Hello Rinnie,
I have a few comments, but they are not directed at you so much as that your post provoked some thoughts I have always had on the differences in our church traditions.
No, not at all if you were perfect already you would not have to go to confession.
In my understanding, one will never be perfect.
Now it occurs to me that Catholics may be using this term in a different way, such as “as good as God would want” or something like that, but only God is actually perfect. There is no perfect human being, there may be a norm, or even an ideal. God loves us nonetheless and wants us to come to him, to seek him out.
What I am saying is this, You must repent and confess your sins in order to be forgiven. But then you have the harder work to do and that is to quit the sin. It is when you have quit the sin and that sin no longer has a hold on you that is is fully repented.
I understand what you are saying.
As I see it, one needs to examine the repetition of these sins and get to the underlying drive, the weakness or attitude or what-have-you that causes this. What then, is needed is like counseling. In the Orthodox church this is often part and parcel of confession, however in the Latin Catholic church, this is usually not the case.
With anonymous confession the individual has is a struggle with sin, remorse, heartfelt confession and an applied penance (which seems to most people to be a mild discipline or punishment, perhaps like negative reinforcement). This is when the grace is supposed to kick in (and it does), but we sin again.
This can be a less than adequate method of dealing with the tendency to sin. We want to change, we need personal spiritual direction.
Personal spiritual direction, like counseling, cannot be done anonymously, it has to be done by someone who comes to know one as an individual and thinks about and remembers past conversations. So most Latin Catholics who need this and seek it out have to find a priest who can give one this time on a regular basis. I have a close personal friend (Catholic) who has an appointment with a priest friend of hers about every two weeks for this purpose. I also had an old Catholic priest friend (memory eternal!) I used to visit once in a while and this was often what transpired when we talked.
Pastors can do this, if the congregation is small.
Obviously, if everyone tried to do this, there would not be enough priests.
I think part of the problem is that at some point long ago, the western church introduced anonymous confession. I think I read that this practice was spread by Irish monks, but I don’t really know. This anonymity has separated the act of confession from the “counseling” and made it into a more mechanical process. It is far better to do the spiritual direction in concert with confession, which I believe was more common in the earlier centuries. One’s confessor would know the tendencies and weaknesses of a person, and help or guide them to a higher state of being in Christ. Specific spiritual exercises tailored to help master the passions will help the penitent make better moral choices going forward.
For Latin Catholics the apparent corrective is to generally avoid the box and avail oneself the use of the recently reintroduced face to face confession whenever possible, taking care to meet with the same confessor on a regular basis.
… But I was taught and still believe that in order to have a sin truly repented in your heart is to be rid of the sin once and for all.
It can’t be done. Salvation is a process, there is never a point where the tendency to sin is completely gone (until perhaps, death overtakes us). It’s like doing the laundry, there is always more, but what we have to wash will change with the seasons.
We can become godlike (or strive for that) but we can never be God. We can try to narrow the gap between us and our Divine Maker, but never close it. The object should be a continual improvement (that’s how I see it), so the
goal is never really attained, it is continually before us. God moves us through our desire to be with Him.
I know that you may have to go to confession for years and confess the same sin. But I believe that it is in that confession that you not only gain forgiveness from God but you also gain extra grace from God to rid yourself of the sin. And it is when you have fully did this with the help from God that you have fully repented that sin. And to me some sin can take years to fully be rid of, so it takes many years to fully repent a sin.
Here now, the emphasis is on full repentence. Most people are not really sure what that means. Many will concentrate on dwelling on the past failures and generating sorrows over them, which is not healthy.
The point should be to turn one’s life around “go, and sin no more …” (this turning around is called metanoia). Yes, regret and sorrow over past failings is needed, but once one has done this, it is time to move on. That’s the Good News, God forgives.
This brings me to a major difference in our Faith traditions. In the East (at least among Orthodox) God forgives in confession
completely, but in the west a notion has taken hold that God’s justice still demands some satisfaction, some balancing of the scales, or a payment to rectify the wrong.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is no question that rectification is important, it is even a healthy cathartic practice. Did you steal a pen from work? Put it back! Did you kill a man? Help his family!
Neglecting to do the right thing in love can be a sin itself (like passing a truly needy begger without acknowledging their humanity), and so when possible this should be done but
when God forgives one in confession
that person is completely forgiven and Orthodox do not see the warrant for further punishments.
And then Father’s words its not what goes into your mouth which will send you to hell, its what comes out.
I guess we were taught differently then. I was taught that when you confess a sin you really do have to change that behavior to be rid of the sin completely:shrug:
