Why go to confession?

The question is often asked, by those who find it difficult to go to confession and by non-Catholics, "Why do we have to go to confession? Why can't we simply go straight to God in heaven, tell him we are sorry and be forgiven? As it is, we have to seek out a priest, perhaps wait in a queue or find that the priest isn't even there, discover that we don't like the priest anyway, and then confess our sins, all of which can be burdensome. Surely it would have been easier if we could just confess directly to God. The answer must surely be that Our Lord instituted a sacrament for the forgiveness of sins because he knew human nature and he knew we needed it. After all he was the Son of Man. What aspects of human nature point the way towards the fittingness of confession?
The Fact of Sin Firstly, there is the fact that we all sin. In spite of our efforts to do good, we all fall into sin, whether venial sins such as impatience, angry remarks, or gossip, or mortal sins like impure acts or drunkenness. St. John reminds us that "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (I John 8: 11). And Jesus himself teaches us to pray: "Forgive us our trespasses." (Matt 6: 12). What can happen, though, is that we lose the sense of sin, the awareness of our sinfulness before God. Cardinal Silvio Oddi said "It would be consoling to be able to maintain that there are now more Communions and fewer confessions because fewer sins are being committed. The headlines of the daily papers, however, do not permit us to be satisfied with that explanation. What has happened, of course, is that people's sense of sin has been eroded systematically."
The Need to Apologize A second aspect of human nature which points to the helpfulness of confession is the deep human need to apologize when we have offended someone. If a man inadvertently forgets to kiss his wife goodbye as he usually does on leaving the house, and he suddenly remembers on his way to work that he has forgotten to kiss his wife, he doesn't merely feel sorry. He gets on the phone as soon as he arrives at work, rings his wife and apologizes. He needs and wants to tell her he is sorry. Only then does he feel at peace. Jesus Christ knew this human need and he gave us in confession a way in which we can tell him, through the mediation of a human being, "I am sorry." Since man by nature is relational, he cannot live alone. The sense of the community is an essential aspect of his psychological being. When sin is committed it affects not only the individual who committed it and the individual who was hurt but the whole community as a body. Sin has a social impact, and as such forgiveness is asked not from God only but from the community as well. The priest not only represents God but also the church, the community that has been hurt.
The Need To Tell Others What We Have Done A third aspect of human nature suggesting the need for confession is the human need to tell others what we have done, including our misdeeds. If we have a car accident, for example, we feel the need to tell someone as soon as possible. Or if we have had an argument with a loved one, we also have a need to tell someone about it. Criminals tell others what they have done, even to boast about it, and sometimes this leads to their arrest. We all share our experiences with our friends at work or over a beer or a cup of coffee. And we do this, even though sometimes we receive bad advice from them or they in turn pass on to others what they have said. In confession, on the contrary, when we tell the priest what we have done we receive only good advice and the priest is bound by the seal of confession never to reveal our sins to anyone. I once witnessed in a particularly graphic way how deep the need is to tell others what we have done. A non-Catholic woman once told me that twenty years earlier she had done something very wrong, but in all those years she had never told anyone about it. Needless to say she suffered greatly during those years. Finally she got the courage to go to a Catholic church where she entered the confessional and told the priest, to her overwhelming relief. Of course the priest couldn't absolve her, but he did give her a blessing. That conversation engraved on my mind in an indelible way, the treasure of the sacrament of Penance. When we have sinned we can only tell someone but we can also be forgiven by Jesus Christ. Indeed, it has often been said that many people would not need to have recourse to a counselor or psychologist if they made more regular use of the sacrament of Penance.
The Need To Know We Are Forgiven Fourthly, we need to know that we are forgiven. We need to hear it in a human way. When we were children growing up, we did many wrong things. We went to our parents and told them we were sorry. If they just grunted and didn't reply, we wouldn't know whether we were forgiven and we would be very uneasy. But when they put their arms around us and said, "Don't worry, dear, I forgive you", we were at peace. As is obvious, the need to know we are forgiven is deeply rooted in human nature. We can tell God directly that we are sorry, but we don't hear that we are forgiven, and we might wonder whether we are sufficiently sorry and really determined to avoid committing that sin again. Moreover, we have probably had the experience of having sinned, sometimes even grievously, of saying an act of contrition with the intention of going to confession, and finding that the real peace did not come until we actually went to confession and heard the words, "I absolve you". We need to hear those words with our ears, and only then are we certain that we are forgiven. After all, we are human beings with body and soul, not pure spirits, and Our Lord instituted the sacraments as outward signs precisely so that we could know when grace is acting in us. In this way, through the mediation of the priest who tells us we are forgiven, the sacrament of Penance brings Christ close to the penitent. The Holy Father, speaking in a general audience on the 22nd of February, 1984, asked the question, "Why should I reveal to a man like myself my most intimate situation, and even my most secret sins? Why can't I address myself directly to God, or to Christ, instead of having to go through the mediation of a man in order to obtain forgiveness for my sins?" He answered, "It is well to consider that despite the feeling of discomfort that ecclesial mediation can cause, it is a very human method, so that the God who frees us from our sins does not fade into a far off abstraction which would, in the end, become a colourless, irritating and despairing imitation of ourselves. Through the mediation of the Church's minister, this God makes himself very close to us in the concrete reality of heart that is indeed pardoned. In this perspective we come to ask whether the Church's instrumentality, instead of being contested, should not rather be desired, since it responds to the deepest expectations that are hidden in the human soul, when one approaches God and lets himself be saved by him." When we hear the words of absolution we know we are forgiven, because Jesus instituted the sacrament in the form of a judgment: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." (John 20:23) The priest, having judged our understanding of what we have done and our degree of sorrow, determines that he can forgive us and pronounces the words of absolution. Then "what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven." (Matt 16:19) Without the mediation and judgment of the priest we would, in the end, be judging ourselves, and no one can be a good judge in his own case. What is more, that encounter with Jesus Christ is, in a sense, a right of the penitent and a right of Christ as well. The Holy Father, in his encyclical Redemptor hominis, wrote: "In faithfully observing the centuries-old practice of the sacrament of Penance, the practice of individual confession, with a personal act of sorrow and the intention to amend and make satisfaction, the Church is therefore defending the human soul's individual right. As is evident, this is also a right on Christ's part with regard to every human being redeemed by him. His right to meet each one of us in that key moment in the soul's life constituted by the moment of conversion, forgiveness." Is this not the way Christ healed the sick and forgave sinners when he was on earth? He came close to them and laid hands on them one by one. As someone commented facetiously, on only one occasion did Jesus heal ten lepers at once, and they were a most ungrateful lot! He wants to come close and lay his hands individually on each person, and therefore he institutes this sacrament. In this regard the use of the grille, or crates, can be helpful. Apart from allowing the penitent to remain anonymous, which is a right of every penitent, the fact that the penitent cannot see the priest makes it more clear that he or she is confessing not merely to the priest but to Christ himself. Adapted from a talk given to the Thomas More Centre Summer School, Melbourne 1999 by Fr John Flader, (c) Society of Saint Peter Canisius 2000.