Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
From my perspective, the biggest difference is Catholics have the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which provides definitive ways to know a sin has been forgiven. Whereas Protestants have to hope they've been forgiven, and that ambiguity doesn't seem like a positive to me.
But to a Catholic, knowing that a specific sin has been forgiven does not equate to knowledege that one has sanctifying grace. Instead:
“Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved” (CCC 2005).
“no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to mistake, that he has obtained the grace of God” (The Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter IX).
We can have very good reason to believe we are in a state of grace, and this belief is a requirement to receive communion worthily. We can't know we are with unmistakable divine faith. We can be mistaken about it.
Well, from my Protestant perspective, I do think that the sacrament of penance and reconciliation is unnecessary, but I would say that's because it's got a mistaken ecclesiology. Mutual confession and forgiveness is, of course, essential to the Christian life and to any Christian community, but I think the sacrament of penance institutionalises that in a way that is unnecessary.
If you'll pardon a personal story, I've flirted with conversion to Catholicism a few times, and something I found very odd, psychologically, was the idea that I should be recording or making some sort of mental list of my sins for purposes of confession. I think that often I am not conscious of my sins, or I do not recognise sins even in the process of committing them, or that both my motives and my actions are mixed, combining sin and righteousness in ways beyond my ability to extricate. There are some unambiguous sins - I know if I have stolen, or murdered, or committed adultery! - but those are very much the minority. Thus when I confess my sins, both in a church context and privately to God, I name (or bring to mind) specific sins that I feel guilt for, but I am also conscious that those are only the tip of the iceberg. I ask God to purify and transfigure my mixed motives, to make me aware of the sins I have not recognised, to correct and chasten my wayward heart toward those sins that I struggle to regret, and so on. I find the - pardon my language - mechanical nature of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation to be an obstacle to this holistic view of sin.
I don't think that, in general, I am in a state of grace right up until I impair it with a grave sin, which I think need a priest to absolve. It doesn't seem that binary to me. I think that I am constantly in a process of metanoia - I pray that God, through his grace, is mysteriously at work in me healing and transforming my sinful nature.
Naturally I don't expect a Catholic to agree with me. In principle I have no objection to a person making a confession to a priest or minister, and that priest or minister offering absolution. In fact I have no objection to a person doing that to another layperson. It is salutary in each case. So I don't think a Catholic is doing himself or herself spiritual harm by going to confession.
But I do think that the visible economy you get in Catholicism, the ledger of sins accumulated and absolved that I felt I was asked to start recording, is not the right way for Christians to think about sin, reconciliation, and grace.
I can speak to my experience with confession, examinations of conscience, etc. I have found it very positive for a lot of reasons, and like anyone who found the "one weird trick that works" I will extol its virtues without self-restraint.
It is good hygiene to do an examination of conscience before bed. I like the Ignatian way of reviewing the day and praising God for all that you did that was good, asking forgiveness for the good you failed to do, etc. I don't see how anyone can progress without these kinds of progress reports. Or maybe that's the point in contention itself, is progress possible or desirable?
I think progress is both possible and what God wants for us. God calls us to prayer and deep prayer is only possible by hating that which is antithetical to God - sin. There is no sin in God. That's putting it mildly. God hates sin. We cannot enter deep communion with God while still harboring deep attachments to sin. The sin in us will repel us from God. This is something I have experienced in myself and witnessed in others.
Is progress possible? Yes, it is. I understand your repulsion towards the idea of listing sins like they're a grocery list or something like that. That is unappealing to me as well.
For a penitent, they might start with a written examination of conscience, with a list of sins and checkmarks next to them. That's fine for someone still learning. But what most people discover, if they actually go with the recommendation of confessing every month (and this is probably only around 10% of active Cathoilcs who do this) is that they check fewer and fewer boxes until eventually they show up to their monthly confession and stare at the paper and realize... they don't know what to confess!
This happened to me. It's happened to many others I've spoken with. I had a few mortal sins that I kept repeating, or things that I hadn't realized was a mortal sin but once I learned that it was I found it hard to stop the habit. To be forthright about one of the sins, I lied a lot. Often because someone would assume something and I would go along with it because it was easier. Or because I made a mistake and wanted to cover it up. Little lies, big lies, it was hard for me to face the truth. I did this since childhood.
One family dinner, when I was 6 and my sister was 9 months old, my parents were asking if anyone would finish off a loaf of bread. I said, "I'll eat it!" but in a quiet voice. My parents thought it was my sister who said it! And I just went along with it, even after my mom would bring it up over and over again the next couple decades as a sign she knew my sister would be a great communicator.
It honestly felt like I couldn't help myself, this was a trait ingrained into me.
When I came back to the Church as an adult, I wanted to get serious about pursuing holiness. This meant regular examinations of conscience and regular confessions. And for the first time in my life I took it very seriously, humbling myself to say everything wrong I could think of without trying to excuse or justify myself.
And over the course of about two years, slowly, painfully, sometimes dragging myself to confession every week, sometimes once a month, finally, these persistent sins were uprooted in me, to the point where they are no longer even tempting.
And then what happened? Was I perfect? Oh, no.
Instead, examinations of conscience started to look very different. What was I failing to do? What virtues did I lack? Where did I resist the call of God today? The better I became the more there was to see. I may have remained in a state of grace for years now, but that doesn't mean I'm "done."
The sacrament of confession keeps you on that spiraling path of going forward, going further, seeing new things and new horizons. Healing your soul, hating your sin, finding God in unexpected places.
Once you're not confessing mortal sins, you get freedom and latitude to focus on a specific area of failure in your life. "I get distracted by my phone too much." "I'm being called to pray more and I'm not setting time for it." "My finances are ordered towards my own gratification instead of what is best for the Kingdom." Etc.
And then you hunker down and just focus on that one thing for the next however long it takes. The same way you got rid of your mortal sins, repeated confession, absolution, examining your conscience every day, keep going, keep progressing, see the virtue grow.
TL:DR, I don't think confession would impair what you already have going on, but add more horsepower to what you are already doing. If it's real, if Catholics are right, it actually is a means of getting graces you wouldn't get otherwise. It doesn't mean you stay on a checklist confession forever, or ever need to go to a checklist at all.
Firstly, thank you for the generous and eirenic response. I'm glad that we started with a disagreement but now appear to have reached a point where we're sharing personal experiences and giving each other advice for how to grow in holiness.
I join you in wholeheartedly endorsing a daily examen. Ignatius was definitely one of the figures who appealed to me and prompted me to investigate Catholicism! I think the idea of pausing to consciously look back at your day is a good one, and for what it's worth I wouldn't say exclusively Catholic. For example, I'd say that Wesley's twenty-two questions are approaching a similar idea. I approve of the way that link puts it in terms of spiritual accountability, and I can see how personal confession would serve the same end.
One of the risks of the approach I laid out, after all, is that it might make sin generic, abstract, and universal. The more a believer contemplates sin and holiness in glittering generalities, the easier it is to ignore the small everyday duties. It is easier to say, "All of my motives are partly mixed with sin" than it is to say, "I lied to my friend Kevin today".
All that said, I notice that one word was missing from your post. There is no mention of the priest in your post. I would have thought that the priest is the most distinctive element of confession in Catholicism. I wholeheartedly endorse a regular examination of conscience, and confession of sin before others and corresponding penitence is obviously meritorious. In Catholicism, though, we are talking about a rite done with a priest, who represents the institutional church and absolves you in Christ's name. (Indeed, in the very person of Christ.) I'm curious what your experience of the priest's role has been. I'd suggest that for most people raised Protestant, the idea of making yourself vulnerable and telling your shameful secrets to a priest seems alien and uncomfortable.
As Shrike mentioned, many Protestant churches technically have liturgies for confession to a priest or minister. In my experience, however, these are almost never used. For that matter, confession is decreasingly popular even among Catholics - you gave a 10% figure for monthly confession, and frankly I think that's optimistic. I've talked to Catholic priests about this locally and they've told me that it is more and more neglected (at least here in Australia), and to an extent it has become 'a sacrament without a theology'. It still exists and is still offered, but there is minimal felt sense among the people of its purpose, much less its necessity. I can't bring myself to approve of that, because even though I don't think that confession to a priest is necessary, I think that what's going on here is probably a society-wide amnesia around the very concept of sin.
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I don't think this is really right at all.
Firstly, confession is not unique to Catholics; Anglicans practice it in a much similar way and Protestants in different ways.
Secondly, while it is difficult to speak for all Protestants since they have differing views of soteriology, it's not particularly different to find denominations that teach that you can definitively know that your sins have been forgiven. In fact I think the only denominations that wouldn't teach that (off the top of my head) would be, ironically, the hardcore (for lack of a better term, though there probably is one) Calvinist and Arminian fringes, which might insist, respectively, that one cannot know one is elect and that one loses their salvation through sinning.
Obviously plenty of Protestants worry about their salvation and the forgiveness of their sins, regardless of what their denomination may teach, but I don't think that Catholics are much different in this regard.
Honestly, the only difference that is consistent between Protestants and Catholics is that one group holds the Pope as a sign of unity and one group doesn't. Every other blanket statement I or anyone else makes will be met with exceptions and avowed rejections.
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Eh? Having been an Anglican schoolboy, since when did we practice confession?
Since splitting from the Catholic church, as far as I know. But in Anglicanism it is not mandatory ("all may, some should, none must"), so perhaps saying it was practiced in a similar way was misleading. From what I understand the form of confession to the priest is very similar, though.
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