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Penance in the Catholic Church

One of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church

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Through Counter-Reformation and Roman Empire

History

In the New Testament, Christians are admonished to "confess your sins to one another and pray for one another" at their gatherings, and to be forgiving people. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to the Apostles, after being raised from the dead, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained". The early Church Fathers understood that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the Apostles and to their lawful successors, the bishops and priests, for the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after baptism.

Early practice

In the middle of the 2nd century, the idea of one reconciliation/penance after baptism for the serious sins of apostasy, murder, and adultery is suggested in the book of visions, The Shepherd of Hermas. The episkopos (bishop) was the main liturgical leader in a local community. He declared that God had forgiven the sins when it was clear that there was repentance, evidenced by the performance of some penance, and the penitent was readmitted to the community.

In the 1st and 2nd centuries of Christianity, penance was likely a public act. However, by the time of Cyprian of Carthage, confession itself was no longer public, specifically in cases of private sins such as having entertained thoughts of denying the faith under persecution. Basil of Caesarea similarly made concessions whereby adultery could be forgiven in private confession. With the additional influence of the monastic practice of "disclosure of thoughts" (logismoi), private confession to a priest became dominant by the 5th century.

Lifelong penance was required at times, but from the early fifth century for most serious sins, public penance came to be seen as a sign of repentance. At Maundy Thursday excluded serious sinners, especially now-repentant excommunicated individuals, were readmitted to the community and communion along with catechumens. This practice was still current in the late medieval period, for example the Use of Sarum, but lapsed with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Confusion entered in from deathbed reconciliation with the church, which required no penance as a sign of repentance, and the ritual would begin to grow apart from the reality.

Beginning in the 4th century, with the Roman Empire becoming Christian, bishops became judges, and sin was seen as breaking of the law rather than as fracturing one's relationship with God. A new, more legalistic understanding of penance emerged at episcopal courts, where it became payment to satisfy the demands of divine justice. According to Joseph Martos, this was facilitated by a misreading of John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18 by Augustine of Hippo and Pope Leo I, who thought it was the "disciple" and not God who did the forgiving, though only after true repentance. The acts of councils from the fourth to the sixth century show that no one who belonged to the order of penitents had access to Eucharistic communion until the bishop reconciled him with the community of the church. Canon 29 of the Council of Epaone (517) in Gaul says that from among penitents only apostates had to leave Sunday assembly together with catechumens before the Eucharistic part commenced. Other penitents were present until the end but were denied communion at the altar of the Lord.

A new approach to the practice of penance first became evident in the 7th century in the acts of the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône (644–655). Bishops gathered in that council were convinced that it was useful for the salvation of the faithful when the diocesan bishop prescribed penance to a sinner as many times as they would fall into sin (canon 8).

Celtic influence

Because of its isolation, the Celtic Church for centuries remained fixed with its forms of worship and penitential discipline which differed from the rest of the Christian Church. It had no knowledge of the institution of a public penance in the community of the church which could not be repeated, and which involved canonical obligations. Celtic penitential practices consisted of confession, acceptance of satisfaction fixed by the priest, and finally reconciliation. They date back to 6th century.

Penitential books native to the islands provided precisely determined penances for all offences, small and great (an approach reminiscent of early Celtic civil and criminal law). Walter J. Woods holds that "over time the penitential books helped suppress homicide, personal violence, theft, and other offenses that damaged the community and made the offender a target for revenge." The practice of so-called tariff penance was brought to continental Europe from Ireland, Scotland and England by Hiberno-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks.

The Celtic practice led to new theories about the nature of God's justice, about temporal punishment God imposes on sin, about a treasury of merits in heaven to pay the debt of this punishment, and finally about indulgences to offset that debt.

Late Middle Ages

With the spread of scholastic philosophy, the question arose as to what caused the remission of sins. From the early 12th century Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard reflected the practice that contrition and confession (even to laymen or, in rare cases, a nun or beguine) assured of God's forgiveness, but remorse for one's sins was necessary. Absolution referred only to the punishment due to sin. But at this time Hugh of St. Victor taught on the basis of the "power of the keys" (John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18) that absolution applied not to the punishment but to the sins, and this hastened the end to lay confession.

From the third century on, a private form of confession that bishops finally put a stop to by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that made confession to a priest obligatory within a year of the sinning, and has enshrined the practice of private confession ever since. In the 13th century the Dominican philosopher Thomas Aquinas tried to reunite the personal "matter" (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and ecclesial "form" (absolution). But the Franciscan Duns Scotus gave support to the prevalent opinion at the time that absolution was the only essential element of the sacrament, which readmitted the penitent to the Eucharist.

In the 11th and 12th centuries a new, legalistic theory of penances had crept in, as satisfying the divine justice and paying the penalty for the "temporal punishment due to sin". This was followed by a new theory of a treasury of merits which was first put forward around 1230. As a means of paying this penalty, the practice grew of granting indulgences for various good works, drawing on "the treasury of the Church's merits". These indulgences later began to be "sold" (i.e., made conditional for the wealthy on some approved alms-giving), leading to Martin Luther's dramatic protest.

Since the Council of Trent

In the mid-16th century the bishops at the Council of Trent retained the private approach to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and decreed that indulgences could not be sold. Some Protestant Reformers retained the sacrament as sign but shorn of Canonical accretions. However, for Catholics after Trent "the confession of mortal sins would be primarily regarded as a matter of divine law supported by the ecclesiastical law to confess these within a year after they had been committed".

The problem that "has dominated the entire history of the sacrament of reconciliation [...] is the determination of the roles of the subjective and personal factors and the objective and ecclesiastical factor in penance". From the mid-19th century, historical and biblical studies called to mind that repentance is required before God can forgive sins and the sinner can be readmitted to the Christian community through the sacrament. Sacramental theology had always taught that contrition was necessary for a valid confession. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) decreed in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that the "rite and formulas for the sacrament of penance [were] to be revised so that they more clearly express both the nature and effect of the sacrament". In a post-conciliar document, The Constitution on Penance, Pope Paul VI emphasized "the intimate relationship between external act and internal conversion, prayer, and works of charity".

Sacrament of reconciliation in pandemics

On March 20, 2020, the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a note on clarifications regards the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular it was noted that where it is impossible for the faithful to receive sacramental absolution, forgiveness for sins (even grave ones) may be obtained by perfect contrition and the believer's firm intention to make a sacramental confession as soon as possible.

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