Friday 11/14/14

This week’s LifeTeen Question of the Week comes from Joe Bradley. Joe asks:

What does the sacrament of reconciliation offer opposed to just confessing your sins to God in a different way through prayer? Are priests allowed to tell anyone, even a law enforcement member, about the sins?


The sacrament of reconciliation is one of the most beautiful gifts the Church has to offer the faithful. As the name suggests, through the sacrament of reconciliation we are reconciled to God. When we sin, we turn away from God. Reconciliation is an opportunity to return to Him, admit that we were wrong, and ask forgiveness. It is an opportunity to humble ourselves. Admitting that we were wrong is never easy. Reconciliation is also an opportunity to practice trust. The faithful can also receive counseling, a blessing, or guidance from their confessor.



But it is much more than that.

The sacrament of reconciliation grants absolution. Absolution is the guaranteed forgiveness of God granted by a priest. It’s like this: when you give a sacramental confession, the priest acts as an agent of Christ. As a result, he has the power to forgive your sins in God’s name. Through the sacrament of reconciliation you can have your sins truly forgiven. Could you confess your sins in your own private prayer and still be forgiven by God? God can do whatever God wants, so it’s not impossible, but it’s not guaranteed either.

Let’s compare it to the Eucharist. We go to Mass to receive the Eucharist because we know that the prayers said by the priest cause the miracle of transubstantiation, the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Could I instead go to Wendy’s and pray really hard that God transubstantiate my four junior cheeseburgers and my value Coke? Sure. Would it work in the same way? I would suspect almost certainly not.


As for the second part of your question, the answer is no. Priests cannot tell anyone the details of a person’s confession, not even the police or a judge. Things said in confession are confidential. In fact, not only can a priest not tell anyone else, he is also not supposed to bring it back up to you again without your permission. Furthermore, priests are not allowed to act any differently based on the information which you give in a confession. This last part is especially helpful for me, because I can go to Father Chris for confession and admit to him that I fell asleep on the job for a couple of hours, and he can’t fire me based on that information.


Personal loopholes aside, it does bring up some interesting issues. For example, imagine a person came into confession just before the 4:00 Mass on Saturday. He confesses to the priest that he has poisoned the chalice. What can the priest do? He is bound by the rules of confession not to do anything different. That means he cannot change the chalice. He is not completely trapped, though. The priest does have some options. For example, in order for a confession to be valid, it must be sincerely contrite. That means that if someone isn’t really sorry about what they did, the priest does not need to give penance and grant absolution. In the case of the poisoned chalice, the priest could ask for the individual to right his wrong before being granted absolution. Since that would be an easy problem to fix, refusing to do so would demonstrate a lack of sincere contrition, thus invalidating the confession. The priest would still be bound to secrecy under the confession, though, so he would have to take the contents of the confession to the grave… probably a lot sooner than he would like.




If you have a question you’d like Mike to answer, submit it under the “Ask Mike” section of our website. To guarantee that your question is chosen, make a sincere and contrite confession and, in a state of grace, write it down and mail it to: