The author is Australian Jesuit Richard Leonard, who is a regular contributor to The Tablet.
Well worth a read and makes great sense.
The Third Rite of Reconciliation enjoyed a great reception in many places in Australia until November 1998. That month Pope John Paul II formally opened the special Synod for Oceania. At the end a “Statement of Conclusions” was produced and signed. The tone of it was generally negative, and the lax administration of the Sacrament of Penance received special attention.
Bishops were told that the first and second rites of penance were the “sole ordinary means” by which Catholics are sacramentally forgiven by God and that illicit use of the Third Rite of Reconciliation (general absolution) had to be “eliminated”. All of this hit headlines around the country.
In December 1999 I remember meeting an Anglican bishop who laughed as he said: “You Roman Catholics are the only group of Christians I know who could gather a church filled with confessing believers on a Tuesday night, explicitly there to repent of their sins and receive God’s forgiveness, and send them home because they wanted to use the wrong Rite. Anglicans would be grateful that so many had gathered for the single purpose of celebrating God’s unbounded mercy.”
In a recent column I suggested that the Third Rite of Reconciliation should become the norm in parishes so that vulnerable priests and bishops would be protected from activists wanting to entrap them for breaching the legal requirement to disclose an admission of child sexual abuse in Confession. It set off a minor firestorm.
Some of my correspondents said – rightly, in my view – that general absolution should return full stop, and not as means to avoid confessors being charged by the police. Others took me to task for even suggesting that this form of Christ’s forgiveness might be remotely equal in efficacy to the other two rites of reconciliation.
From my own graced experience of the first and second rites, as well as the privilege of hearing personal confessions for decades, I need no convincing of their beauty and power when they are celebrated well. However, to question the motivation of someone seeking absolution via the third rite, or suggesting it might not deliver on its sacramental promise of Christ’s forgiveness, is entering into very dangerous territory
One priest attached to his email a statement from his bishop, who claimed the third rite was more about confessing “sinfulness” rather than sins. The bishop went on to denigrate the third rite as a “do-it-yourself” parody of the sacrament. His comments are as tragic as they are ill-considered.
I cannot see how this could be described as “sacramentally DIY”: gathering in a church at a nominated time for the specific purpose of celebrating that Christ’s forgiveness is greater than our sins; hearing the Word of God and a homily; performing an Examination of Conscience; making an act of contrition and purpose of amendment; kneeling to receive sacramental absolution and then being absolved by Christ through the ministrations of the priest or bishop; saying the Lord’s Prayer; and, finally, being blessed and sent in peace while singing of the mercy of the Lord.
All of this is celebrated in the context of knowing that if a particular penitent were carrying a mortal sin, then they were further required to attend to the first rite of reconciliation.
What has happened since November 1998? For all our preaching, our teaching, our demands and our encouragement, the reality is that since the third rite was eliminated, the vast majority of Australian Catholics do not access any form of Penance, ever.
Even Lenten and Advent penance services have noticeably shrunk in recent years. If we believe in the sensus fidei then the People of God have not received the teaching that the communal rite of penance is “illegitimate”. For almost 30 years we have chosen form over substance, and the Body of Christ is the weaker for it.
I believe that if we restored the more ancient communal rite of penance, we could regularly see again a church full of confessing Catholics repenting of their sins and celebrating God’s unbounded mercy. Other than an institutional back down, where would the downside be?
3 comments:
I assume the third rite is also conditional on a firm purpose of amendment, so what's the big deal?
Methinks the only firm purpose of amendment many had was the firm purpose to retain the 8th Amendment! ;-)
May God forgive them, through the Third Rite, of course.
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