Agreed. We dont know what his priest said to him/her during their confession.If your priest said that, then he misspoke, because its “penance”, not “punishment”. I think one of the reasons people here are focusing on this is because there is a difference between punishment and penance, and no one wants to confuse the two. So either your priest was confused on this, or perhaps you didn’t hear him correctly and you heard “punishment” when the priest really said “penance”. Catholics are sensitive to misinformation of our sacraments and theology and obviously don’t want the wonderful sacrament of penance to be misconstrued. I am not saying you are intentionally doing this, but we do have to correct any misunderstandings.
Ishii
I understand this as restitution more than punishment. IF we can make it right, we are to do so. Not as a condition of absolution, but as a fruit of repentance.Earlier today i was in a conversation with a couple if my friends (one Muslim, one Atheist) about the forgiveness of sins. I promptly stated that God forgives sins as long as we accept Christ and confess/do penance for our sins. My Atheist friend then said the following “But is it forgiveness if you are requiring penance? Isn’t it unusual to say we forgive someone, but then still require they be punished?”
I honestly did not know how to respond to this satisfactorily so i left the comment and went on with the conversation, but know i really want to know how to answer him if it ever comes up again.
It’s highly possible you get vocabulary mixed up.Look I’m done with this whole punishment/penence thing. Its mute. I don’t go to confess my sins to a priest anymore so I really don’t care what they say. Its not worth getting in a tissy about. I believe there are more important things to discuss then this.
I have been going to church for 75 years and you are just confused like you are about a lot of things,I have talk to 3 priest and all said you are WRONG about more thing then just this. Talk to the priest that will not help you, and what did I blaiming on a ND churchBill you were not there all those years. Were you there in the confessional with me, I don’t think so. So don’t tell me what I heard when I was a Catholic. And stop blaiming everything on a non-denomination church. Its getting pretty old.
punishment==retributive suffering pain or loss, penalty, rough teatmentLook I’m not making a big deal out of it. I really could careless what they say. I know what I heard you don’t. But then I can’t be right because I’m not Catholic.