Confession and non-Catholics
I once had a Protestant woman become quite upset when she was told by a Catholic priest that, while he would be very happy to hear her sins and to pray with her, he could not offer her absolution. A number of her Catholic friends, while less upset, did wonder why this was so. As it turns out, there are nuances to the question that need to be addressed.
Preliminary point #1: There are times when a priest can’t offer absolution to Catholics!
In order for a sacramental confession to be valid, a person has to come offering both contrition and conversion.
Contrition is a looking back at the sins and being sorry for them — if a person is not sorry, it isn’t really a confession. Usually people coming to confession are contrite — after all, they are there — but sometimes we encounter situations where contrition is absent, such as with a person who is “forced” to go to confession by their parents, even though they don’t feel sorry at all. It just isn’t a real confession, so we can’t offer the absolution.
Conversion, on the other hand, is a looking forward — it means that they promise to amend their life, such that they would not do it over again even if the exact same circumstances were present. Often enough we are presented with situations where contrition exists, but the person (while terribly sorry) states that they’d do it again if they “had” to. This is problematic as it shows a lack of faith, but more importantly it shows a lack of a willingness to “pick up your cross” and follow Jesus. Most often, though, the lack of conversion comes when a person refuses to change some objective element of their life that is contrary to Christian discipleship. For example, for a person who is in an irregular marriage (whether formal or “common-law”) one of the elements of their conversion is to bring that marriage into line with Jesus’ teaching on marriage. Until that is done, absolution can’t be given. Obviously this is sometimes met with tremendous anger, usually stemming from past hurts, and a priest has to be very careful how the situation is addressed so as to respect pastoral charity, but it can’t be done at the expense of truth.
It is important to also note that certain canonical penalties prevent a priest from offering absolution at that moment. A person who has been excommunicated has to have that excommunication lifted before sacramental absolution can be given. Sometimes that can be done by the priest himself — I, for example, have the faculty to lift excommunications for people who have performed or had abortions. And any priest can absolve any penalty when the person is in danger of death. But generally, when a person is under a canonical penalty, it needs to be removed first by some prior steps — contact with the diocesan bishop, for example. In such a case a priest would help the person through this process, and then joyfully be able to give the sacramental absolution at the end.
Preliminary point #2: The person has to be validly baptized
The expression “non-Catholics” is a bit broad, as it includes both non-Christians and non-Catholic Christians. The sacrament of Reconciliation pre-supposes the sacrament of Baptism, which is really the sacrament par-excellence for the forgiveness of sins…to the point that in the early Church the sacrament of Reconciliation was called the “second baptism”, because all it does is renew the baptismal grace.
This does not mean that the Church does not offer forgiveness to non-baptized persons! It’s just that the means of offering that forgiveness is different — it is through offering Baptism, not sacramental absolution. And I would always be willing to sit and talk with someone, baptized or not, who had something weighing on their conscience, and to pray with them. Again, it is a question of pastoral charity.
Preliminary point #3: The “objective element” of the sacrament
We need to recognize that confession is a sacrament, and as such it is a bit special when compared to many other prayers of the Church (such as blessings). Every sacrament has an outward sign (such as the words of absolution) and an inward grace (the healing of one’s relationship with God). But every sacrament also has an intermediate element between these two things that we call the res et sacramentum. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, for example, the outward sign is the words of the Eucharistic Prayer, the inward grace is the grace received in Holy Communion, and the objective element between them is….the Body and Blood of Christ itself, sitting on the altar after the consecration and before the reception of communion. It is “objectively” there, and remains so even if not all the Eucharist is consumed (that’s why we have locked tabernacles in church).
Each sacrament has it’s own “objective element”. For the Eucharist this is easy to figure out — it’s right before our eyes — but what is it for Reconciliation? It is the healing of our relationship with the Church. The outward sign is our confession + absolution, which reconciles us with the Church, which then reconciles us to God in a manner par excellence, because the Church is also identified with the Body of Christ. This is one of the reasons why priests are ministers of the sacrament of Reconciliation. It’s not because we’re nice guys and good listeners — I wish we always were! — but because through our ordination we are able to represent the Church to the penitent because we have been configured to Christ, the Head of the Church, and we act in his name.
Often enough I hear the story “I don’t need to confess my sins to a priest because I can confess them to God directly”. Well of course you can express sorrow to God directly, and I hope people do in fact do this — and do it often. But the problem is this: when we sin, it’s not only God we offend. First of all, there is the person whom we have directly sinned against — in general we have to say we’re sorry to them, too. But beyond this, whenever we sin we also sin against all Christians, because in our sin we discredit the good name of the gospel. I’ve experienced this personally with the clergy abuse crisis in the U.S. While only a small minority of priests are guilty of these crimes, all priests fall under a cloud of suspicion because of it. Those abusers have not only hurt their victims, they have hurt their fellow priests — the hard-working (and, might I add, innocent) ones — in the process. In fact, they have hurt all Catholics, by hurting (in the process) the credibility of the Catholic Church as a carrier of the Gospel. How many ordinary Catholics found it just a little bit harder to profess their faith to their neighbours as a result of all of this? More than a few, I imagine.
This being said, I am not waiting for an apology from all those priests. This is not because I don’t think they want to offer one, but because I recognize that it would be impractical to require them to personally apologize to all Catholic priests — much less to all Catholics. But this doesn’t bother me, because I believe in the power of the sacrament of Reconciliation. In it Christ, the Head of the Church, speaks on behalf of the members to reconcile the sinful members once again to his Body. In going to confession, a person is not just “speaking to God” or “speaking to God through the priest”, but is speaking to the whole of the Church — those alive today, and even those who have gone on ahead of us in purgatory or heaven. And the priest, acting in persona Christi capitis, reconciles that person to the Church as well as to the Lord. This is something that “confessing to God directly” cannot accomplish. It is a genuine “objective element” for the sacrament of Reconciliation.
So why can’t the priest offer absolution to non-Catholic Christians?
By now the answer to this question should be obvious. A non-Catholic Christian, by definition, is not in full communion with the Catholic Church. The sacrament of Reconciliation is about restoring a person to communion to God through restoring them to the full communion of the Church. You can’t restore a person to the full communion of the Church if, by their membership elsewhere, they are indicating that they don’t want to live in full communion. Ergo, you can’t offer them absolution. If they want sacramental absolution, they should also by definition want to be Catholic. If they don’t, then sacramental absolution isn’t for them — it just wouldn’t make sense.
To be honest, some of our recent catechesis on the sacrament of Reconciliation hasn’t helped us any in this understanding. In recent years we’ve tried to get away from a “judicial” view of the sacrament and present a more pastoral view, which unfortunately sometimes winds up looking like a merely therapeutic encounter. “Why should I confess my sins to a priest and not to God directly?” is often met with the answer “Because it’s good to actually vocalize your sins to another human being, and the priest is bound by a special obligation of secrecy.” This is true as far as it goes, and I’ve used the answer myself, but it *is* incomplete. Because I’ve known Protestants who’ve heard this answer and said to themselves “Hey, that’s a good point, I’ll go to the Catholic priest myself”, and they come away quite confused (or even hurt). This can create confusion even in the minds of our Catholics, so we need to be a bit more complete in our explanations.
Are there any exceptions?
Yes. Although non-Catholic Christians are not in full communion with the Catholic Church (otherwise, they’d be Catholics), thanks to the fact that they are baptized they are not totally out of communion either. This allows us to offer sacramental absolution in certain limited circumstances.
Members of the Eastern Orthodox churches share the same sacramental life as the Catholic Church, and their faith is almost identical in the core elements. Because we are so closely related, the rules for offering them absolution are as follows:
Catholic ministers may lawfully administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to members of the eastern Churches not in full communion with the catholic Church, if they spontaneously ask for them and are properly disposed. The same applies to members of other Churches which the Apostolic See judges to be in the same position as the aforesaid eastern Churches so far as the sacraments are concerned. (Code of Canon Law, canon 844.3)
Regarding the members of the Protestant churches, the rules are a bit more stringent:
If there is a danger of death or if, in the judgment of the diocesan Bishop or of the Episcopal Conference, there is some other grave and pressing need, catholic ministers may lawfully administer these same sacraments to other Christians not in full communion with the catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who spontaneously ask for them, provided that they demonstrate the catholic faith in respect of these sacraments and are properly disposed. (Code of Canon Law, canon 844.4)
In other words, unless the diocesan Bishop and/or Episcopal Conference has specifically outlined certain circumstances in which absolution can be given, the only time a Catholic priest can offer absolution on his own initiative is when the penitent is in danger of death AND the other requirements mentioned in 844.4 are also in place.
What about Catholics receiving absolution in another church? This is also quite restricted, even more so than for non-Catholics to receive absolution in the Catholic Church. But this is quite normal, if you think about it. After all, what jurisdiction could a non-Catholic minister possibly have to reconcile a person to the Catholic Church? I can see the argument if all the minister did was reconcile the person to God, but their function is also to reconcile them to the Catholic Church…how could they possibly do that, when they aren’t a minister of that Church, or (in many cases) their ordination as priests isn’t even recognized as valid? So the response Canon Law gives is the follows:
Whenever necessity requires or a genuine spiritual advantage commends it, and provided the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, Christ’s faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a catholic minister, may lawfully receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid. (Code of Canon Law, canon 844.2)
In other words, we can (in certain limited circumstances) receive these sacraments from Orthodox — but they generally won’t offer them anyway — and we absolutely cannot receive them from Protestants, including Anglicans/Episcopalians. The irony is, to do so would be a sin!
