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Reflects on the Sacrament of Penance During General Audience Continuing his catechetical series on the Sacraments, Pope Francis reflected on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which along with the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick form what he described the “Sacraments of Healing”. “The Sacraments of Penance and Reconciliation [...] flow directly from the Paschal mystery,” he told pilgrims attending his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. "In fact, the same evening of Easter the Lord appeared to the disciples, closed in the Cenacle, and, after addressing to them the greeting ‘Peace be with you’, he breathed on them...

All over the Catholic world, statements are being made by the pope, cardinals, bishops, religious and priests about compassion for people in adultery and homosexual relationships. This is giving people arms to attack any priest or bishop who may uphold true Catholic and biblical teaching on the sinful nature of these sexual unions. But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife. And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh....

ROME — An Italian newspaper came under fire from the Catholic Church on Thursday for publishing details of priestly advice given to an undercover reporter posing as an ordinary parishioner during secret confession. "I find this perverse from the point of view of professional ethics, and unspeakable from a human point of view," the segretary general of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, said in Rome. A day earlier, the Archbishop of Bologna Carlo Caffarra, speaking on behalf of other bishops from the northern Emilia-Romagna region, issued "the strongest protest" against "serious violation" of a Catholic sacrament. The editor...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is inviting every parish around the world to open its doors for 24 hours this Friday and Saturday, March 13-14, so that the faithful might encounter Jesus Christ anew in the Sacrament of Confession and Eucharistic Adoration.  The Lenten initiative, organized by the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, is called “24 Hours for the Lord.” It is intended also to be a time of reflection and prayer, an opportunity to  speak with a priest, and a chance to rediscover — or perhaps discover for the first time — the great mercy at the...

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who has announced she will run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by her fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer, was recently shot down by the California 5th District Court of Appeal for downplaying a prosecutor’s fabrication of a confession by a defendant charged with child molesting who was recently charged again for child sex abuse. The national political media is ignoring Harris’ embarrassment before the court even as she moved on to the national stage last week speaking at a gala dinner by the pro-abortion group Emily’s List held in Washington, D.C. The Hill reported...

The believer in Christ is a lifelong repenter.  He begins with repentance and continues in repentance. (Rom. 8:12-13) David sinned giant sins but fell without a stone at the mere finger of the prophet because he was a repenter at heart (2 Sam. 12:7-13). Peter denied Christ three times but suffered three times the remorse until he repented with bitter tears (Mt. 26:75). Every Christian is called a repenter, but he must be a repenting repenter. The Bible assumes the repentant nature of all true believers in its instruction on church discipline. A man unwilling to repent at the...

The confessionals are empty. The sinners have gone away. Or should I say, “sin has gone away.” Not to be judgmental, but rather to be observant, I sense poignantly a lack of what I would call “sin awareness” among modern Catholics. We seem to have assimilated the secular notion that the concept of sin places outdated, even psychologically damaging restraints on people, or that the feeling of guilt for wrongdoing (or wrong-thinking) is emotionally debilitating. Thus, we see in society the virtual elimination of the word “sin.” We don’t want to hurt anybody’s self esteem. Catholics, perhaps innocently, have...

Pope Francis hears a Confession in Brazil in July 2013 (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano) Pontiff urges faithful to receive the Sacrament of Penance in LentPope Francis has offered some quick tips to help Catholics prepare for the Sacrament of Penance.After a brief explanation of why people should go to Confession – “because we are all sinners” – the Pope listed 30 questions to reflect on as part of making an examination of conscience and being able to “confess well”.The guide is part of a 28-page booklet in Italian released by the Vatican publishing house. Pope Francis had 50,000 free copies...

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.(Romans 10:9-13)Israel, the nation created...

On my personal blog, and through e-mail, I sometimes get reader requests for posts.  People often have interesting questions about a wide variety of issues, and I do what I can to try to tackle reader questions when I can.  One of my relatives sent me a question a little over a year ago, and seeing that I had the same question boiling around in my mind many years ago (before I figured it out), I’m thought I’d tackle it and clear up what is a somewhat common question.The question has to do with whether or not Jesus went...

The Lord declares in Isaiah 43:25: I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Psalm 103:2-3 adds: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases… Many will use these verses against the idea of confession to a priest. God forgiving sins, they will claim, precludes the possibility of there being a priest who forgives sins. Further, Hebrews 3:1 and 7:22-27 tell us Jesus is, “the… high priest of our confession” and that there are...

“Why didn’t someone do something?” Those five words still haunt my thoughts today. Sometime ago, I sat speechless as I listened to a man recount his trip to a holocaust museum with his young daughter. As they walked by photos of the death camps and gas chambers, his daughter silently contemplated the horrors that were unfolding before her eyes. When the tour ended, they drove home without saying a word. The father wondered if she truly understood the significance of the event. Was she too young to view such depravity? Was she too fragile to cope with the truth of...

Call it truth in advertising–though not in reporting. Religion News Service's story on Pope Francis's Christmas address to the Curia bears a headline that aptly sums up its spin: "Pope Francis to Curia: Merry Christmas, you power-hungry hypocrites." The lede signals that we have before us the mainstream media's familiar "Francis as radical" meme: VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis launched a blistering attack on the Vatican bureaucracy on Monday (Dec. 22), outlining a “catalog of illnesses” that plague the church’s central administration, including “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and gossipy cliques. The pope’s traditional Christmas greeting to the cardinals, bishops and priests who...

Confessional. Credit: Paul Lowry (CC BY 2.0). Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 8, 2014 / 08:54 am (CNA).- Responding to an invitation from Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera to seek reconciliation with Christ during the season of Advent, nearly 5000 Catholics stood in line for hours to receive the Sacrament of Confession. According to the Archdiocese of Mexico City's News Service, some 30 priests spent 12 hours in shifts hearing confessions at the Cathedral of Mexico City Nov. 29. Cathedral officials said many people also attended an Advent talk given by Father Julian Lopez Amozurrutia entitled, “Coming Home.” Although the lines generally...

“Return of the Prodigal Son” (detail) by Murillo Have You Been Saved? In Acts 4, St. Peter delivers a powerful sermon. He concludes by saying, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”I have written before in these pages of the time when I was growing up in the southern part of the United States and how I would from time to time encounter young, protestant teens and adults who would excitedly take to the streets to witness for Christ.Now...

VATICAN CITY — The secrecy of a confession is maintained so seriously and completely by the Catholic Church that a priest would be excommunicated for revealing the contents of a confession when ordered to testify by a court or even after the penitent dies, Vatican officials said.“No confessor can be dispensed from it, even if he would want to reveal the contents of a confession in order to prevent a serious and imminent evil,” said Msgr. Krzysztof Nykiel, regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with matters of conscience.The penitentiary sponsored a conference at the Vatican Nov. 12-13...

Washington, D.C., September 05, 2014 (Zenit.org) | 3257 hits Below is a statement released Thursday by the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, regarding the next legal battles facing the diocese regarding the state supreme court's attempt to mandate breaking the seal of confession. The diocese reports that now the "Louisiana Supreme Court has directed the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing and then to take the unprecedented step of deciding whether or not a sacrament actually took place."It notes that "civil courts are entirely without jurisdiction to decide what constitutes a sacrament in the Catholic Church."A statement on the case from July...

Many observers misunderstood the Hobby Lobby dispute and others like it as a First Amendment case, but it wasn’t. It primarily related to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with an indirect reference to the constitutional freedom of religious expression. A case in Louisiana may be the real McCoy, though. The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional — an order that would result in automatic excommunication and damnation, according to the doctrine and canon law of the Catholic Church: The state high court’s decision, rendered...

The pressure will now rise, since Anglicans have betrayed Christian tradition and history (again).Never mind that the Church of England has cobbled up a rite of baptism that omits any reference to the Devil (HERE), now we have this from CNW: Anglicans in Australia abandon seal of confession for serious crimesAnglican leaders in Australia have unanimously approved a proposal to abandon the confessional seal, authorizing priests to disclose information about serious crimes such as sexual abuse.The General Synod in Australia, meeting on July 2, passed an amendment to the Anglican canon on confessional secrecy. The change must now be approved...

5 year old bullying victim forced to sign ‘sexual misconduct’ confessionAfter being coerced by a fellow classmate into pulling his pants down at school, kindergartner Eric Lopez was forced to sign a “sexual misconduct” form by school officials. This happened despite the fact that Lopez was told that if he did not pull his pants down, another student would.Read the rest at Progressives Today.