"Bless me, Father...."? by Greg Durel

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you heard this more than once: ’ I was a Catholic for 25 years, until one day I read my Bible and found out that confession to a priest is not biblical. I left the apostate Church and found Jesus…’ blah, blah, blah.

reachingcatholics.org/bless.html
 
Perhaps one day Mr. Durel will get around to reading James 5:14-16:

Let him call for the presbyters [priests] of the church, and let them pray over him … and the prayer of faith will save the … man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.
 
Certain Protestants get all upset about Catholic confession, and we spend a lot of time defending it.

I’d like to know:
  • the Catholic explanation for Jesus’ implementing confession
  • if Catholic confession is (according to Protestants) sinful
  • if Protestant views about Catholic confession are rooted in the “Catholic indulgence abusees” from around Luther’s time.
 
Perhaps if more people would go to confession to a priest, we might be spared hearing the confessions of our friends and aquaintances. Also, we might be spared the public confessions by celebrities.

In other words, many people believe in going to confession, they go to confession, but they don’t go to confession to a priest.

The sacrament of Penance was instituted by Jesus Christ Himself to enable people to confess their sins. And the Sacrament of Penance enables people to confess all of their sins without fear of reprisal. This is guaranteed by the Seal of Confession.

Apparently, many people don’t realize that their sins are also forgiven in the Sacrament of Penance. And they also receive special graces from God.

There is a response to people who want to confess their sins, but don’t want to do it in the Sacrament of Penance:

“If you have to go to confession, please have the common decency to use a confessional.”
 
These Protestant heresies arise from the erroneous belief that original Christianity was based on the Bible. It wasn’t. The Church wrote the New Testament, among other writings, and set the criteria for the NT canon. She canonized the writings she had inherited from Christ and the Apostles and named them the Old Testament. She selected 27 of her own writings and named them the New Testament. Then she put these two collections of writings together and formed ta biblia – the Bible. At the time, she was nearly 400 years old.

Any writing that did not conform to the doctrines of the Church and to writings that she had already accepted was excluded from the canon. The Protestant belief that the Church’s teachings are “unbiblical” is simply bull-oney. If the Scriptures contradicted the Church’s teachings, they wouldn’t be considered Scripture and they wouldn’t be included in the Bible at all. Any interpretation of the Scriptures that does not conform to the teachings of the Catholic Church is a misinterpretation.

The NT Scriptures have to be read in context – they were written from the heart of the teaching Church. They have to be read with the mind of the Church, who was teaching as she was writing, to correctly understand them.

Poor Mr. Durel. Pray for his soul. The cure for his ignorance is education, but he’s too busy singing “I’ll do it my way” to pay attention. He’s in love with his own false assumptions.

A little knowledge of history does a body a world of good.

JMJ Jay
Ex-Southern Baptist, ex-agnostic, ex-atheist, ecstatic to be Catholic!
 
More like One day I deleted all catholic interpretations from my Bible. The Bible can be interpreted in thousands of different ways thus the many thousand denoms the best way to interpret it is through the church which gave us the Bible in the first place. Sure you can twist scripture to fit your own beliefs but it won’t be so obvious to everyone thus the many differning opinions.

Anyway Luther never got rid of the confessional and confession to one’s pastor was still recommendeed in his writings. He was changig his theology on a daily basis and one day thought it was no longer a sacrament supposedly later he changed his mind about that and wanted to put it back in but it was to late his previous views went to the printing press thus he left his opinion rather contradicotry its good to confess to one’s pastor and grace may come from this practice and the forgiveness of sins can happen during confession but somehow this is not a sacrament.
Luther’s stance against confession wasn’t a strong one nor very convicing Calvin and the other reformers were more motivated to stamping out this practice from protestantism. Needless to say the human need for this has somehow brought back confession back to evangelical churchs in a weird way they get together in groups and through counciling confess of their sins. Jesus was way ahead of them 2000 years ago. Trust him and not the latest theolgical trend in protestantism.
 
Chris Jacobsen:
Perhaps if more people would go to confession to a priest, we might be spared hearing the confessions of our friends and aquaintances. Also, we might be spared the public confessions by celebrities.

In other words, many people believe in going to confession, they go to confession, but they don’t go to confession to a priest.

The sacrament of Penance was instituted by Jesus Christ Himself to enable people to confess their sins. And the Sacrament of Penance enables people to confess all of their sins without fear of reprisal. This is guaranteed by the Seal of Confession.

Apparently, many people don’t realize that their sins are also forgiven in the Sacrament of Penance. And they also receive special graces from God.

There is a response to people who want to confess their sins, but don’t want to do it in the Sacrament of Penance:

“If you have to go to confession, please have the common decency to use a confessional.”
Click to expand...

There might also be fewer questions online from other Catholics about their spiritual problems - which would be all to the good. Complete strangers are just a bit unlikely to have the training and the wisdom necessary (for the two are needed in combination) to resolve knotty points of moral theology.​

Confession as “performance art”, perhaps ? Maybe that’s why “celebs” do it.

Could there be a connection between judgementalism online, and the decline in confession ? If there were more of the latter- there might be less of the former ##
 
mark a:
Certain Protestants get all upset about Catholic confession, and we spend a lot of time defending it.

I’d like to know:
  • the Catholic explanation for Jesus’ implementing confession
  • if Catholic confession is (according to Protestants) sinful
  • if Protestant views about Catholic confession are rooted in the “Catholic indulgence abusees” from around Luther’s time.
Click to expand...
I bumped this to try to get an answer.

Thanks.
 
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Katholikos:
These Protestant heresies arise from the erroneous belief that original Christianity was based on the Bible. It wasn’t. The Church wrote the New Testament, among other writings, and set the criteria for the NT canon.
Click to expand...
Thank you for saying that!

It’s a point I make over and over when instructing converts. The Catholic Church is NOT based on the New Testament – we existed for hundreds of years before the formation of the New Testament.

The New Testament is based on the Catholic Church – we established the Canon based on our traditions.

Confession to a priest is how the Church implemented Christ’s instructions to the Apostles about forgiving and retaining sins. To ask “Where is it in the New Testament” is like asking “Where are the collection plates, or pews or steeples in the New Testament?”
 
mark a:
Certain Protestants get all upset about Catholic confession, and we spend a lot of time defending it. I’d like to know:
  • the Catholic explanation for Jesus’ implementing confession]
Click to expand...
In Mt 9:2-8, Jesus tells us that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins

In John 20:19-23, it pretty much sums it up were Jesus implements confession. “whose sins you forgive are forgiven, who sins you retain are retained”. Also, there is only one other time in the Bible that God breaths on man (Gn 2:7), in both Jn 20:23 and Gn 2:7, God is breathing LIFE into man. First physically, and then spritiually.

And in James 5:16, we see the presbyters forgiving sins and Annointing the Sick.

2 Cor 5:17-20 makes more sense when St Paul talks about the ‘ministry of reconcilation’ with the context of Jn 20:23.

Lastly, since Catholics believe there is a difference between degree of sins (ie:mortal and venial), 1Jn 5:16 tells us there is sin that is not deadly (ie: venial).
mark a:
  • if Protestant views about Catholic confession are rooted in the “Catholic indulgence abusees” from around Luther’s time.
Click to expand...
Code: 
A great book to read about this is  ROOTS OF THE REFORMATION by Karl Adam.    Marcus Grodi of [The Coming Home Network](http://www.chnetwork.org/) and EWTN: The Journey Home has something written on the back of the book.   You can go to:  [Coming Home Network: Roots of Reformation](http://www.chresources.com/proddetail.php?prod=2523)    to see the book.
“The abuses in the Church were not the real cause, but only the occasion for the reformation” pg. 29 Roots of the Reformation. Luther believed the Church was teaching falsely, and the abuses helped him put the Church in the wrong to justify his new gospels of salvation. pg 30. I just started the second chapter of the book, which is about Luther.

Mark, I hope these responses are what you were looking for.

God Bless
Lance
 
Mr. Durel rants on about how it is necessary for priests to be married. I guess he never read these bible passages:

Matt 19:12"Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage FOR THE SAKE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (priests). Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."
Evidently, some Protestants can’t accept this.

1 Cor 7:8 “Now to the unmarried and to widows I say: it is a good thing for them to remain as they are, AS I DO, but if they cannot exercise self-control they should marry.”

1 Cor 7:32-34 "I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided.

Also, he blasts the Church for calling it’s priests “Father”, but it is alright to call your earthly father, Father. I guess he misses in the bible where Jesus makes reference to Abraham as Father, Matt 3:9.
Paul makes several references to HIMSELF as “Father”:
1 Cor 4:14-15 I became yuour father in Christ through gospel., Philem 10- whose father I vecame in my imprisonment., 1 jThess 2:11 we treated you as a father treats his children

This is what happens when you just pick out phrases to mean whatever you want it to mean. Protestants would do themselves more good looking at the Catholic Catechism to see what we actually believe instead of reading ancient texts that were written for a different culture in a different language.
 
Confession developed out of the more communal penitential practice of the early Church, which is clearly supported in Scripture. A Catholic friend of mine tells me that St. John Chrysostom refers to private confession, so it may have arisen earlier than is normally claimed. But it appears to have become common, in the West at least, as a result of monastic practice particularly among the Irish. As an Episcopalian, I used to go to confession several times a year. Since moving to New Jersey (more than a year ago) I’ve only been twice. My parish priest in NC was a very good and orthodox confessor, which is sometimes hard to find in the Episcopal Church, as you can imagine.

As for the Protestant view, of course you have Protestants who think that the whole thing is idolatrous or whatever, because it puts a human being between us and God. But most Protestants would see it as unnecessary rather than sinful. And many are coming to see that some kind of regular practice of confession to one’s fellow-Christians is very important. The stumbling-block for most Protestants is the idea that the priest has special powers of forgiving sins–the idea of confession itself seems to be becoming increasingly attractive, as it should.

Finally, I’m sure the abuses in penitential practice in the Reformation era had something to do with the Protestant attitude, but in fact Luther advocated the continued practice of confession (though he didn’t think you had to confess every sin–something he believed impossible because of his extremely strict definition of “sin”), and Lutherans have never rejected the practice. I admit that relatively few of them practice it these days, though.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
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