I have a friend, a woman. Like me, she is a somewhat observant Catholic. We’ve been close friends for many years (more than twenty), but never anything more.
She told me recently that she’d gone to confession. She hadn’t been for many years, but she wanted to confess (and be absolved of) something that she’d done many years ago. She’d had an abortion back when she was a teenager.
She was denied absolution by the priest. She was really, really upset about this. So was I.
If she’d shot someone with a gun in the course of a holdup, she would have been absolved. But it seems that she can’t be granted absolution for the abortion.
Is the Church really telling her that she is condemned to Hell and that there is absolutely nothing she can do about it? This seems horrendously unfair. She is genuinely repentant.
The Church has no opinion as to whether she is going to hell, taking the position that no one but God and the person involved can know the heart of the sinner. (I am not claiming that the Church has always been so self-effacing, but that is the current expression of church teaching.)
What the Church will say is that with a serious sin that has not been absolved, the person is not permitted to partake of the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and that the church would urge the person to repent of his or her sin.
“But wait,” you say, “that is what she was trying to do when she went to confession.”
True enough. I do not know why the priest withheld absolution (although, if he was not a complete asshole, he should have explained it pretty carefully to her).
I can conjure up a number of reasons why the priest might have withheld absolution, but I am not going to speculate on what scenario applied to her. The various possibilities include (but are not limited to):
the priest inferred from her statements that she was simply trying to get over some vague sense of guilt and was not truly sorry for the action (which could include statements that she would do it again if she found herself in similar situation or that she was not sorry for engaging in any other sacrament (Matrimony, Eucharist) since the event);
the priest inferred from her statements that she was not really looking to continue on as a fully active member of the church (based on your description of her, I would not think it his place to make that determination, but I did not hear the conversation–he might have a different view of “mostly observant” than you and your friend);
the priest is an asshole who believes that he needs to scare her or that, in his personal opinion, abortion is unforgiveable. (The Catholic Church does not hold abortion to be an unforgiveable act.)
I do not support the idea of shopping around for the “best” priest, but if that particular priest is known to be very rigid regarding some rules, it might be worth her while to approach a different priest. However, one of the aspects of repentance is a sincere sorrow for all of one’s sins and the firm intention to not repeat them. If there is some aspect of her life that would suggest to a priest that she was either not sorry or that she had no intention of avoiding sin, she is liable to come up with the same problem even with a more compassionate priest. (Also, Confession/Sacrament of Reconciliation is an all-or-nothing activity. The priest pronounces absolution on that confession, not on individual acts reported. So it is possible that while your friend was most concerned about the abortion, she expressed a lack of repentance for some other action and it was not the abortion for which he withheld absolution.)
The Church is refusing to absolve her of what she considers a very serious mortal sin. That’s pretty condemnatory.
She has not partaken of the Eucharist, since she is a believer in Catholic teaching about sin that hasn’t been absolved. She would like to, though. She would like to be a fully active member of the Church. She has raised her children as Catholics. She has lived a good and Catholic life, at least for all her adult life. Her teenage years were different. Stupid. Wild. Thoughtless. Then she grew up.
This seems to be pretty much the case. My own advice to her was to find another priest. I think this guy has his head up his ass.
I do not support the idea of shopping around for the “best” priest, but if that particular priest is known to be very rigid regarding some rules, it might be worth her while to approach a different priest. However, one of the aspects of repentance is a sincere sorrow for all of one’s sins and the firm intention to not repeat them. If there is some aspect of her life that would suggest to a priest that she was either not sorry or that she had no intention of avoiding sin, she is liable to come up with the same problem even with a more compassionate priest. (Also, Confession/Sacrament of Reconciliation is an all-or-nothing activity. The priest pronounces absolution on that confession, not on individual acts reported. So it is possible that while your friend was most concerned about the abortion, she expressed a lack of repentance for some other action and it was not the abortion for which he withheld absolution.) **
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The Church is not refusing to absolve her, one specific priest is. Go to another priest, at another church. Attitudes among priest vary, just like among any group of people.
A person who actually procures an abortion, knowing in advance of the sin involved in such an act, incurs a latae sententiae excommunication from the Church. Latae sententiae simply means that the penalty is incurred automatically upon the commission of the offense.
By canon law, the removal of an excommunication is the province of the local Ordinary - the bishop. Normally, bishops delegate to their priests the authority to remove such penalties. However, it is conceivable that in the particular diocese under discussion, the bishop reserves to himself the removal of this penalty. I imagine that in this case, the priest would have explained why he was not able to offer absolution, however, and guided the woman through whatever else needed to be done.
An excomunicated person may not receive any sacraments, including the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Typically, then, the priest would first absolve the penitent of the excommunication. The reconciled person can then receive absolution in confession from all sins of which she is aware and return to the sacramental life of the Church.
I would note that the OP mentions that the abortion happened when the woman was a teenager. Can. § 1323 1° provides that someone under 16 is not liable for the penalty of automatic excommunication. Can 1324 4° provides for a lesser penalty for a minor of ages 16 or 17. Only is she was 18 or 19 would the full penalty of excommunication apply.
Your friend need not worry about a representative of the Church granting her absolution because only God and the sinner really know the heart of the sinner. Assuming that your friend can be forgiven (the Church thinks so), your friend really is repentant, and that God is omniscient then it is already done.
This is the main problem I have with Catholics (I am Baptist); the idea that a regular man can keep you from salvation. Why should that priest be able to refuse your friend the right of being forgiven, when it is God who she transgressed against?
I maintain that the priest cannot dictate the will of God, and that to assume such and act accordingly is a terrible insult. In essence you are saying that if the Church, an organization composed of humans, is more powerful than the Almighty!
As you note, if the priest in question was not given the faculties to lift that automatic penalty, then he should have steered her to someone in the diocese who did have that authority. Going by how the original story was relayed. The woman was simply refused, which seems to preclude this situation.
Also, some dioceses have a grief program for woman who are only later dealing with the grief and new conscience of an abortion. In these programs, they’re counseled to see a priest who’s had training in this area several times to work through the grief which then culminates in the celebration of absolution. But again, the story doesn’t include any further intructions from the priest about what to do.
And this is the hinky part of the story. Let’s say the priest is just a hard-ass idiot. He still needs to tell the woman what must be done in order to obtain absolution. Unless the priest is in need of medication, no priest simply refuses absolution without giving a reason and saying what must be done in order to obtain absolution.
There’s something in the story the woman is leaving out. Has to be. If the priest truly simply refused absolution with no further direction, she needs to write a letter to the bishop.
Not only that, but the woman would have had to know in advance that the act of procuring an abortion incurred an automatic penalty of excommunication. Without that foreknowledge, the automatic penalty doesn’t kick in.
Note that the Church agrees with the basic position that forgiveness is determined between the sinner and God and that the issue of Reconciliation to the Body of Christ is a somewhat different issue.
Of course, one might also consider that Jesus authorized his Apostles (and, by extension, the church) to make that exact determination:
We can argue about how far Jesus’s authorization extended (in which case this will get thrown into Great Debates), but clearly Jesus authorized someone to do just what you claim no one should do.
Thanks for your witnessing to your beliefs, but that belongs in MPSIMS.
But, since we’re in GQ, we need to deal with your factual errors:
The RCC does not teach that any mere human has to the power to dictate the will of God or keep anyone from salvation.
The RCC teaches that once a sinner is truly sorry for their sins, they are forgiven by God. The Sacrament of Penance (aka, Confession, or Reconciliation) does two things: 1) It reconciles the sinner with the community of the church; and 2) It celebrates with the church God’s mercy through Christ in a liturgical and sacramental ritual.
IOW, after apologizing to God, one needs to apologize to God’s people. No true act of grave and serious evil is ever private – it effects the whole Body of Christ. If one broke their relationship with God, then they broke their relationship with God’s people. And so it is only right to reconcile with the community, or, in the case of RCC practice, with a representative of that community, the priest.
In addition to that main purpose of the sacrament, it also provides other benefits such as spiritual direction, review of conscience, assurance of forgiveness (if one is doubtful of God’s mercy), and pious practices which discipline oneself not to sin again.
Or to put it another way, it does in private what Jimmy Swaggart had to do in public. No one said, “Oh, Jimmy, you don’t have to apologize to us and confess your sorrow publicly for the scandal that you caused, because God forgives you, not us.” Jimmy most certainly had to apologize to the community. And that’s what the sacrament of Penance is all about.
Now, when a priest refuses absolution, it can only be for two reasons: 1) He’s damned sure that the sorrow and the apology isn’t genuine (the sorrow is supposed to be presumed, but sometimes a penitent indicates they’re not really sorry – maybe only sorry they got caught, e.g.); and 2) It’s a particular kind of offence for which he is not authorized to give absolution. Some cases require absolution from the bishop (as in the case of abortion in some dioceses) or by the Pope himself (as in the case of priests who’ve solicited sex in the confessional).