Is Confession efficacious if one no longer believes in Catholicism?

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Platonist said:
I was wondering, does confession still have merit if you no longer have faith in things like the Incarnation etc
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Sorry, I can’t answer your question.

Christ, our Lord God, forgives sin. Why confess to Him without believing in Him? Do you think that a deity will forgive your sins and bring you under the love and protection of His grace when you don’t even believe in Him?
 
Beryllos said:
We are saved not by rituals, going through the motions. We are saved by love – God’s love and ours.

Confession is not like turning the crank on a machine to print a ticket to heaven. It is an opportunity to repent and restore a right relationship with God.
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Yes, this is why I no longer go to the ritual of Confession.

I’m in a similar situation to the OP. For multiple reasons I’ve lost the ability to believe that the Catholic Church is the Church Jesus founded with authority to teach the truth, including the truth about the sacraments. I’m still hoping to be persuaded back to the Church, but until that happens, I’m aware that my only reason for walking into a room with a priest would be to “go through the motions”, cover a technical base ‘just in case’ that makes some difference.

As it is I continue to pray and confess my sins to God privately. And I continue to hope that somehow the tangled knots of my situation will be untied. But I ‘get’ the OP’s question. I attended Confession for about two months into my problem, and finally stopped after the people I went to for help made it worse and undermined further my ability to trust the institutional Church. Anyway though, thread not about me. But yes, I imagine the OP has your exact line of thinking in mind, and is wrestling with whether to continue with what is at this point (for the OP) a mere ritual.
 
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MNathaniel said:
As it is I continue to pray and confess my sins to God privately
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But you pray and continue to confess your sins to God, so you have faith God hears your prayers, He forgives your sins.

That’s different then not having faith in the need to confess your sins.

That’s why I said the OP at least had faith in his confession, nut he said he was just going through the motions, to me saying it sounds as if he’s not really confessing anything just saying sorry without meaning what he’s saying.

Is that what you mean by going through the motions?
 
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annad347 said:
But you pray and continue to confess your sins to God, so you have faith God hears your prayers, He forgives your sins.
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Well sure, I have faith God hears my prayers. He hears everything. Do I have a specific belief about what will happen to me after I die, re: salvation? No. For all I know, I’ve committed culpable sins in the past that led to my current state of confusion, such that though now genuinely confused, the culpability is still my own, my distance from God is real and of my own doing, and my inability to be in Communion with the institutional church before death is just the beginning of my personal hell.

:woman_shrugging:t2:

God is still good, but I am not okay. I do trust myself to Him. I wish the Church could somehow help me embody this trust through her. But all I can do is what I can do, now. And hope that God has mercy on me. We’ll see what happens.
annad347 said:
Is that what you mean by going through the motions?
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Was this question for me, or for the OP?
 
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MNathaniel said:
finally stopped after the people I went to for help made it worse and undermined further my ability to trust the institutional Church
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By the people you went to, do you mean your confessors? I think I understand; I’ve had priests at Confession that I figured were either theologically incorrect, or more likely just bad at explaining sound theology. I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing. I figure Jesus is here with me and the priest, and His grace is stronger than the priest’s and my errors.
 
Why wouldn’t he forgive you as long as you are sorry and try to be better? How can a god that doesn’t make it clear who he is and what he expects care if you believe? It’s not like he made it super obvious otherwise there wouldn’t be so many religions that claim to be the truth
 
@Platonist ask a priest this question to check against anything you read from us laymen here on CAF.

The efficacy of a sacrament does not depend on your personal faith, no. It depends on the faith of the church, which is not entirely on your shoulders, brother. This is the distinction between a sacrament and a sacramental. Sacraments work ex opere operato: from the work performed, and not because of the one performing it.

If you are baptized and confirmed, truly fear hell and make a firm intention to avoid grave sins as the church teaches, then you have imperfect contrition, which is enough for you to present yourself as a penitent. Obviously bring this up with the confessor (your lack of faith). Furthermore, if the confessor is a validly ordained priest, it doesn’t matter what the degree or quality of his faith is, either, because it’s not something he does, it’s something Jesus Christ does for you.

Peace
 
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rosejmj said:
Why wouldn’t he forgive you as long as you are sorry and try to be better? How can a god that doesn’t make it clear who he is and what he expects care if you believe? It’s not like he made it super obvious otherwise there wouldn’t be so many religions that claim to be the truth
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I understand your point. The OP is Catholic. His unbelief is breaking his vow. I don’t think forgiveness is likely unless he can honor his own vows.
 
Unbelief is not necessarily something people choose. It’s normal to have doubts and the OP just has not found adequate answers to those doubts. If you made a vows or promises to stay faithful to Islam, would you stay true to them even if you realized Islam is probably not true? And even if the OP doesn’t believe it’s still hard to “leave” religion and religious mindsets. The fear or he’ll, the doubts, the questions… it’s all scary. Most likely it’s easier to just believe and stay with a religion. It’s hard and scary to acknowledge you don’t know, because we want to know who god is(if he exists),we want to know what’s expected of us, we want to know what’s after this life(if anything). It’s more scary because if you were ever religious the fear of hell was pounded into you so you wouldn’t leave. Should you risk leaving if there is a tiny chance it is true? But what if something else is true? What are you supposed to do to avoid hell when you don’t even know what’s true and what god wants?
 
rosejmj said:
Unbelief is not necessarily something people choose.
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rosejmj said:
Most likely it’s easier to just believe and stay with a religion.
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These two comments contradict each other.

If someone loses belief beyond their ability to choose to lose it, that would seem to contradict them finding it “easier to just believe”.
rosejmj said:
It’s hard and scary to acknowledge you don’t know
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:woman_shrugging:t2:

Depends on the person I guess. Many people seem to find it easy and comfortable to say they don’t know.
 
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Maybe you could confess your doubts and let God’s grace set you straight?
 
People don’t choose to have doubts and there is nothing wrong with questioning things before believing. Someone can’t make themselves believe something they don’t think is true. It would be lying to yourself.
 
When I say unbelief I mean doubts that go unanswered and lead one to seriously question and even stop believing something. However, I’d say in many cases it’s easier to try to dismiss any doubts and just “believe” because religious doubts can cause a lot of internal turmoil and even if following a religion is hard at times , it often is comfortable because we know it, we might heed built our identity and community round that religion. We like the sense of certainty that comes from religion when we believe it.

Sure, some people don’t care, but most of those people never were seriously invested in any religion or never really believed there might be repercussions for not following the right religion. The OP seems to have been pretty informed about the faith especially since she attended RCIA which takes commitment and is more than many cradle Catholics ever get
 
Doubt is a different subject than belief. It’s basically a strawman argument.

If we need to discuss doubt, doubt is the result of a lack of faith. Christ scolded the apostles, “Ye of little faith”, when they doubted Him.

The essence of faith is believing in spite of doubt. When we proclaim our Baptismal vows, which are repeated at Confirmation and every Easter Sunday, we promise to believe in spite of doubt. Furthermore, our beliefs are confessed at each Mass.

Failure to maintain one’s vows and promises to God, doesn’t leave one well positioned to achieve a state of His grace. It’s called the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Can a person be reconciled with God while not believing in the source of reconciliation?
 
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Yes, and saying those things means little when one doesn’t know if Catholicism is true. No one wants to be deceived and blindly believe something that’s false. If someone thinks that Catholicism may be false, it would be foolish to keep blindly believing because you’ve been told to.

I think the OP is struggling between what they have been told to believe and what they believe in their heart. They still seem to be living out the faith even if maybe they aren’t sure what to believe. I think going through the motions of the sacraments also helps to establish that feeling of safety. They have problems and doubts with the faith and blind faith isn’t the answer and it would be a lie. You are making the assumption that the OP believes what you do about the faith. You are assuming that God demands blind faith when any rational being would commend someone for questioning things and seeking answers. If doing that leads you away from something or away from a religion, I don’t think a good reasonable God would punish someone for seeking the truth even if they may not settle for the right religion or spiritual beliefs. No one really knows. You believe what you have been taught, but it’s faith, you cannot prove it’s true and therefore it is something that many people will not be capable of understanding or believing because it goes beyond science and reason. Every religion does
 
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I understand what you are saying. I suspect that you are not considering what a vow means or the significance of breaking a vow.

The question is whether or not the Sacrament of Reconciliation is efficacious. In order to receive the grace of the sacrament, one must reconcile with the Catholic community. One cannot be reconciled without believing that Jesus is God.
 
First of all the baptismal promises are all taken in the present tense. The person is affirming that they believe in the basic doctrines of the Church in the present. Who’s to say those beliefs can’t change? The OP is still living out their faith, it’s not like they left. That is it. I see no other promises. I also think that any just God would “let you off the hook” if the promises you made were in the name of something false. Would it not be okay for someone who made vows to stay in Islam to leave Islam and become a Christian if he believes Christianity contains the fullness of the truth?
 
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rosejmj said:
Would it not be okay for someone who made vows to stay in Islam to leave Islam and become a Christian if he believes Christianity contains the fullness of the truth?
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This question has nothing to do with the question of valid Reconciliation. Straw man.

You are missing the point of vows. There are consequences for breaking them. That’s the point.

Please explain how someone can be reconciled to the Church without believing in Jesus?
 
All the OP said is that they are having serious doubts about Catholicism. Not that they don’t believe in Jesus or that they broke any vows. Please point me to any reliable sources that state doubting or even not believing fully means someone is breaking vows
 
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