I can imagine that as an X this would not bother you because you have another person agreeing with you.
Whether it bothers me isn’t the issue. Whether it bothered you shouldn’t even be the issue. You said it was
anti-Catholic. Anti-Catholic suggests language or actions that are bigoted or disparaging about the Catholic faith.
Elizabeth is perpetuating the myth that protestants & others have that it takes a certain number of Hail Mary’s or Our Fathers to forgive sins. That is bogus.
If you actually listen to what she said, she doesn’t suggest that at all. She said, “I never understood confession. It never made sense to me. I tried to keep track of what sins were what, and how many Hail Marys I had to say. And they would never match up.”
This isn’t my point of view. I always understood the purpose of confession, and I went weekly. But I started going when I was 7 years old, and didn’t learn what it all meant until I was fifteen. That was 8 years total confusion.
She probably ***doesn’t ***understand confession but saying so isn’t bigoted and condescending, it’s her honest viewpoint, and the honest viewpoint of many people who were taught something when they were seven and never really understood what they were doing.
Priests do tell you to say prayers after confession. Most people think this is to do penance for their sins. Actually, if you look at
catholic.org/prayers/confession.php it turns out they are right.
He will assign you some penance. Doing the penance will diminish the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.
I’m sure everyone here has a clear idea of the difference between “diminishing temporal punishment for sins” and “I have to say these prayers or God won’t forgive me.” The fact that someone is confused is evidence of idiocy, as some here are claiming, or anti-Catholicism as you are claiming. But, everyone in
my first communion class started going to confession when we were seven. There is a good chance she wasn’t much older. Seven-year-olds aren’t necessarily the best at catching nuance. Actually, most adults aren’t either. They start saying that something "anti-___ "and “hateful to ____” rather than saying that they disliked someone’s point of view.
Oh, and one other point. The prayers often ***don’t ***match up. I was really baffled once when I was told to say 1 Our Father and 1 Hail Mary during a confession which included 2 mortal sins. Being thoroughly repentant, and heartily ashamed, I was as good as I could be the following week. I went to confession with no mortal sins and only a handful of venial sins. I felt like I could have done better, but was definitely heading in the right direction. 2 decades of the rosary was my penance. I was a little surprised. That was when I started to look for a pattern. Their wasn’t one. It was completely random based on what he felt like giving that day.
Sorry… I guess relating my personal experience there was amazingly anti-Catholic.
Question your faith away, I’ve no problem with that. That is a way of learning more about your faith.
But you will send letters complaining if I question it publicly, right?
