit that has yet to be exploited in the marketplace.In fact our society is obsessed with "Thinking Outside the Box." People continually search for new ways to entertain themselves, to feed themselves, to exercise themselves, to justify themselves,...

Controversy has erupted once again over whether priests and religious leaders are subject to mandatory reporting laws after a "priest" at an evangelic Christian church in Melbourne did not report a child sex abuse confession. The Herald Sun reports the priest will not be charged over not reporting the assault despite the pentinent striking again. The case has stirred debate over the role of the churches in handling confessions by lawbreakers and raised questions about whether religious leaders should be subject to mandatory reporting obligations. Teachers, doctors, nurses and other professionals are legally bound to report suspected sex abuse...

Advice from Fr. Philip Neri’s ConfessionalI. Starting point: 1. Sin. When we sin we abuse a gift from God. Just about every sin we commit can be traced back to a disordered use of some grace we have received from God. Abusing God’s gifts is a dangerous practice b/c it is through the charitable use of our divine gifts for others that God perfects His love us. If you are not using your gifts for the benefit of others then God’s love is not being perfected in you. 2. Forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness we are not asking...

Feb. 18, 2008, 2:42AM\ Worshippers praise youth pastor for confessing to 1994 slaying HOUSTON — A youth minister who confessed to the unsolved 1994 killing of a convenience store clerk is being widely forgiven by worshippers at his former church who say they admire his courage to finally surrender to police. Calvin Wayne Inman, 29, remains jailed without bond since being charged Wednesday with capital murder in the stabbing death of a clerk during an alleged plot to steal cash and cigarettes. He was 16 at the time. In the first service Sunday at the 800-member Elim Church since Inman...

To this day, only one person truly knows what happened on a lonely Massachusetts bridge on the night of July 18, 1969. Sometime that evening, a car driven by US senator Ted Kennedy plunged into the icy water below. While the politician survived, his passenger, a 28-year-old aide, was not so lucky. Mary Jo Kopechne died on the road from Chappaquiddick that Friday night. In the ensuing scandal, the presidential hopes of the last of the Kennedy brothers were destroyed. Now the senator has signed a £4million deal to write his memoirs, due out in 2010, raising hopes he is...

First, Mortal Sin ... Our excuses are numberless. In fact, they are as numberless as our sins, none of which are now deemed by us (and, for sorrow, by many priests) grievous enough to preclude our receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion. Most often they are reducible simply to this: "I have not committed any mortal sin". Indeed. For Catholics who have never been taught the difference between Mortal and Venial sin --- which is to say, the entire last generation of Catholics --- we must be clear about the notion of sin, especially...

One of the first things Roman Catholics do when they enter the confessional is utter how long it has been since their last confession. But Franca Gargiulo can't remember the last time. Gargiulo is a spiritually thoughtful woman who went to Catholic school as a girl and at 44 still attends Mass at St. Dominic Catholic Church in San Francisco. Confession--telling your sins to a priest and receiving absolution--is one of her faith's seven sacraments, but for Gargiulo it now seems as anachronistic as prayer veils and meatless Fridays. "It lost its efficacy for me," says Gargiulo. "It was too...

A few Scriptures and some Quix commentary . . .  Keeping in mind . . .  THESE SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW [FOLLOW WHO?] THOSE WHO BELIEVE . . . cast out demons . . . speak with other tongues . . . etc.  AND . . . by reasonable extrapolation: John 20:22-23 (The Message)The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson 22-23Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with...

What You Need to Know: Penance (Reconciliation, Confession) When it comes to understanding the Sacrament of Penance (also called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or simply Confession), we can move quickly from the barest possible outline to one of the deepest documents the Church has issued in the modern era. The best short summary of the theology behind the sacrament, its history, and its structure and efficacy is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Given that Confession is both under-appreciated and underutilitzed in our own day, Pope John Paul II issued a brief document, On the Mercy of...

Americans are flocking to confess their sins as Protestant churches have joined their Catholic counterparts in modernising the sacrament of penance.Thousands of people are attending confession at weekends and just as many are posting their repentance on videos that are played back to congregations or shared on websites such as YouTube.New technology is fuelling the boom, but so is clever marketing by Churches that are portraying confession as a form of self-improvement — always popular with Americans — rather than some sort of punishment.Church leaders also attribute the boom to the fashion for self-analysis peddled by daytime television programmes such...

The indications are modest, but consistent. The latest one comes from Loreto, where twelve thousand young people received the sacrament of forgiveness, with the pope's encouragement. And in the seminaries, there's a return of books for studying "cases of conscience" ROMA, September 6, 2007 – During the two-day meeting between Benedict XVI and the young people who flocked to Loreto by the hundreds of thousands from Italy and from many other countries, something happened that was unexpected in terms of its intensity and breadth: mass participation in the sacrament of confession. Between Saturday, September 1, and Sunday, September 2, in...

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — To many Roman Catholics, especially the older generations, it's inconceivable that online blathering could stand in for confession. "It would be like cheating!" said one woman at St. Mark, in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. But for Ashley Iodice, a high-school senior in Weston, Fla., Internet absolution feels more natural than talking to a priest. Now a Baptist, Iodice grew up Catholic; she remembers confession as scary — and less than sincere. It's hard be honest about the depths of teenage depravity, she said, when you're talking to an elderly priest "who's committed his whole...

It has been 4 months since my last confession. After each confession I come out thinking, "I am going to do a monthly confession." And then a few months go by and here I am. I finally had to schedule "Confession" on my calendar to ensure I would get in there. I decided to read up on the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Penance/Confession at New Advent. It is good to read what they have to say. Here are a few bullets that jumped out at me. While this sacrament as a dispensation of Divine mercy facilitates the pardoning of sin, it by...

Dear Friend of Catholic Answers: True story: Many years ago I was at the cathedral in San Diego for confession. I told the unseen (and now long deceased) priest my sins and waited for his counsel. What I got was: "Why are you wasting my time?" "Pardon me, Father?" I said, thinking I had misheard him. "I asked why are you wasting my time? You had only venial sins to confess. You can have venial sins forgiven by saying an act of contrition or during the penitential rite at Mass. So why are you wasting my time?" Uncharacteristically, I was...

O J's 'confession' cash given to victim's family By Jacqui Goddard in Miami, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:56am BST 17/06/2007 A judge has awarded the publishing rights of O J Simpson's purportedly "hypothetical" murder confession to the family of one of his alleged victims. Relatives of Ron Goldman, who was stabbed to death in Los Angeles in June 1994 with Simpson's ex-wife Nicole, plan to have the account on bookshelves within weeks, under the title Confessions of a Double Murderer - or, more simply, I Did It. OJ Simpson tried to hide profits The book, in which Simpson chillingly theorised...