Topic: Is Confession a Pagan Practice?
Question: My question is: when did Christians first start going to Confession, and how did it develop into what it is today? I want to be able to tell my Protestant friends what's really going on and that this isn't some pagan practice.
Answer:
The discipline of confessing sins to a priest and having him set a penance to make satisfaction is a practice from the Old Testament (See Numbers 5:5 and Leviticus 5:5). The idea of examination of conscience and the confession of sin was the norm for Jews (e.g., Leviticus 26:40, Ezra 10:1, Nehemiah 9:2-3, Daniel 9:20) especially on the Day of Atonement (e.g., Leviticus 16:21). So much so that St. John could say:
1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And St. James:
James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.
Jesus had given the Apostles the authority to forgive sin in His name:
John 20: 21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
Such confession of sin was usually public in the early Church:
17 And this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks; and fear fell upon them all; and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. 18 Many also of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 19 And a number of those who practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
In the first several Christian Centuries, there was public confession of sin (usually to the Bishop) and public penance. Around the 4th Century, the Monks in Ireland had developed a method for spiritual direction which involved the private confession of sin to a spiritual director. This style of confessing sins in secret was quite successful as a tool for spiritual direction. The Bishops decided to use it as the normative way of hearing confession and absolving from sin. This also was the occasion for the development of less public and less severe penances for sin. Spiritual direction replaced most of the more punitive public penances.
We received the following note from one of our readers, Barry Ukrainetz. It shows that the practice of private confession of sin was known in the early Church and declared by Pope Leo the Great to be an "Apostolic Rule." Even though the current style and format of auricular confession is derived from the methods of Spiritual Direction practiced by Irish Monks, they were building on previous Traditions that were apparently of Apostolic origin. We want to thank Barry for sharing this quote with us.
Art Sippo
The Catholic Legate
Addendum
Dr. Sippo,
I just read your article about the origins of auricular confession. However, I think there is a slight error in it. Pope St. Leo I in the mid-5th century promulgated the practice of auricular confession because he said it was more in line with what the original Church Fathers did. He claimed, in other words, that public confession and penance was not the way it was originally done. This is from the Catholic Encyclopedia under Confession.
Pope Leo the Great (440-61), who is often credited with the institution of confession, refers to it as an "Apostolic rule". Writing to the bishops of Campania he forbids as an abuse "contrary to the Apostolic rule" (contra apostolicam regulam) the reading out in public of a written statement of their sins drawn up by the faithful, because, he declares, "it suffices that the guilt of conscience be manifested to priests alone in secret confession" (Ep. clxviii in P.L., LIV, 1210).