A Second Look at Penance Services
After more than 30 years of public experiment, it may be time now to restudy and reappraise the role and value of the parish penance service that has become de rigueur in the Lenten and Advent programs of parishes across America.
The penance-service schedules have, of course, concentrated and lessened the confessional burdens of parish priests. As such, they have been a convenience, of a sort, for priests who have had their overall parochial duties greatly weighted in recent years.
However, the routine public penance service appears to have sapped the penitential spirit of large numbers of parishioners. The penance service has, it seems, contributed unwittingly to the undermining of a sacramental asset that has been a significant force in the formation of conscience and in the spiritual growth of Catholics through many centuries.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is at the center of the Christian approach to spiritual healing and moral rehabilitation. Healing is an essential feature of the Christian ministry to souls in the kingdom of God on earth. If current penitential programs have done anything to cripple the Church's works in the world of sin, sorrow and forgiveness, there may be need to make some changes in procedures.
At this juncture, there are disturbing signs of damaging effects from the practice of gathering large throngs of parishioners into the church before the year's two main liturgical feasts and rushing them pell-mell into confessionals in order to free them — en masse, as it were — from the accumulated burdens of sin, moral carelessness and spiritual sloth.
One of the alarms in the penance-service practice is that the hasty marshaling of large groups of persons into makeshift penance rooms for quick absolution has moderated the profound, spontaneous, personal feeling of a need to confront the conscience from time to time, at various intervals throughout the year.
The parish scheduling of mass confessions twice a year may even have worked in some cases to induce a faulty psychology of penance, sorrow and forgiveness. It appears that, under the current system, more than a few penitents have become inclined to view the penance service more as a parish discipline than as a deeply felt, spontaneous, inner approach to self-scrutiny, profound sorrow and renewed spiritual growth.
It is possible that the penance-service routine has brought about a softness and carelessness vis-a-vis sin even in "good Christians" throughout non-Lenten and non-Advent seasons of the year.
And there are some other concerns. As one who was present, as pastor, in the very beginning of the penance-service movement, and as one who has taken part in innumerable penance services in my parishes and in neighboring parishes, I have begun to question the pastoral prudence of these routinely scheduled regimentations of God's people into hurried phases of contrition, confession and absolution.
There is reason to fear that these large convocations for penitential purposes at annually anticipated intervals have weakened the fabric of personal, aspiring and intensive pursuit of moral purification.
The personal ardor for divine mercy can readily be distracted and diluted in the wholesale rush to line up — turnstile fashion — before a bevy of confessors recruited for the occasion in order to have all the confessing and absolving concluded on time, without undue hardship on anyone.
One thing that is happening — at least in some places — is that the attendance at these services has substantially diminished through the years. In my inquiry as to why this is happening, I have heard from some of the laity that they have lost some respect for and interest in this bustling approach to the unburdening of conscience. What might be more disturbing is the fact that there has been an even greater reduction in the number of penitents who attend the regular weekly confession sessions throughout the year.
The astounding fact is that parish members, as a class, are not going to confession as often as Catholic standards of spirituality recommend.
But the greatest tragedy of all in the public-penance scenario is that throngs of otherwise fairly good people have lost or are in the process of losing a personal sense of sin. And along with this diminished sense of moral guilt there is left only an attenuated feeling of need for God's mercy and sacramental grace.
These facts would be disturbing in any age. But in these times of expanding moral decay throughout American society, they are cause for profound dismay.
One of my brothers who is a doctor of medicine once said to me, "I think that I hear as many confessions as you do."
I replied: "I doubt it. But even if you do, you cannot do the same thing about it as I, by reason of ordination, can do."
The present intellectual environment indicates that the supernatural concept of sin and moral disorder is losing ground. Gaining ground is the secularist concept of sin merely as anti-social conduct that threatens physical health, earthly happiness and emotional well-being.
In this sense, sin is to be treated mainly by a psychotherapist. Lost in the shuffle for many is the notion of sin as a force that neutralizes a soul's friendship with God, a force that destroys Christian rectitude, peace of soul and spiritual growth.
There is extreme danger in the current trend toward religious indifferentism and spiritual apathy.
It is not just an unhappy accident of history that religious performance among the multitudes in this nation is getting to be less than brilliant; that secularism is making deep inroads into the Christian community; that candidates for the priesthood are vanishing; that Mass attendance in many places is lagging in spite of growth in population; that youths, in wholesale numbers, are giving up the practice of the faith; that many Catholics in public life are espousing secular causes in defiance of Christian moral standards; that the public "image" of the Church has faded in these days of secular dominance and social "emancipation."
One source of trouble may be that moral weakness is eating away the fabric of the body of Christendom while the healing power given by Christ to the Church is, in many instances, only haphazardly used. It has even come to be, to some extent, that the word "sin" is not to be mentioned anymore in polite society.
Sin and mercy are a constant refrain in the inspired Word. My New Testament concordance lists references to sin 94 times and to mercy 55 times. It is not likely that there would be such frequent advertence to man's offenses and to God's compassion if these elements in human life were not important factors in the success or failure of man's long journey to the distant peace.
In this overall hurry to dispatch long lines of penitents to confessionals in a single penance service, there may be a tendency to overemphasize the distinction between venial sin and mortal sin. There is certainly a great difference between sin that destroys the life of grace and the sin that "merely" lessens the vital quality of a soul's friendship with Christ.
It is true enough that no number of venial sins adds up mathematically to one mortal sin. Yet a disregarded and uninterrupted series of minor transgressions can create enough spiritual havoc that moral resistance is weakened. In this case, a serious fall from grace is possible — even likely.
The lesser sins are not inconsequential. Venial sin can be considered the cholesterol of the spiritual system. In itself, venial sin is not death-dealing. But, unrepented, it is spiritually enervating and at least moderately threatening to a sustained spirituality.
With even a bit of pastoral indifference to the depleting effects of "lesser" sins, what becomes of Christ's admonition in the Sermon on the Mount? "You must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48).
To give penitents the notion — even by indirection — that they may ignore venial sins with impunity is, at best, a theological technicality. This procedure is like that of a medical doctor who would counsel his patients to forget about plaque in the vascular system and just concentrate on preventing heart failure.
Indulging another theological technicality, some pastors tend to maintain that the confessional assignment is designed for absolution and not for consultation. What they are saying is that a confessor is not much more than an absolution machine. But a confessor, actually, is not only an absolver but also a spiritual director to souls who are suppliants in the world of sin, forgiveness and moral rehabilitation.
A factor in authentic sorrow is the determination to avoid sin in the future. The rhetoric of contrition and resolution, in itself, is not a guarantee of substance or promise. Earnest motivation is needed to assure that there is contrition of the heart along with stern determination of will.
The total human approach to sorrow, reform and spiritual growth could be more meaningful and productive for Christians if they would make a more frequent, more spontaneous and more inspired effort from time to time throughout the year to resort to the sacrament of forgiveness and receive the grace of reconciliation with the Lord.
In the world of American physicians, there is a current trend to get doctors to pay more attention to positive growth in health instead of just combating illness. The positive efforts include attention to nutrition, exercise, environment, moderation, positive thinking and so on.
In the same sense, the Sacrament of Reconciliation can be used to build spiritual vigor, good conscience and moral prudence, instead of merely closing in on moral maladies and spiritual pollution.
Clear, insistent and motivating instructions to the laity from the pulpit will indicate that this sacrament has extremely positive values. The positive elements are present in the fact that the sacrament is designed not just to forgive sin but to strengthen character and extend the kingdom of grace in the soul.
In the sacrament, when properly approached, there is mercy and forgiveness for past sins. And there are sacramental graces, hope and help granted to forgiven sinners to help them grow in the Spirit and become strong against challenges and trials that lie ahead.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is an essential part of the Church's liturgy. As such it calls for positive, joyful and prayerful celebration by penitents who come unto the Lord's presence to confess with sorrow — and stay to honor God's law and love by a more faithful moral performance as time goes on.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is liturgical in the full sense of liturgy.
A Christian's sin is a wound in the Body of Christ. Man's sorrows and confession, though expressed to the Church in solitary fashion, are joined to the vast chorus of sorrow and mercy-seeking of active members of the Mystical Body across the world and across the ages.
The silent sorrow and the earnest search for forgiveness constitute an acceptance of God's sovereignty, an active submission to God's justice and a large measure of gratitude to the Lord for His continuing providence toward His struggling people on earth. And all of this is done in the name of the universal Church and for the spiritual vitality of God's people everywhere. Sacramental forgiveness, though given to an individual in a place of sacred solitude, restores an ailing member to the wholeness of Christ's Body, the living, loving Church.
The act of reunion of a repentant Christian is not done by himself alone.
Even his repentance is not strictly a solitary adventure into grace. The journey from spiritual distress to renewed hope is a community event done in and through the great Mediator, the Head of the Mystical Body, the Brother of every Christian in progress on the rugged pathway to salvation.
In the Sacrament of Reconciliation that helps turn penitents from the darkness of sin to the light of grace, sinners are brought back into active, vital association with the Communion of Saints. In the spiritual transformation, the whole Church, with repentant sinners, in family fashion honors the Lord, thanks God for forgiveness, atones for past misdeeds and petitions the heavenly Father for continuing mercy to all submissive children of redemption.
This is public prayer. This is the Christian community, as community, at work in behalf of the crippled of the household. This is the Church, an intermediary between earth and heaven, performing its sacred healing duty for the humble and erring of this world.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is an active liturgical presence. And it cannot in good conscience be taken lightly.
Whatever arguments can be adduced from history for the infrequent use of the confessional, the fact remains that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a major factor in the work of healing God's people, in the process of reducing moral weakness, reviving hope for salvation in penitents and building virtue in souls on earthly pilgrimage.
It may or may not be premature to lay the shriveled interest in this sacrament at the door of the parish penance service. However, there seems to be some connection between the regimentation involved in the penance service and the growing popular disinterest among the laity regarding the Church's role in the healing process of human souls.
A thorough theological and pastoral review of the penance service as it is now conducted appears to be in order.
A return to spontaneous reverence for sacramental confession and a more personalized approach to the tribunal of mercy may help stanch the outward flow of penitential sacredness and enlarge the spiritual effectiveness of a month-to-month approach of Christians to the forgiveness of Christ.
This commentary is not intended as a definitive pronouncement on the past or future of the penance-service movement. Rather, it is designed as a call for serious discussion of the whole subject, purposeful scrutiny, prayerful consideration — and, possibly, some kind of change, if that should prove to be a reasonable judgment. •
FATHER HUGHES is a retired priest of the Diocese of Duluth, Minn., but has continued to be active in various pastoral activities. in past years, his articles appeared in The Priest and Our Sunday Visitor.
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