Confession?

What happened to the holy sacrament of confession?

I tried it several times. Opening the door to a confessional in a Catholic church (here in the Netherlands) to take a peek. Invariably I bump into a dusty box room or the storage for the vacuum cleaner. What happened to the Holy Sacrament of confession?

It turns out that, just like a large percentage of Catholics seem to think that the bread and the wine are meant symbolically, and that the devil doesn’t exist, an even larger percentage has stopped going to confession. Accept for perhaps a small group around Easter.

It started in the ‘60’s. Cradle Catholics were forced as children to go to confession, without being explained properly its purpose or the exact meaning of sin. Many children never got any further than I have been disobedient, I lied to my parents or I stole a cookie. To be forced to do anything without knowing its purpose, isn’t fun. I totally agree to that. And this became one of the reasons why this beautiful sacrament slowly disappeared.

What is sin? When I was preparing for my baptism, I was very resistant to the concept of sin, even to the point where I found it hard to pray the Hail Mary. I thought I was an honest and righteous human being with integrity, and I would never sin on purpose. To be called a sinner was demeaning. But I was blinded by my own arrogance and ignorance. When I started to dive deeper into Catholicism and the Bible, and when I learned about original sin it all became a lot clearer. We were sold into sin and death by our primal ancestors. Satan is always trying to seduce and mislead us to sin. He will unrelentingly whisper in our ears and tells is that it isn’t all that bad, we are already broken anyway, so it won’t make a lot of difference, we are unappreciated and unlovable, God doesn’t care at all, because He doesn’t do anything about it. Believing these kind of thoughts causes us to become careless, to always seek ways to comfort ourselves and to be on the constant lookout for something to entertain us so that we don’t get bored. God created Adam and Eve according to His own image and likeness, which means they were created without sin, and therefore weren’t equipped to arm themselves against sin. Just like death, it renders us powerless and we can’t compete with it. We weren’t made for that.

The 10 commandments are the foundation of our Western civilization and culture, and together they form our written and unwritten code of conduct. This foundation, that stems from the Bible, has survived 2000 years, and that is saying something.

The commandments don’t beat around the bush. The first one says that we are not to worship false gods. But what is a false god? The Buddha, Shiva or other gods from various religions? During the days of the golden calf it was pretty clear, but how do we interpret this commandment in our modern times? I think that a false god means everything I worship. Everything that has my focus and gets my precedence. Like money for instance, my career or a spiritual teacher. Another false god is my self-image and how I want it to be perceived by the world around me. How often do I tweak facts a little bit, in order to make myself look better? Do I portray myself as a hero or as the perpetual victim that isn’t to blame? We call this a selective memory. We seem to remember things differently as time goes by, and always to our own advantage. Josef Pieper, a German Catholic philosopher, wrote that this “falsification of memory” is among our greatest of enemies, for it strikes at the deepest root of our spiritual and moral lives. There is no more insidious way for error to establish itself than by this falsification of the memory through slight retouches, displacements, discolorations, omissions, shifts of accent. Once we do this—and we all do—we begin to lose the true narrative thread in our lives. Things no longer make sense to us. Relationships grow cold. We lose our sense of purpose and our sense of self.

Self-reflection probably isn’t anyone’s favorite activity, but very necessary if you want to confess. Self-reflection coupled to deep introspection. Jesus tells us the necessity for self-reflection very clearly in Mt 7:3. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own? It simply means to take a look at yourself before pointing the finger at others. But we aren’t very fond of that. It is much easier to find a culprit outside of ourselves. If we get our way, it is never our fault but always someone else’s. This is a very human characteristic, which doesn’t mean it ought to be condoned.

Scott Hahn explains it beautifully in his book Lord Have Mercy. He writes about how we all do this, and how we do it after Adam and Cain. Gen. 3:9 describes how God is looking for Adam in Eden. A God who is all knowing doesn’t know where Adam and Eve are? I didn’t think so. He just gave Adam a chance to confess. This becomes even clearer in Gen. 3:11 when He asks them how they know they are naked, and have they been eating the forbidden fruit? (As if He didn’t know already). Here Adam misses out on a great opportunity. He doesn’t confess the truth by saying Yes, Indeed I did. I was weak and disobedient. I am truly sorry. Instead he says it is the fault of the woman that God placed at his side. In other words, he blames Eve as well as God. Eve in her turn, did the same thing. God asked her point blanc what she had done and she blamed the serpent. No wonder they were thrown out of paradise! Who knows what would have happened if they had been honest. But both didn’t assume responsibility for their own deeds.

Further on in Genesis we read the story of Cain and Abel. God warns Cain about sin in Gen. 4:7 If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him. Next thing we hear is that Cain kills Abel. God asks Cain Where is your brother Abel?” and gives him the opportunity to confess. But instead of answering honestly and showing remorse, Cain lies and says: I don’t know, am I my brother’s guardian? It sounds a bit arrogant to me. And even more so when he begins to lament himself to God because he thinks his punishment is too harsh and he even suspects everyone that sees him will want to murder him.

How often do I do this in my own life? How often do I place myself in the role of the victim, so that I am not to blame?

What it comes down to is that no one is fond of shedding light on their own weaknesses, or even discussing them. When we feel attacked, or are being called on one of our shortcomings, we will defend ourselves till the end and deny our fault or part. This is often accompanied with sarcasm and cynicism. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram bear witness to this fact.

It appears as if we are constantly trying to impress the world around us. We all want to be seen in a certain way, and we are all willing to place high stakes for this. In that image there is no room for weakness or sin. It seems as if deep down we are convinced that we aren’t good enough. A kind of an inferiority complex that we guard as if it were some dark secret, that no one is to find out about. And so we spend our entire life trying to prove that this isn’t the case. Because if our weaknesses were to be discovered, our dark secret could become truth and seen by all.

The other commandments speak for themselves. Of course, we all know that we are not supposed to kill, steal, lie and cheat. Accept for the fact that most are illegal it also goes against our conscience. The bible mentions the 7 sins in several places: Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Sadly enough, I can find them all within my own life. The intense longing for something that I desire but don’t have, and would love to have. This invariably leads to a depression that causes me to give into gluttony: eating out of frustration, just one glass of wine too many, and all sorts of trivial activities to distract and console myself. I also know greed very well. My selfishness leads me to place my self-interest above others, making it more important. Sloth is another one I know very well. I call it procrastination. I’ll do it later, or tomorrow. Of course, we all know that tomorrow never comes and procrastination is the thief of time. Wrath is another one. The 10 commandments, as well as Dutch law, state that you are not supposed to kill. But isn’t wishing someone were dead or simply non-existent, out of wrath not similar? It doesn’t put you in jail, but how does it feel on the inside? Jealousy for me is coupled to vanity and I know it too well. Am I truly interested in the other person or just in myself? Pride is equal to arrogance. My arrogance causes me to think that that I know everything better than another person. Makes me think that I am smarter and more intelligent and that I understand things better. How many fights and arguments were caused by pride?

Our body has a built-in mechanism that lets us know when it is time for confession, without fail. We call it conscience. Our conscience comes directly from God. It lets us know the difference between good and evil. That is why you become so miserable when you go against your conscience. Of course we often try to pacify it, by coming up with all kinds of excuses and reasons why what we did is permissible or at least passable. Or we rush to a good friend for support, which they often will give. But the question remains if this serves our best interest.

Cardinal John Henry Newman explains that our conscience is a messenger from Him who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us from behind a veil and teaches and rules us by His representative, the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.

During the time of confession, the priest is In Persona Christie, so basically you are confessing to Christ. It is an enormously liberating experience to voice your weaknesses and sins to Christ. With Him you don’t have to be afraid that He will see you as not good enough, because you know that He loves you. Perhaps He is the only one with whom you don’t have to be afraid of this. A loving father doesn’t see his children as not good enough. No, he loves them and wants the best for them. Next to the spiritual value, the combination of the relief of confessing, the wise words of the priest, the absolution and penance have great therapeutic value, and this doesn’t mean I am comparing the priest to a therapist. I have experienced it myself. At a certain moment something from my past kept resurfacing. Even though my priest had told me that at the moment of baptism all sins are forgiven (I was baptized at a later age), it kept coming back and I suffered from guilt, deep regret and a total feeling of powerlessness that wouldn’t go away. So, I went to confession. A couple of days later I noticed how the guilt and shame slowly started to melt away.

At the beginning of each Eucharistic Mass we confess our sins. Perhaps some Catholics think that this is enough, or that confessing straight to God is enough. But perhaps this is the easy way out.

It is very powerful to voice your failures, weaknesses and shortcomings, simply because we always try to avoid, deny and hide them. As long as we keep doing this, our actions and thoughts remain in the dark. The only way to reconcile is to face them, acknowledge them and bring them to the Light. No sin can survive in the Light of God.