Readings and Reflections – November 8, 2015
Treasures from our Tradition
In 1974, a revised ritual of penance was given to the Church, and at forty years distance, we still are discover-ing its treasures and tentative about some of its provi-sions. The rite reaches deep into our tradition for an early insight: when we turn to God, we are restored to life in the Church. There are three different forms of penance. The familiar individual confession is preserved, but with tremendous enrichment. It is less rushed, anchored by a reading from scripture, and the confession of sins is seen as an opportunity to proclaim faith in God’s power to save. In a sense, what is “confessed” is the penitent’s faith in God’s gift of forgiveness. The priest suggests a penance that may be directly connected to the virtue that the per-son seeks as a means of overcoming the fault. There are formulas for contrition suggested, but the penitent might even express sorrow for sin and desire for mercy in his or her own words. The prayer of absolution grounds the event in the life and ministry of the Church. Harking back to the joyful dance of bishops leading penitents into the church, the rite now ends with a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s mercy, and may include the gesture of laying on of hands. After forty years, we struggle to claim this rite forged of memory, tradition, and grace. History tells us to be patient; we do not always recognize a treasure at first.
—Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.
Readings and Reflections – November 1, 2015
Treasures from our Tradition
Eight hundred years ago, the church’s practice of penance underwent major revision as theologians, called scholastics, reflected on the practice of their day. By then, penance was normally a very secret rite, celebrated completely apart from the community. Public penance had mostly disappeared behind the walls of monasteries and the cloister grills of convents. The scholastics trimmed penance down to bare essentials, even sweeping aside age-old traditions like a laying on of hands and prayers of ab-solution. All that was left was the confessor’s simple statement, “Ego te absolvo,” “I absolve you.” In 1614 a new ritual book tried to make penance more public and solemn. It suggested, but did not require, that the priest wear a surplice and stole, and hear the confession in a confessional. For the first time, we have the directive that the priest be separated from the penitent by a screen, a rule that some bishops applied very strictly. By the 1940s, large numbers of Catholics availed themselves of the sacrament of confession every Saturday, and most people thought confession was a prerequisite for Communion. In some urban parish churches, confessionals were staffed, usually by the junior priest, for several hours every day, even during the celebration of Mass. It is remarkable how quickly things changed, but as we have seen, the system has collapsed before and what often comes next is an im-pulse of the Spirit, new life, and a fresh start.
—Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.
Readings and Reflections – October 25, 2015
Treasures from our Tradition
In the tangled but fascinating history of penance in the Church, the Irish “tariff” system helped us survive the collapse of the old system of public canonical penance and prepared the way for a new system that emerged in the twelfth century. The old form was unrepeatable, public, dealt with serious community matters, and regulated by the bishops as chief reconcilers. The new form had a more intimate setting of penitent and confessor, was extremely repeatable, and applied to everyone. The old canonical form was closed to children, who were hardly capable of the very grown-up sins listed or their demanding remedies. The old form was likewise closed to clerics, who were protected in a sense by the very nature of the discipline. In the new Irish form the penitent directly named sins, or answered direct questions by the priest. Sometimes, the penitent would recite a long formula accusing him- or herself in a general way of all sorts of sins, even from the distant past. Next, priest and penitent together would lie prostrate before the altar and recite several of the psalms with penitential themes. Finally, the priest would pronounce a judgment, deciding what form and duration the penance should take, normally insisting that the person return for reconciliation once the penances were completed. —Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co
Readings and Reflections – October 18, 2015
Treasures from our Tradition
The Irish are rightly tired of being the subject of jokes about guilt. In fact, it is from the Celtic church that the whole experience of reconciliation in our tradition was creatively rescued and revived. The Irish church was unique in its origins, not so much organized around dioceses, but around monasteries. Aspects of religious community life readily spilled over into ordinary gatherings of the faithful, including the way people looked at sin and applied remedies. Unlike the public nature of canonical penance, the Irish method was linked to a kind of mentoring process they called “soul friending.” Just as young novice monks might find a mentor in the wisdom of a senior guide, so did a way of penance open up to ordinary folks. Monks were accustomed to frequent confession of faults to the abbot or mentor, who would suggest penances. In time, abbots with a certain flair for this began to share lists of sins and corresponding “tariffs” with others. Some of these books survive and provide a hair-raising view of long-ago sins like cattle rustling, and a great deal of self-correction involving dips in icy streams and rolling about in thickets of thorns. After the penance was performed, the penitent returned to the confessor, and in a private act marked by the laying on of hands, or perhaps a kiss of the altar, the sinner was re-stored.
Irish monks were committed travelers and their methods were widely copied. We might say that they saved a sacrament but at the expense of shifting attention to the sins of the individual and away from the actions of the reconciling community. —Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.