3808 — The Confessional
By E. H. H.
When, where, and by whom was the confessional introduced?
It is almost impossible to trace these church and ecclesiastical customs in history, for the reason that they all began gradually. That is true of every perversion of truth—it has a gradual development. If you should ask Roman Catholics, in most cases they would tell you that it is based on James 5:16, but the text does not imply that. "Confess your faults one to another" doubtless means those that we have wronged, those before whom we have committed faults. Public confession has been a matter connected with God's people and work all the way through the centuries, even before Christ's time among the Jewish people. Doubtless there have been those who have felt that they had secret sins which they themselves could not overcome, and wanted the help and instruction and prayers of godly men, and these have made private confessions; but there was no demand for it. This in the beginning was purely voluntary. Finally it began to be taught. Pastors and priests began to advise it, to demand it, and at last to require it; but it met with more or less opposition in the beginning. Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia, third edition, says that "private confession originated in the monastery, where only transgressions of the rules of the order were subject to public confession and penance. According to its idea, monastic life presupposes all sin impossible but sin in thought, and this was to be confessed privately to the abbot." "Outside the monastery private confession at first met with opposition from the side of the clergy. The bishops of Apulia and Campania demanded that sins confessed in private should be made publicly known to the congregation; and it was this demand which first caused Leo the Great to officially recognize and confirm private confession as a legal institution." "In the eighth and ninth centuries the practise thus legalized was made compulsory. The Synod of Liege (710) decreed that every person should confess once a year to the priest of his parish; and the canon 21 of the Lateran Council of 1215 confirms the old established custom. Chrodegang's rules (Mansi XIV 313) demanded that ecclesiastics should confess twice a year; and, while the synods of the sixteenth century recommended lay people to confess frequently, they made the confession of ecclesiastics weekly (Hartzheim VII 679). The Council of Trent (session 25, canon 10) decreed that nuns should confess once a month. It was also in the thirteenth century that the formula of absolution used by the priest, 'Dominus absolvat' (May the Lord absolve thee), was changed to 'Ego te absolvo' (I absolve thee). When the right of hearing confessions was granted to the Dominican order, conflicts arose with the parochial clergy; and in 1321 the chancellor of the University of Paris demanded that confessions made to a Dominican friar should be repeated to the priest of the parish, but Pope John XXII refused his confirmation." Professor Gieseler, in his "Ecclesiastical History," volume 3, Edinburgh, edition of 1853, tells us, under the centuries 1073 to 1305, 6th chapter, section 83: "In the beginning of this period of time, confession of secret sin was not yet required as an indispensable condition of forgiveness, but only recommended as conducive to amendment. Neither was a power of absolution attributed to the priest; and accordingly it was believed that laymen also might hear confessions. In the twelfth century, after that confession was reckoned among the sacraments, the contrary views began to gain ground, first, as opinions, and afterward got the ascendency in the church by virtue of the decree of Innocent III, which imposed by law an annual confession to the parish priest. From that time forth the confessional began to be considered as the alone means of obtaining forgiveness for deadly sin, which the priest as the representative of God actually granted, and which he alone could grant. Thus confession to laymen died away of itself. The common people were more easily won over to these alterations in doctrine and practise, because it was made a fundamental maxim not to impose on the person confessing a penance that would be burdensome to him." Dowling's "History of Romanism," chapter 10, period A.D. 1073 to 1303, section 92, says: "In this general council [fourth council of Lateran], also by the 21st canon, the practise of auricular confession was for the first time authoritatively enjoined upon the faithful of both sexes at least once a year." The "Encyclopædia Britannica," under "Confession," says: "The growth of private, or auricular, confession is more difficult to trace [that is, more difficult than open confession]. Even those who would be most inclined to represent it as primitive admit that for the first three centuries little or no mention is made of any such practise." Reference is then made to the little mention of the thing by St. Augustine and the opposition to it by Chrysostom, the latter contending that confession to God is sufficient. "But the practise gradually became more common, especially in the West, and more a matter of rule and precept; till at length, in the fourth Lateran Council, held under Pope Innocent III, in 1215, it was enjoined upon all members of the Church of Rome once a year, by the famous 21st canon, beginning with the words 'Omnis Utriusque Sexus Fidelis.' The medieval church of the West fixed the number of sacraments as seven, and insisted on auricular confession as an essential part of the sacrament of penance. Confession and absolution was reserved for the priesthood." The whole theory of auricular confession and priestly absolution finds its basis in man's desire for self-salvation, or salvation by the human.