protestants not confessing to a priest

[pablope]

Huh??? I don’t see the connection with the story of David and Nathan. What am I missing. David was a murderer and an adulterer, but he knew how to repent. There are entire Psalms that show his grieving because of his sinful behavior. And… David went right to the Lord.

I would like to understand what you are trying to say. Can you please try again?

Let’s look at job 42:

7 After the Lord had said these things to Job , he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.

This is the offense of Eliphaz…

8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.

This is pretty much self explanatory…so let me ask…why did God not just forgive Eliphaz directly?

Why did he tell Eliphaz to go through Job to be forgiven? Why did God say…not deal with you according to your folly?

You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

Eliphaz did as commanded and where forgiven…via Job praying for them…“the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.”

 

[KathleenGee]

Sin is an offense against God. And only God can forgive sin. The priest only acts as intermediary.

Christ established His Church through the Apostles. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost…as well as many others. The Apostles appointed their successors…they had many followers and disciples.

Christ’s words to them were not intended for them alone. To lay hands and to represent Christ has been in effect for 2,000 years. There has been no break in apostolic succession. And as has been said on CAF many times, it is up to the individual to keep one’s focus on Christ, otherwise fall to perdition…and no one is immune to that. It is dealing with God’s nature vs human nature.

You cannot condemn the Church because of the chaff. It will always be with the wheat.

Otherwise, if we use only Sola, we are then first of all basing our following on single men who are no longer working in the spirit of the Church…but individual men. They cannot believe the Lord continues to work in His Church generation after generation. That is broken, fractured. And there is always the ongoing aspect of some of their energies to denounce the tradition of faith that has been held since the beginning of the Church.

I do not find validity in that fracture. And there is a need within Protestantism that the Church did work to reform itself, as well as having open ear to the concerns of those regarding the books of Scripture.

As the Church did before it reaffirmed again, that indeed the Books of Scripture that were selected in the early Church…most books of the Bible approved by ecclesiastics around 90 ad…except for the Gospel of St. John…the issue to verify he as true author, and later around 200 AD, the acceptance of the Book of Hebrews…the Council of Trent examined and then concluded that Sacred Scripture, in use for 1500 years up to the time of the Reformation, was inspired for public use in the Church.

By 100 AD, the Church had established its method of administration – the episcopacy with bishop and presbyters and deacons, along with practically all books approved of Sacred Scripture, as well as the Apostle Creed…their utmost concern to preserve the truth of Jesus Christ.

The Life of the Church is Christ, and He manifests Himself in His Word and in His sacraments. And it has endured all this time. If the Catholic Church were false with false practices, the Lord would have led us otherwise. But He did not.

The Resurrected Lord did indeed establish the Sacrament of Penance on the Eve of the Resurrection, the Day that changed time, space, and victored over death. To have the Lord give the Apostles such power on this day is most significant and…literal…just as His Eucharist, death, and Resurrection are literal, and not symbolic words.

If you reduce faith to words, then you will have countless debates and misunderstandings and divisions…that is why Christ established His Church and sacraments so we can draw on the one Same Lord.

 

[pablope]

There is no reason to confess to anyone but God. Although if we have hurt another person, we need to go to that person and ask for forgiveness.

The scriptures don’t say anything about confessing our sins to another human being. I love going to the Father many, many times a day. What a blessing!

Actually…the Bible shows an example of two people going directly to God, but with disastrous results:

Here it is, from Genesis 3:

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

From verse 11, God knew Adam had sinned, so here he asks the question and is actually asking Adam to confess what he had done. And verse 12 is Adam’s response…and his response actually makes the sin worse, he blames another, Eve and God, for him being disobedient. So instead of owning to his sin, or admitting the sin (confessing) which God was looking for, he blames another. So the result is disastrous.

Same with the Eve…when God asks Eve in v13, God knows Eve has sinned, God is asking Eve to own up to her disobedience. And you can see Eve’s response…she blames the serpent. So, another disastrous response.

From the examples cited above, you can see that when you go directly to God, there is a lot of rationalization, of second guessing, whether we sinned or not.

Do you think this is what God wants? Don’t you think God knows our human nature (well, He created us) very well, that in wishing for us to truly repent, with no rationalization, that He would not give us the process to truly confess our sins, with no second guessing, no rationalization our part?

 

[KathleenGee]

Pablope has provided good responses…and the site, www.calledtocommunion.com has many former Protestants who have had the same concerns.

To say that you are blessed many times a day…is the same thing we experience…to make a statement like that gives me the impression that somehow we as Catholics are not as graced…again…it is the filter that is being indoctrinated on you…

I have read much of St. Catherine of Siena and brought up her writings in response to our study of Martin Luther with a bishop who was on the Ecumenical Council at Vatican II.

Grace through faith has been taught, but Luther and his own personal history has provided us a very scrupulous monk, a great theologian in his own right, but one who personally could not experience the love of Christ. Because he could not experience enough of the love of Christ and His unconditional care for Him in church conditions in his time, does not mean either that other Catholics did not have the same difficulty. The ones who followed him wanted out, to be free both in their own separate administration as well as their own national and political identity.

All this led to the dismantling of Christianity, and subsequently according to some, the breakdown of common faith and family, and facilitated the Age of Enlightenment. We see its fruition today in the ‘tyranny’ as Pope Benedict calls it – the tyranny of relativism…from Descartes to today…no absolute values, no absolute truth, no institutional authority…but individualism and individual choice.

 

[SecretGarden]

The reason why most Protestants don’t confess to a priest is because their theology doesn’t teach them it is necessary. Some denominations do teach it is necessary to admit their sins in front of the body of Christ or some will share their stories in the form of a testimony where they may or may not admit about doing something wrong. The latter is a personal choice. Generally most protestants will confess their sins to God which is why many non-Catholics find the church’s sacrament of confession to be strange and obscure.

 

[KathleenGee]

Yes, it is following Scripture but without the Church, and its many benefits. They do not acknowledge Christ’s great commission to the apostles either that is written in Scripture. They were given the power to forgive and absolve sins…in Christ.

There are some factions in Christianity who spend alot of time denying the dimension of church…and its disciplines…to their followers. I know of a priest who came from a background…and was on and off, because of many ingrained fears, in coming to the Church. But he finally did…and the Spirit did not stop there, but continued to call him further into the priesthood, and again he had fears and hesitation, but finally entered and became a good priest.

There is a sad lack of acknowledging history, of how the Word of God was immediately put into practice in the beginning Church, and the public testimonies of just how much the apostles and their followers worked to be faithful to Jesus and to insure that each succeeding generation would hear the Good News of Our Lord.

I just don’t think the Church and non-denominationals are on the same footing, and really you can’t compare the two really. Certainly both follow the Holy Spirit, live the life of the Spirit…Catholics just are not shallow or idolatrous as they appear

 

[Nabooru]

I find the whole theology confusing. Jesus said all authority on heaven and earth was given to Him, not to humans, even holy ones. If I go to a priest, what if he decides not to grant me absolution, no matter how sorry I am?

The Catholic definition of “binding and loosing” is disturbing to a Protestant. There’s no doubt that many papal decrees in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were inspired by commercial interests or current politics rather than piety. So is Jesus, in virtue of his promise to the disciples, forced to agree that a faithful magnate is going to hell because he didn’t give the Papal States the military force the pope demanded, for example?

 

[KathleenGee]

The priest counsel and discerns. I went to confession for absolution about something I had felt some guilt about in regard to my mother and the priest did not absolve me.

He did so because he said I did not sin. He said alot of people are like this after their mothers die.

The priest receives much training in both theology and psychology. They counsel penitents. One visiting priest told the congregation to please come to confession for the Lord’s grace and healing. He also said he just got a new car. He said he promised everyone, that if he heard a sin he had never heard before, he would award the parish the new car. I especially like the old wizened priests who have a good sense of humor but – you can’t pull anything over them either.

Anyway, the priest will aid the penitent come to realize some things, and help him to arrive at the point of making a good and sincere confession, and dispel any false guilt or scruple and give them spiritual counselling. The priest is most aware of his own sins when hearing confession.

 

[SteveVH]

I find the whole theology confusing. Jesus said all authority on heaven and earth was given to Him, not to humans, even holy ones.

Yes, all authority in heaven and on earth was given to Jesus. Anyone in authority has the power to grant that authority to others. It is why a diplomat or embassador has the authority to speak for the President. The authority was given to him or her.

Read what Jesus said to his Apostles after the resurrection:

"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:21-23)

If I go to a priest, what if he decides not to grant me absolution, no matter how sorry I am?

I have never known a priest who has decided not to grant absolution to one who is truly sorry for one’s sins and is willing to repent by avoiding that sin in the future. The only instance when absolution is not granted is when one will not commit to changing their life but rather persists in the sin he is confessing. For instance, if a person confesses that he or she is living with another outside of the bonds of marriage but has no intention of changing that situation then a priest may not grant absolution.

The Catholic definition of “binding and loosing” is disturbing to a Protestant. There’s no doubt that many papal decrees in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were inspired by commercial interests or current politics rather than piety. So is Jesus, in virtue of his promise to the disciples, forced to agree that a faithful magnate is going to hell because he didn’t give the Papal States the military force the pope demanded, for example?

Just what do you think the Catholic definition of binding and loosing is and what is your definition. As to your other issue concerning Papal Decrees and forcing Jesus to agree that someone is going to hell, no one can force Jesus to agree to anything. He is God. The Church has never, I repeat never, made a definitive statement that any person is going to hell. We hope and rely completley on the mercy of God and the sacrament of Reconciliation is nothing but the mercy of God. It is a means of forgiveness, not condemnation.

 

[KathleenGee]

One thing that came to me later today is that the Catholic faith is binding.

Sometimes I wane…just want it easy…and then I catch myself and call on the Lord…and His life of grace comes to me and binds me to my faith and beliefs.

 

[Nabooru]

Steve, Roman Catholics have told me that the “binding and loosing” is inextricably linked to confession, as in, “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.” I personally, along with most other non-Roman Catholics, cannot reconcile with Christ giving such authority to human beings as to practically make Himself subservient to them. The Church exists for God, not God for the Church. The Church does not make the rules and then make them binding on Christ. It’s the other way around.

 

[pablope]

Steve, Roman Catholics have told me that the “binding and loosing” is inextricably linked to confession, as in, “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.”

These words are in the Bible…spoken by Christ directly…so you have trouble accepting them?

I personally, along with most other non-Roman Catholics, cannot reconcile with Christ giving such authority to human beings as to practically make Himself subservient to them.

 

[JonNC]

Steve, Roman Catholics have told me that the “binding and loosing” is inextricably linked to confession, as in, “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.” I personally, along with most other non-Roman Catholics, cannot reconcile with Christ giving such authority to human beings as to practically make Himself subservient to them. The Church exists for God, not God for the Church. The Church does not make the rules and then make them binding on Christ. It’s the other way around.

Honestly, and with due respect, I’m kind of surprised to hear this from an Anglo-Catholic.
Maybe GKC or Edwin could chime in if they come accross this.

Jon

 

[Nabooru]

But nowhere does it explicitly say that the presence of the prophet was neccessary; I personally feel that those men were seeking the same kind of consolation that the High Church Protestant does when he or she confesses their sins to a priest. It’s not like they can’t go straight to God, but at times of serious sin it’s comforting to “make it official”.

And how do we know that binding and loosing specifically refers to the forgiveness of sins? The closer translation would be, “What you will bind has been bound in heaven, etc.” Jesus sends the Holy Spirit upon the disciples to spread the New Covenant to the world, and what they will preach in that new covenant is what will be inspired unto them - what has been bound and loosed. There is no evidence that Christ intended this for anyone but the apostles.

 

[SteveVH]

Steve, Roman Catholics have told me that the “binding and loosing” is inextricably linked to confession, as in, “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.”

And those Catholics would be right. How can you deny what Christ actually said? One more time:

I personally, along with most other non-Roman Catholics, cannot reconcile with Christ giving such authority to human beings as to practically make Himself subservient to them. The Church exists for God, not God for the Church. The Church does not make the rules and then make them binding on Christ. It’s the other way around.

 

[SteveVH]

Steve, Roman Catholics have told me that the “binding and loosing” is inextricably linked to confession, as in, “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.”

How can you deny the very words Jesus spoke? This is not some metaphore or parable open to varying opinions. Jesus was very clear in what he said. One more time:

“Receive the holy Spirit. "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:21-23)

Does this not say exactly what you deny it says: “What you forgive, I will forgive. What you don’t forgive, I will not forgive.”?

I personally, along with most other non-Roman Catholics, cannot reconcile with Christ giving such authority to human beings as to practically make Himself subservient to them. The Church exists for God, not God for the Church. The Church does not make the rules and then make them binding on Christ. It’s the other way around.

I don’t think you completley understand exactly what the Church is. It is a divine institution because it was established by Christ himself. He promised that it would be guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit and that he would remain with it. Christ is the head, we are the body. So it is not as if he just gave this authority to all men to use as they see fit. The Church is Christ’s presence on earth. It is he that does the forgiving through his duly ordained priests. The priest acts in the person of Christ based upon the authority given to him. The priest does not personally forgive anyone. That would be meaningless. He forgives “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”, not in his own name.

It is understandable that one who does not understand the nature of a sacrament might come to the conclusion you have arrived at. Christ gave incredible authority to his Church and this authority is exactly what many non-Catholics cannot accept because they have no such authority themselves. To ackowledge this authority in the Catholic Church is to admit the lack of authority in their own faith community. This is Christ’s Church, not man’s. Christ’s very unambiguous words stand on their own and I am sorry that you cannot accept them. But, like gravity, it is true regardless if one believes he can jump off the top of a building and fly.

 

[SteveVH]

There is no evidence that Christ intended this for anyone but the apostles.

Really? And why do you suppose that Christ would give this authority only to be lost upon the death of the Apostles? What good would that do anyone subsequent to the Apostles? The entire notion is completely unreasonable and unfounded. He told the Apostles to go out and preach the Gospel to all the world. Did he mean this only for the Apostles as well? I don’t think they got to far in accomplishing his command if that is the case. Obviously the authority and commission he gave to the Apostles was meant to extend to their successors, the bishops, or it would have been an exercise in futility.

 

[Nabooru]

You forget the church is staffed by human beings, not angels or God Himself. Catholics seem to believe that God, the Father Almighty, and Christ His Son, handed over all divine authority to one particular group of mortal, human men. God still exists and rules. It’s not like He retired and from now on the church is running the company.

If the Church were truly what it is claimed to be, Christ’s infallible successor, then there would not be so much sin among its hierarchy. The apostles were not sinless, but in the Holy Spirit they were pretty darn close. The church seems to assume that its role is to do whatever it wants and it automatically becomes God’s will. The Protestant church admits itself as a group of human beings who strive to live in the way of God, but are still fallible human beings. The RCC has committed many major sins over the years. That doesn’t make it any less a church, but it does shake the foundation it builds itself on.

 

[Nabooru]

I didn’t mean for it to be offensive. I’m sorry if it was. But the incredulous tone expressed towards me by one poster made me a little bitter, that’s all.

 

[pablope]

But nowhere does it explicitly say that the presence of the prophet was neccessary;

You are rationalizing your thinking…I suggest you take out your pre-suppositions and preconceived protestant thinking and just read the passages as they are.

From Job 42, v8…God’s own words…8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job a

Do you see anything optional in that?

From 2Sam12…v1…The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.

Nathan was commanded directly God…do you anything optional in that command?

The question is not whether is optional. God determined that it was needed. The question you have avoided is…Why was it necessary for God to send Nathan to David? And why did God direct Eliphaz to go through Job and not just forgive them directly?

Hopefully, this will prod you along…2sam12…5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what

I personally feel that those men were seeking the same kind of consolation that the High Church Protestant does when he or she confesses their sins to a priest.