In this episode Trent takes questions from podcast supporters about sacraments. Is confirmation is redundant? Why can’t priests reveal what’s said in confession? Do Protestant apologists have a decent case against baptismal regeneration?
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
My office at Catholic Answers doesn’t have a window. It’s in the center of the building, and I always thought maybe it’d be nice to switch it up and get an office that has a window. Lo and behold, I would’ve never thought that getting an office with a window would make me feel more isolated than ever before. And that’s because my new office is at my house, in our guest bedroom. I look out the window and it’s always neat to see somebody walking by like, “Ooh, a person went by.” Or, “Hey, wow, there’s actually cars on the road.”
But that is life now in the COVID-19 pandemic. But even with this pandemic, it’s not going to stop me from delivering to you three episodes a week of the Counsel of Trent Podcast. Last week we only had two. I forgot to let you know we’d be taking a little break on Good Friday to enter into the Triduum. I hope you had a blessed time and a blessed Easter.
It was hard. I appreciated it even still being able to watch and pray … It’s funny, when I tell the kids, I don’t say to them we’re going to go watch mass, because it’s like no, this is not TV. We’re not going out in the living room just to watch TV or watch a mass that’s being streamed or televised. I don’t like saying that, “We’re going to go watch mass kids.” I always say to them, “We’re going to go pray with the mass.” Because it’s hard. I don’t want to say we’re going to mass because then it kind of gets their hopes up, right? We’re not actually going to mass. We’re going to the living room, but you got to put on pants.
That’s what I’ll say to you. I mean it feels good. I’m going to tell you this. It felt good on Easter, even though we participated in mass via live streaming. It felt nice to put on clothes, to dress up even more so than we normally do. I strongly believe you should not be going to mass in your pajamas at home, because you wouldn’t be going in mass to your pajamas when you go to church. But to put on that extra attire to really bring in Easter, it was good.
But at the same time, there was a lot of sadness there. I could feel it in our house. I could see Laura getting a little bit teary during spiritual communion saying that, because it’s an Easter where you’re not able to receive a communion. Well, we were blessed. A friend of mine actually informed me that a church here in San Diego, he told me the day before Easter, on Holy Saturday, that there was a church in San Diego offering a drive through communion service. So I didn’t tell my wife about it because I didn’t want to get her hopes up in case I got there and it didn’t happen.
So I went there, there were a bunch of cars lined up. They opened the gates, they let us in, doing all the safety protocols; had the masks, had the Clorox wipes. They told us to bring a homemade pyx. So I used a special wooden rosary container, my wife’s one of her favorites, gave us instructions on how to purify it. And they asked, how many do you need? I said, “Two hosts for me and my wife.”
And they put them in the pyx; my homemade pyx. Locked it up, went home, came in and I had my wife’s a little rosary container. And I said, “I have a surprise for you.” And she’s was so funny. She said, “Is there a bug in there?” I don’t know why she thought I just caught a bug and I wanted to freak her out. But I opened it up and there was the host, there was the Lord. And she just started crying. And then she told me she had had a bite of my Indian food like five minutes earlier. I didn’t tell her not to eat anything, because that’s a big tip off.
So, but that actually worked out. That was nice because then we placed the pyx in our icon corner of our house. So you know us from going to Byzantine Catholic church for a while. But even if you’re going to a Latin church, anything like that, having icons, Holy pictures, Holy cards, a little corner in your house, you should set it up for that.
And we just put the pyx there and we waited an hour and we had a Holy hour in our home. And then we consumed the Lord’s precious body and then we were given instructions to purify the pyx by pouring water into it and then drinking the water. And so now that rosary container, the other instructions we were given is that it can no longer be used to hold rosaries. It’s now just pyx. So something that you could carry the Eucharist to the homebound. I mean, we’re not going to do that in the near future, but it was a real treat.
But at the same time, I felt a lot of sadness and grief for the vast majority of people who have still been deprived of the Eucharist. It’s kind of weird though. Now it’s gone, it’s hit home for us. Because my wife did mission work in Honduras many years ago before we were married. And she went there and she talked with people and she came back and she told me about people there who hadn’t been to mass or haven’t received the Eucharist in a year. And my only response back then was, “Oh wow, that’s really sad.” You’ve probably heard that before, like, “These people in this rural area, they don’t receive the Eucharist. They can go months or even years at a time.” We’re like, “Oh, that’s so sad.” But then when we haven’t had the Eucharist in a month, we’re like, “This is an outrage. The bishops need to do something about this. We’re being deprived of the sacraments.”
So we get all ornery when it’s us, and then for all that time we would hear about people who didn’t have access to the sacraments, we were sad but you didn’t get as emotional because it wasn’t as close to home. So I’m praying for you all. And I’ve even seen on the podcast, some people have stopped supporting because they had been laid off, they had been furloughed and know that I’m praying for you guys. I know it is hard out there. And if you’re a supporter of the podcast and you’re agonizing over this, whether you can keep supporting, do what you have to do as best for your family. Your family comes first. This podcast is way down the line in your responsibilities. You got to take time off, do what’s right for your family to get on your feet. Maybe in a few years you could come back and support us. That’s fine. Do what you got to do.
I’ll be praying for you. At the very least, if you can’t support us financially so we can grow and reach people, you can always pray for the podcast, you can recommend it to other people. I mean, hey, if people are locked in when it comes to the COVID-19 lockdowns, they got nothing else to do anyways, right? You can help by just sharing our podcast with people leaving a review at a Google Play or iTunes podcast app at Counsel of Trent.
I was so happy actually, a week ago I told people we were only 27 votes away from 1000 reviews and now we’ve got 1000 reviews. Which I’ve looked at all the Catholic podcasts out there and we’re in the top tier people. There’s not a lot of them. Only a small minority have more than 1000 reviews on iTunes, especially one that’s only about two years old like this one. And it’s helping people and it’s reaching people and I want to keep doing that so I’m grateful.
And for the rest of our supporters people, I’ve had people contact me through the Patreon page at Trenthornpodcast.com saying they want to give more now, because they know that a lot of people aren’t able to support. For for you all, I am grateful. And that’s why I’m grateful for my supporters at Trenthornpodcast.com, today we’re doing this special open mailbag segment of the show. One of the perks of being a supporter is that you get the opportunity to submit a question for our open mailbag episodes. If you want to take part in that in the future, for as little as $5 a month, you too can support the podcast and have the opportunity to have your question heard. And you also get the ability to comment on episodes like our community at Trenthornpodcast.com is only for subscribers, so it’s kind of a closed community there where it’s been locked down just for members, if you will. You can comment and reach out to me directly; whole lot of fun.
So let’s hop into it now. The theme I was asking for were questions related to the sacraments, so let’s jump right into it. Number one. “Hi Trent. Have you heard any reasonable Protestant objections to the fact that no one rejected the doctrine of baptismal regeneration prior to the 16th century?” No, I have not. Let’s go on to question number two. Ah, I’m sure you probably want it a little bit more than that.
So when it comes to baptism, every Christian, I would say almost every Christian understands the necessity of baptism. In fact, baptism is what makes you a Christian. I mean, you can be imperfectly connected to the body of Christ and desiring baptism, like if you’re a catechumenate, someone who’s waiting to be baptized. But traditionally, baptism is the ordinary means of salvation that God has given us. Because baptism is not just a way to show other people that we have chosen to believe in Jesus in our hearts, baptism isn’t for us to show people anything. Baptism is for the regeneration of our souls; to cleanse our souls of any sin, both original and actual. Baptism is called the door to the other sacraments.
So if you think about it with the sacraments, all the sacraments are connected around the Eucharist. Think about it that way, we have seven sacraments, they’re all connected to the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. So confirmation strengthens us to be adults in the faith to understand and defend the Eucharist. Reconciliation allows us to have communion, to be able to receive Christ and to have a sanctifying grace to be in God’s friendship again. Priests are able to consecrate the Eucharist. Married people ideally give birth to others who will receive the Eucharist, and the anointing of the sick strengthens us so we can be healed to receive the Eucharist, especially in the last rights, the last Eucharist, in Viaticom, the last Eucharist will receive before death.
Baptism is what allows us to receive the Eucharist at all, because we’ve entered into the body of Christ. So the baptism is called … While all the sacraments are connected to the Eucharist is one way to look at them, imagine a web and they’re connected to the Eucharist at the center. We can also look at the sacraments in a linear way. And at the beginning of the line, baptism is at the beginning of the line, because baptism is the door to the other sacraments because it cleanses us of all sins, any actual sins we’ve committed, or even if it’s just original sin. If you’re an infant, then the only sin that you would have would be original sin, it cleanses of you that you have that. And as the Counsel of Trent, the 16th century council says, “Upon being baptized, there is nothing to retard.” I use the word hinder. “Nothing to retard your entrance, hinder your entrance into heaven because you’re immaculate, pure, free from sin upon being baptized.”
And many Protestants believe in baptismal regeneration by the way. Lutherans believe in it, there are even some Baptists who believe in it. I think Presbyterians believe in it. I mean it’s hard, even among denominations, you’ll see people who will disagree, but there are a lot of Protestants who believe in baptism and regeneration. But there’s also a lot who do not. And so the question is, well, what do they do with that A historical phenomenon, that saying baptism is only symbolic or shows you that you have previously been regenerated by faith was unknown before the 16th century.
As some of them will try to say it’s great apostasy, the church fell away quickly after the time of the apostles. I mean it’s similar to how, I don’t know how people, certain Protestants, reformed Protestants will say, you can’t lose your salvation, how they explained that that belief was unknown in the church prior to the 16th century. And my debate with James White, he made one offhanded remark trying to attach it to the church fathers, but it simply can’t be done.
Now what some people will argue is they’ll try to show a debate about infant baptism in the early church, and they’ll try to say there was a debate about that. And so if that’s the case, then they didn’t really believe in baptismal regeneration, because if they did, there would have been no debate about infant baptism. That’s not the case. Origin talks about how infant baptism was an ordinance given by the apostles. Even Protestant scholars like RC Sproul say infant baptism was something that was practiced by the early church.
When it comes to Tertullian, that’s right, Tertullian objected to infant baptism, but not because he didn’t think you could validly baptize an infant. Tertullian didn’t believe that baptism was only connected to faith and he categorically denied infant baptism. Rather, Tertullian believed that you should delay baptism, you should delay baptism very late in life.
And this was actually common in the early church, as happened to Emperor Constantine. There were people who said, “Well, if baptism is a surefire way to be cleansed from sin, then maybe you should get baptized right before you die and then you’ll be certain to go to heaven. Because if you get baptized earlier in life, you might sin later and then you might go to hell.” But that was a not wise belief to have because of course you never know what day the Lord will call you home. He could call you home in an instant. So no, we believe in practicing early baptism.
So Tertullian’s objection to infant baptism wasn’t because it did not regenerate you, he firmly believed in that. But what he and some other people in the early church thought was, as a matter of prudence, maybe you should delay it, lest you get baptized early in life and then commit a mortal sin later in life. Just get baptized right before you die, so the deal is done, and while we don’t obviously believe that today.
All right, here’s our next question. “I’m not allowed the Eucharist, because I’m waiting for my marriage to possibly have radical sanation. Does this mean I shouldn’t do a spiritual communion?” What’s radical sanation? In the code of Canon Law, in Section 1161, paragraph one, it says, “The radical sanation, not sanitation, sanation of an invalid marriage is its convalidation without the renewal of consent, which is granted by competent authority and entails the dispensation from an impediment, if there is one, and from canonical form, if it was not observed and the retroactivity of canonical effects.”
So what it means is, let’s say you’re Catholic, you and your spouse are Catholics, but you got married outside of the church when you were in your 20s. You went down to the justice of the peace, got married outside of the church, and now you have a family, you’ve come back to the faith, you realize what you did was wrong. Your marriage is invalid, you got married outside of the church. So you want to have your marriage convalidated. You want to be in a valid marriage so that you’re not in a state of sin. You want to repent of that, so you can receive the sacraments. In that case, you would go and get it convalidated.
Now I’ve heard from some people that they are married in those situations. One of the spouses wants the convalidation, and the other says, “I don’t want to go to the church. I don’t want to get it convalidated. I don’t want to go through all that.” And so they think, “Well great, if they won’t do it, I can’t get it convalidated if my spouse isn’t willing to cooperate.” You can still get your marriage convalidated with a radical sanation.
So that would be if you can show the Bishop the proper authorities that you and your spouse are married and you plan to continue conjugal life together. They really won’t grant a radical sanation if you’re separated. But if you plan to live conjugal life together, plan to grow in the faith together; if you’re planning to preserve that married life, then the Bishop, the competent authorities can convalidate your marriage without both of you being in the church, renewing your spouses according to the proper canonical form.
So if that’s the case, and if you do that … if you’re in a situation where you’ve gone to confession and repented of the sin of being married outside of the church, and you’ve continued to lead a life without falling back into mortal sins such as not having sexual relations, since you’re not in a valid marriage, then you could still receive the Eucharist if you’re not in a state of mortal sin. But if you are in a state of mortal sin, you can still ask for spiritual communion. You can still ask for Jesus to enter to your soul, to show that you of contrition, to express, make a perfect act of contrition, sorrow for sin, and to ask the Lord for forgiveness to ask him into your heart. So I would say that whatever situation you’re in, you should always ask for the presence of Christ to heal you from sin and to dwell within you, to lead you to the sacraments, especially to reconciliation and to the Eucharist.
All right, here’s the next one. “I was wondering if you could run through the purpose of the sacraments in the big picture of God’s plan. And in particular, baptism gives us saving grace and confession restores us to it when we lose it. Why do we need confirmation in the Eucharist? Would a Protestant who holds that accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, not find all these sacraments redundant?”
So if we have baptism and reconciliation, why do we need confirmation, for example? Well, the reason is that salvation is a process. I think it’s paragraph 1253 in the catechism. It says that baptism is the beginning of faith. Baptism gives us grace, but it’s the seeds of grace that will flower and grow, so we can grow in righteousness before God and grow in faith before him.
So we are given that grace in baptism and we are restored to friendship with God in confession. So if you can imagine that baptism is like the initial inoculation against sin. And confession is sort of like the defibrillators that bring us back from spiritual death and a spiritual life. Confirmation is like that surgery that permanently empowers us to be spiritually strengthened.
I know someone actually who was always getting sick. I know somebody who always got colds and was sick, because she had sinuses that were very, very tiny; tiny sinuses. And so she actually went and got a surgery that they insert a balloon in your sinuses and it breaks them open and it keeps them from being inflamed from you getting sick. So if you can imagine different aspects of our spiritual life, like prayer, reception of the Eucharist, there’s things we do that are like going to the spiritual gym to make us stronger away from sin. Confirmation, because it leaves an indelible mark on our souls to make us adults in the faith. It’s like that permanent surgery that alters us to make us strengthen to be able to receive God’s grace, to be able to defend it and to evangelize others.
So if baptism makes us children of God, children in the church; God’s children, confirmation makes us God’s adult children, if you will. That now we are able to reach spiritual maturity in not just living our faith, but sharing it and defending it in the presence of others. So that’s why the sacrament of confirmation is so important. And that’s why I’m really happy to see in a lot of churches the initial initiation sequence of receiving the sacraments being restored.
Because I remember for a long time, confirmation, when I had Catholic friends, even before I was Catholic, I knew that when they were 16 or 17 they would go and they would get confirmed when they were like 16. It was basically the Catholic bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah. But then our diocese in Phoenix changed it to lower the age to seven or eight years old. That way you did first confession, first communion and confirmation all at the same time. And that parallels in the early church and once again, not to plug, but I do love my Byzantine church. It’s a beautiful treasure I found for over a year. I don’t know why I’m talking like this when I praise it. I’m sure they had Byzantine churches in the South. They do, Matt Frag goes to one in Georgia.
But in the Eastern church, confirmation is part of the sacraments of initiation at baptism. When you baptize a baby, they receive chrism oil. Babies also received this oil in the Western church, but in the Eastern church, that chrism they receive is the sacrament of confirmation. So they are baptized at birth, chrismated at birth, sacrament of confirmation, and then they receive first communions. They get a lot of graces at the very beginning of life. And I even saw some polls online in the Catholic Twitter-verse saying that a lot of people, even in the Western church, we’re interested in going back to that initial sequence, because more grace you give at the beginning of life, the better.
And another person asks a similar question, “What is the purpose of confirmation? If baptism gives us the Holy Spirit, why do we need confirmation?” According to paragraph 1303 of the catechism says, “A confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace, roots us more deeply in divine affiliation, unites us firmly to Christ.” Divine affiliation means having God as our Father, increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit, renders our bond with the church more perfect and gives us special strength of the Holy Spirit.
And here’s the next question. “Is it possible to be a fully practicing Catholic, list sins, feel remorse for sins and ask God for forgiveness and not go to confession? For example, in today’s time of quarantine?”
Yes, absolutely. You can still receive absolution even if you’re unable to go to confession. Yes. In fact, my colleague Michelle Arnold just wrote a really great article at catholic.com called Confession Without a Priest. I highly recommend you check out, just went up online, Confession Without a Priest. You can see that at catholic.com. And it talks about how it’s been known in the church for a long time, if you don’t have access to a priest, you can still have the effects of confession if you make an act of perfect contrition.
So how does that work? Go to the catechism, paragraph 1451. It says, “Among the penitents acts of contrition, occupy first place. Contrition is sorrow of the soul and detestation for sin committed together with a resolution not to sin anymore.” So there’s the kinds of contrition we make. There’s perfect contrition and imperfect contrition. When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called perfect.
So when we’re sorry for our sin because it offended God and we do not want to offend him because we love God, that’s called perfect contrition. Imperfect contrition is more prompted by the Holy Spirit to confess our sins because we’re afraid of going to hell. So we recognize that we need God and we need his forgiveness, but it’s imperfect contrition, because you’re not really sorry for the sins, you’re more sorry about getting caught.
I mean I have kids, it always what happens, yes. I’m like, “Are you sorry for what you did?” “Yeah. I don’t like this. I don’t like going to timeout.” I was like, “Oh you’re only sorry because you got caught, not that you feel bad about what you actually did.” So the thing is, when you make a act of perfect contrition, not to be confused with a perfect act of contrition.
Sometimes I hear people say this like, “Well, if you can’t go to confession, just make a perfect act of contrition.” No, no, no. Because a perfect act of contrition would just be if you said, “Oh my God, I’m sorry for all my sins and choosing to do wrong and failing to do good.” If you just said the formula perfectly, that would be a perfect act of contrition. But you could recite that and not care about it to make a perfect act of contrition. It’s an act of perfect contrition. When you express sorrow to God, you make a firm resolution to not sin anymore and you also make the resolution to go to confession as soon as possible once you are able to do that.
So if you’re in that bout now and you’re unable to go to confession, express that sorrow to God, make an act of perfect contrition and then set it on your calendar and reminder to resolve to go to confession and God will understand, because the principle holds, I implies can, God does not obligate us to do what we are physically unable to do.
So if you are sick or if you’re quarantined, you don’t have to go. You’re not obliged to go to mass because you can’t go to mass. If there’s no priest to go see to confession, whether the diocese has locked them all up in quarantine or you live in a rural area and there’s no priest within 200 miles, you’re not obligated, but God is never far from us. He’s not left as his orphans. And so there are ways we can receive that absolution provided we make a firm resolution to seek the sacraments when we are unable to do that.
All right, we’ve got a few more here. I hope this counts. “Can you talk about why we have the seal of confession? If a pedophile confesses to a priest, why can’t he call the authorities? I have a friend who’s not Catholic. He really struggles with this. I don’t think I answered it as well as I could.”
So why do we have the seal of confession? The seal of confession is found in Canon Law, Canon 983.1. It says, “The sacramental seal is inviolable. Therefore, it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way, a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.” A priest can never tell other people anyone else, no matter what. Well you told him. And confession. Why is that? Because God wants everyone be saved, even the worst of sinners. That is why. God wants every single person to be able to share eternity with him. And so he’s given us a sacrament of confession and the seal of confession to know the priest will never tell anyone else, allows us to have confidence, to know that we can go and to know that when we confess our sins to him, we confess our sins to Christ. He really is in persona cristae.
And then when we confess our sins to him, we can have the confidence in that to know is between us and God and the priest acts as the mediator in the person of Christ. If there were exceptions to that rule, there were exceptions, then there are people who would not seek out confession and they they wouldn’t do that and their souls would be in jeopardy. And God wants to save everyone, even the most depraved, awful people, that we should never vengefully desire their torment, we should mercifully desire their repentance.
I wrote article about this on catholic.com a while ago, and I made an analogy here that in all 50 states there is attorney-client privilege. If you go to an attorney and you tell him about a crime you committed in the past, not one you’re planning to commit in the future, but you need legal counsel for a crime you committed in the past, the defense attorney can’t turn around and go to the prosecution and give them everything you told them. That would violate attorney-client privilege; only for past crimes, not if you’re planning to commit future crimes.
But why? Because a person needs to know they can safely confide in someone, so they can have a defense in court and have their best chance of staying out of jail. So if the state lets people share crimes with lawyers so they can have their best chance to get out of jail, then the state should also allow people to share their crimes with a priest, so their best chance to be able to stay out of hell.
So also, I think on a practical level, I don’t know how this would work if a priest heard that someone has confessed the sin of child abuse, what is the priest going to do? Leap out of the confessional and go around take a cell phone picture of the person who is confessing it, or call the police on the cell phone right there? And especially if it’s anonymous, I think a lot of times this is just taking a jab at the church in an unnecessary way.
Here’s another question on confession. This is fun. “Would you please discuss the evolution of confession? How do we get from John 20, 21, 23 to telling a priest our sins individually? Has confession evolved?” Catechism gives us another answer to this question. Paragraph 1447, it says, “Over the centuries, the concrete form in which the church has exercised this power, power of sacramental confession, received from the Lord has varied considerably. During the first centuries, the reconciliation of Christians who had committed particularly grave sins after baptism, like idolatry, murder, adultery, was tied to a very rigorous discipline according to which penitence had to do public penance for their sins, often for years before receiving reconciliation.
To this order of penitence, which concerned only certain grave sins, one was only rarely admitted, and sometimes only once in a lifetime, it was very strict. Then in the seventh century, Irish mist missionaries inspired by the Eastern monastic tradition, monastic tradition, took to continental Europe, the private practice of penance, which does not require public and prolonged completion of penitential work.”
So in the early church, what happened was, you would confess your sins in public to everyone and then have a public penance that you had to undergo that everyone knew about. Later on in the seventh century, this transitioned more to private confession and private penances that were done. So the church talks about how the sacrament has remained in its essential form, in the matter which is the confession of sins, the expression of contrition, absolution being given through a priest. But whether it’s publicly witnessed or privately witnessed by the priest, that has changed over time.
And so I think once again, when we go back to the idea of the seal of confession, that helps to invite more people to the sacrament to let them know that this is your opportunity to be freed from your sins, and God’s mercy does not know any bounds. And of course there’s people who may not take confession very seriously. You’re always going to have the risk of some people not taking things seriously, but that should not keep us from putting forward practical ways for people to experience Christ in the sacraments.
Also want to add in here, since I mentioned in the Eastern Orthodox. And in the Eastern church, there is a slightly different way that the sacrament of confession is carried out. It’s still done privately between the penitent and the priest, but usually it’s not done anonymously behind a screen. Usually it’s done where you see the priest. And I love this formula. Another thing I love about the Byzantine church I attend, the Holy Angels. I love going there for the sacrament reconciliation for the mystery of penance.
This is how it is described by Kallistos Ware. He is an Eastern Orthodox Bishop, but the ceremony of the rite is an Eastern rite, so you’ll also find in Eastern Catholic churches including the Byzantine Rite church. I’ll read to you how Ware describes it. It’s a beautiful way the sacrament of reconciliation is carried out.
“In orthodoxy, confessions are heard, not in a closed confessional with a grill separating confessor and penitent, but in any convenient part of the church. Usually in the open immediately in front of the Iconostasis.” The Iconostasis, it’s a gate that opens and closes, that divides where the faithful gather in the sanctuary where the priests and the deacons are. It’s kind of the gate that represents the border where heaven and earth meet. It’s actually like the boundary line that divides the sanctuary from where the faithful gather in front of it in the church.
So usually it’s done in front of the Iconostasis, is what we do in the Byzantine church, but where it goes on to say, “Sometimes priests and penitents stand behind a screen, or there may be a special room in the church set apart for confessions. Whereas in the West, the priest sits and the penitent kneels. In the Orthodox church, they both stand or sometimes they both sit. The penitent faces a desk on which our place, the cross and an icon of the Savior or the book of the gospels. The priest stands slightly to one side. This outward arrangement emphasizes more clearly than does the Western system that in confession, it is not the priest, but God who is the judge, while the priest is only a witness and God’s minister.”
This point is also stressed in words which the priest says immediately before the confession proper. “Behold, my child. Christ stands here invisibly and receives your confession. Therefore, be not ashamed nor afraid. Conceal nothing from me, but tell me without hesitation everything that you have done and so you shall have pardon from our Lord Jesus Christ. See his Holy icon is before us and I am but a witness bearing testimony before him of all the things which you have to say to me. But if you conceal anything from me, you shall have the greater sin. Take heed therefore, lest having come to a physician, you depart unhealed.”
So a wonderful formula in that sacrament. I love being able to take questions on the sacraments today here on The Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m glad you were able to join me. I’m hoping to create more resources to help us get through this time of quarantine. Maybe some more videos for the Counsel of Trent channel on YouTube. Just search Counsel of Trent on YouTube. Become a subscriber there, should have some new videos going up soon.
Otherwise, just pray for me for our family. Here comes a little one or others coming back into the room. I managed to get through almost the whole … And here he comes. We almost got through the whole thing. Thank you all so much. Here Matt, come over here. It’s the end of the show. You want to say bye to everybody? We made it through basically the whole thing. You want to say bye?
Bye.
Oh, you’re so good. I love you. Thank you guys and I hope you all have a very blessed day.
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