Auricular confession

“ They have never made auricular confession the subject of their study, and hence the horror they feel at its iniquitous and private abominations. I must frankly confess, however, that it is a matter of surprise that American theologians should be so entirely unacquainted with the writings of popish doctors and popish priests, as not to find all the apparently objectionable expressions in my books in common use among them. ”

“ But let us come to my first lesson in Auricular Confession, No! No words can express to those who have never had any experience in the matter, the consternation, anxiety and shame of a poor Romish child, when he hears his priest saying from the pulpit, in a grave and solemn tone; "This week, you will send your children to confession. Make them understand that this action is one of the most important of their lives, that for every one of them, it will decide their eternal happiness or ruin. ”

“ But the abominable, auricular confession which is so highly esteemed by the world, is nothing but hypocrisy, human righteousness and superstition, open delusion of unbelievers, a false hope of the impenitent sinner, and a subtle invention of gain by the avaricious priests, whereby they set aside true confession and repentance, and comfort and encourage the world in their reckless, ungodly life. ”

“ Why does not innocence,—native, conscious innocence,—if, in reality, there is such a thing,—teach woman to flee from those incarnate demons, Romish confessors? Why will they entrust themselves, alone and unprotected by father or mother, brother or honorable lover, with these scheming, artful seducers? Why will mothers, married women, go to confession to these men, or why will husbands be such inconceivable dupes as to permit it? Have husbands any idea of the questions which a confessor puts to their wives? They have not even the remotest. ”

“ I now declare, most solemnly and sincerely, that after living twenty-five years in full communion with the Roman Catholic church, and officiating as a Romish priest, hearing confessions, and confessing myself, I know not another reptile in all animal nature so filthy, so much to be shunned, and loathed, and dreaded by females, both married and single, as a Roman Catholic priest, or bishop, who practises the degrading and demoralizing office of auricular confession. ”

“ Who can read the above extract from Michelet on auricular confession, without fancying that it is nothing more than one of those effusions with which rich fancies like his frequently abound? Men unacquainted with anything but the ordinary business of life, cannot fancy, much less realize, truth in the above. Is there even a Roman Catholic to be found, who can realize or believe the fact, that while he supposes himself the only possessor of his wife,—that she is his own—heart and soul—whole and undivided, yet is not so? ”

“ But on the side of the sinner himself it seems as if the need ought to have been too great to accept so summary a refusal of its satisfaction. One would think that in more men the shell of secrecy would have had to open, the pent-in abscess to burst and gain relief, even though the ear that heard the confession were unworthy. The Catholic church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted auricular confession to one priest for the more radical act of public confession. ”

“ No; they were very careful not to say so; for from that very moment, their shameless lies would have been exposed; the stupendous but weak structure of auricular confession would fall to the ground with sad havoc and ruin to its upholders. Men and women would open their eyes, and see its weakness and fallacy. "If God," they might say, "can forgive our most grievous sins, against modesty, he can and will certainly do the same with those of less gravity; therefore there is no necessity or occasion for us to confess to a priest." ”

“ In the popular Protestant view confessional boxes are associated with the scandals, real or supposed, of the practice of auricular confession. They were, however, devised to guard against such scandals by securing at once essential publicity and a reasonable privacy, and by separating priest and penitent. In the middle ages stringent rules were laid down, in this latter respect, by the canon law in the case of confessions by women and especially nuns. ”

“ These inquiries will cease when I state that the young lady became a convert to Popery, and give my readers some idea of what auricular confession is, and how it is made. Every Roman Catholic believes that priests have power to forgive sins, by virtue of which power any crime, however heinous, may be remitted. ”

“ As far as you tell us, she has made no resistance, and it is scarcely possible that one whom you have placed upon so high a prominence of virtue, could have so suddenly fallen into the depths of vice. This is all very plausible, and naturally to be expected from those who know nothing of auricular confession,—a Popish institution, one of the most ingenious devices ever invented by the great enemy of man, for the destruction of the human soul. ”

“ It is probable that auricular confession never altogether died out in the Church of England, but it is obvious that evidence on the subject must always be hard to find. Certainly there has been a great increase and development of the practice since the Oxford movement in the early part of the 19th century. Two chief difficulties have attended this revival. In the first place, owing to the general disuse of such ministrations, there were none among the English clergy who had experience in delicate questions of conscience ”

“ There is practically no reason for supposing that the crime was{137} either more or less prevalent, at the close of the eighteenth century, than it had been ever since, in the thirteenth, auricular confession was made obligatory, or than it has been since the nineteenth century opened. The strain of the confessional is too great for average human nature, and the most that the Church can do, in its most recent regulations, is to keep these lapses of the flesh from the knowledge of the faithful. ”

“ Let my readers who understand Latin peruse the extracts I give from Bishop Kenrick, Debreyne, Burchard, Dens or Liguori, and the most incredulous will learn for themselves that the world, even in the darkest ages of old paganism, has never seen anything so infamous and degrading as auricular confession. ”

“ Although the life or salvation of a man, or the ruin of the state, should depend upon it, what is discovered in confession cannot be revealed. The secret of the seal—confession—is more binding than the obligation of an oath. ”

“ The husband of her who goes to confession has no hold upon her affections. If he claims a right to her confidence, he claims what he can never receive; he claims what she has not to give. She has long since given it to her confessor, and he can never recover it. She looks to her confessor for advice in everything. ”

“ Cry and sigh are the original forms of all lyricism, and just as they are a sweet compulsion to expel an inner overflow by utterance, so confession is only deliverance from an inner pressure, from guilt and penitence, from mighty forces, accordingly, which the confessor wishes to transmit to others. ”

“ I have known this many a day that there needs no priest to make a confession valid, but that to every truly penitent heart the way to the very throne of Heaven is open, and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. If I regretted aught, it was that I must die without another kind of confession—the confessing my faith openly before men. ”

“ If the confessor only intends to free himself from these disturbing images and the consequent punishment by means of confession, we are not dealing with what is properly called conscience, but more or less with disease, with an abnormally excited imagination. ”

“ Such a problem is seldom simple and easy, and as there is no possibility of contradiction, the danger is nowhere so great of making light of the matter. “What is reasserted is half proved.” That is a comfortable assertion, and leads to considerable incorrectness. A confession is only established in truth when it is construed psychologically, when the whole inner life of the confessor and his external conditions are brought into relation with it, and the remaining motives established as at least possible. ”

“ At this end of the telephone whisper your confession, and before it has well passed your lips there comes back the voice sweet as that of angels, 'The Lord hath forgiven thy sin.' One word, one motion of a heart aware of, and hating, and desiring to escape from, its evil, brings with a rush the whole fulness of fatherly and forgiving love into any heart. And that one confession may be the turning-point of a man's life, and may obliterate all the sinful past, and may bring him into loving, reconciled, harmonious relations with the Almighty Judge. ”

“ It is unnecessary to dwell on this sort of auricular deception, of which most men’s recollection will supply instances. The following may be stated as one serving to show by what slender accidents the human ear may be imposed upon. ”

“ Fathers, Mothers and guardians of those children, if, through your fault or theirs, your children are guilty of a false confession: if they do not confess every thing to the priest who holds the place of God, Himself, this sin is often irreparable: the Devil will take possession of their hearts: they will lie to their father confessor, or rather to Jesus Christ, of whom he is the representative: Their lives will be a series of sacrileges, their death and eternity, those of reprobates. ”

“ Although the priest may be unable to absolve the penitent from all his sins, yet the latter is bound to confess all to him, that he may know the total quantity of his guilt, and refer him to the superior with regard to the sins from which he cannot absolve him.
Art. 3 - Whether one may confess through another, or by writing? Objection 1: It would seem that one may confess through another, or by writing. For confession is necessary in order that the penitent's conscience may be made known to the priest. But a man can make his conscience known to the priest, through another or by writing. ”

“ My confession then, O my God, in Thy sight, is made silently, and not silently. For in sound, it is silent; in affection, it cries aloud. For neither do I utter any thing right unto men, which Thou hast not before heard from me; nor dost Thou hear any such thing from me, which Thou hast not first said unto me. What then have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions- as if they could heal all my infirmities- a race, curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Why seek they to hear from me what I am; who will not hear from Thee what themselves are? ”

“ My dear Christian, when you come to confession, you must not be satisfied in repeating with the mouth a prayer which you have committed to memory, or to permit a prayer of confession to be repeated to you by your confessor, but you must yourself bring with you a penitent heart, out of which your confession will then freely flow, for to confess without a penitent heart is mocking God, and without it no forgiveness of sins can take place.
To a penitent heart in the first place belongs, that you confess your sins and experience sorrow and penitence on account of them. ”

“ Those of us who were to confess at a particular time, took our places on our knees near the confession-box, and after having repeated a number of prayers, etc., prescribed in our book, came up one at a time and kneeled beside a fine wooden lattice work, which entirely separated the confessor from us, yet permitted us to place our faces almost to his ear, and nearly concealed his countenance from our view. ”

“ Treat it as a sin, and confess it to God and the man whom you have wronged. As soon as you catch yourself lying, go straight to the person and confess you have lied. Let your confession be as wide as your transgression. If you have slandered or lied about any one in public, let your confession be public. Many a person says some mean, false thing about another in the presence of others, and then tries to patch it up by going to that person alone. That is not making restitution. ”

“ Does confession really relieve your mind? Does it make your sins fall off you like an old garment? My friends have told me so, but I cannot believe it.’
‘Oh, sir, your friends were right, indeed. It is the greatest comfort anyone can have. Why, when the priest absolves you, they are all gone. You not only need not trouble yourself about them again, but you are strictly forbidden to do so. It would be doubting God’s goodness, and the power He has imparted to His priests. Oh, sir, do try it, only just once,’ continued the woman, who saw in Hindes a possible convert. ”

“ But it is one thing to sing words; it is quite another thing to realize the meaning of what we sing. If this Christian woman had been questioned in regard to her doctrine, she would doubtless have said that she believed that there were three Persons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but a theological confession is one thing, a practical realization of the truth we confess is quite another. ”

“ Under the sacred seal of confession she implored his counsel; prostrate at his feet, she entreated him to decide her destiny. Never had the confessor directed a penitent in a case so difficult; he paused for many moments, and seemed unwilling to pronounce—but the young widow insisted.
“My daughter,” at last said the minister of truth, “it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not swear!’ and you have failed to follow this command; you have disobeyed God—you ought to submit to the consequence of your fault. It has been before Heaven ”