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Show IS THE CONFESSIONAL THE WORK OF - CHRIST. ' In the next place I ask if confession be not the work of Christ, whose is it? When did it spring up in the world's history I How can any reasonable man imagine that an institution of such beauty and grandeur on the one side, and on the other so humiliating humil-iating for man, so opposed to his pride and passion could be established, imposed upon mankind, and become universal without rousing some emotion of admiration for the Pontiff who instituted it, and anger at his insolence. Search the records of the past and you will find no trace, nothing but silence, a silence which is absolutely inexplicable The Church has even shown gratitude towards those members who have deserved well of it. She has not forgotten the bifthop who instituted the Rogation Days. She venerates the Pontiff who established the Feast of Corpus Christi; she knows the name of, those to whom she is indebted for the scapular and the rosary. She honors the saintly virgin 1o whom the devotion of the Sacred Heart was revealed. Now confession is one of the greatest powers in the. Church. It makes the priests of souls. And yet the memory of the man who invented such a wou-derful wou-derful engine for good has passed away and no- where, throughout the Church can any trace of his name be found. Not only does Holy. Church not know the name of any such man,' but for over 1,S00 yea'-s has she proclaimed uninterruptedly that no mere man created the tribunal of penance, that it has ever possessed among its treasures the trreat means of sanctification, that it was Jesus Christ Himself who instituted this great sacrament and entrusted it to her living care. Remarkable as is the silence of gratitude on the part of the church and her faithful children, still more remarkable is the silence of protest and anger. Here is an, institution that compels me to kneel at the feet of a man who is no better than myself, which obliges me not only .to kneel before him, but. to disclose all my sins, all my crimes what I i . . scarcely dare own to myself and at which I deeply blush. And when this institution was presented to the children of men, they accepted it without a protest. pro-test. No matter how it was done, there came a day when nwui had to kneel and confess for the first time. And men did not cry out, men did not say to the priest, "Who are, you? Who gave you this power? Why should I be forced to act thus? I had no such obligation yesterday, why should I confess to day? Even 1 hough we were to allow that it was no difficult matter to bring under this hateful yoke a crowd of men, women and children wore there no proud, haughty and high-spirited souls ' to revolt at such -a preposterous idea ? What answer would the despots of the middle ages make to the poor priests in their train had they dared to demand of them to kneel down and declare their sins? Not a single cry of remonstrance or protest or' outraged pride has ever reached us; still more astonishing than the submission of emperor or. king, feudal lord or baron, is the submission of priests themselves. them-selves. Surely they would have been the very first to cry out against the innovation, saying, ''Such a law is not for us." We hear the confessions of the laity but we do not go to confession ourselves. But the priests, too, confess their sins. Confession Con-fession is stricter for them than for others. They confess more frequently in a more humiliating manner man-ner to confessors -who are their equals, often their inferiors. , We read at times in the history of the church that bishops and priests have complained that the church was too easy towards the sinner, that she granted pardon too easily to the fallen, but no priest before the days of Luther ever denied the divine power granted to her of pardoning and forgiving sin. Pope, bishop, priest, king, lord and people all have submitted to this humiliating yoke in a manner so simple and natural that not a sound or murmur of discontent can be heard during the long course of ages. One more silence has to be registered. The church has ever had enemies watching with jealous eye for the least apparent in- novation in her teaching; seeking for an opportunity oppor-tunity of accusing her or breaking away from her. I ask to whom has confession been the pretext? In the ninth century the Greeks began the schism which was consummated in the eleventh century, but they retain confession as a divine institution. In the fifth and sixth centuries the Nestorians and Eutyehians abandoned the bosom of the Church; they gave up much of the Church's teaching, but not confession, which they look upon today as one of the sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ. Tho same can be said of the Arians of the fourth century, cen-tury, and of the earlier sectaries. Though accusations accusa-tions of every kind have been hurled against the Church of having falsified and corrupted the doctrines doc-trines of our Lord, there was nc ver question of confession con-fession in the ninth and eleventh centuries anymore any-more than in the third or fourth centuries. Never till the sixteenth century did anyone separate from the Church on account of confession; furthermore, each and every sect that broke off from the unity of the Church bore off with it as an indisputable portion of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the doctrine doc-trine of confession. Clearly, then, the supposition that confession is the work not of our divine Lord, but of some unknown un-known individual is an absurd hypothesis rejected alike by faith, reason, good sense and history. Why, even Luther himself allowed that "secret confession such as it is practiced today, although it cannot be proved from the Bible is useful nay necessary nor should 1 wish it not to exist in the Church of Christ (De. Capt. Babyl. Bk.3, pake 292). He lays down the same teaching in the Augsburg Confession in 1530. In 1537 he declares that confession and absolution ab-solution must never be abolished in the Church." Such, too, is the teaching of Melancthon even Calvin who raged so bitterly against confession. Hear his owti words in his Institutes, Bk. 3, Chap. 14, page 7, "I do not pretend to deny that private absolution is useful; on the contrary, as J thave already done in many places of my.work3, 1 retom- " " - 'I mend it, provided it be free and undiluted with I superstition." In the Book of Common rayer of tho ' f Anglican church, we find that the sick when , ( J troubled in conscience with any weighty matter aro j to be moved to make a special confession, and when . - f the confession is finished, if the sick person de- , i mand it humbly and with all his heart, the minister f must absolve him, using the very words the Catholic: ; priest uses in the tribunal of penance. ; (Concluded Next Weew.) |
