Penance Reconsidered

The sacrament of penance, known more familiarly to Roman Catholics as "confession," has fallen on lean days. Where quiet lines of penitents once gathered to wait near the confessional boxes on a Saturday, a priest may now sit on the church steps waiting wistfully for even one sinner to show up. The reasons for the sacrament's neglect are probably many: a severe drop in church attendance, a new theology of sin that does not stress the damning "mortal" sins of pre-Vatican II days, an avoidance of confession by some who practice contraception, or an increasing reluctance to enter dark, close quarters to recite one's sins to an unseen judge.

Despite church disapproval, some Catholics have chosen to think of the new penitential prayers in the Mass as their "confession." Others, particularly on college campuses and in progressive parishes, have been taking part in unauthorized communal rites of penance, acknowledging their sins inwardly while a priest gives "general absolution"-a sort of blanket forgiveness-for the entire group. A variation sanctioned by the church-a combination of a communal celebration of the sacrament with brief individual confessions and absolution -has won wide acceptance in many U.S. parishes. As for more leisurely individual confessions that require some counseling, many penitents have in recent years shunned the confessional to meet their priest in more normal surroundings-in a parish office, for instance-for a face-to-face talk.

Last week the Vatican issued a long set of new rules formalizing some of the experiments but sharply limiting others. For individual confessions, the rules encourage the use of a room set aside for the purpose, require that the priest greet the penitent warmly with a reminder of God's forgiving nature, and read a passage of Scripture with a reconciliation theme. The new norms stress the sacrament as a rite of "reconciliation" between the sinner, his neighbor and his God, and try to give that conciliatory flavor to the encounter between priest and penitent.

The document approves warmly of communal rites, which the Vatican seems to want to establish as the basic, most common form of the sacrament. But those congregational celebrations, the rules insist, must incorporate individual confession and individual absolution for each penitent-a somewhat cumbersome procedure. General absolution is in most cases forbidden. To the disappointment of liberals, it will be largely confined to mission areas, where a single priest may have to deal with large crowds of penitents in limited time.

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