I was in my Global Capitalism and Ethical Values class this morning and we got on a tangent about the website Postsecret (note about that: while I do read Postsecret on a regular basis, there are often secrets with pictures posted that aren't appropriate when small children are in the room. I scroll past those and also don't read it when I'm home, just to protect the little one's eyes. Just FYI). As my friend Sam and I were trying to explain the website to our professor, who has no experience with it, she mentioned that it seems like most people submit secrets because of the confessional aspect of it. Our professor then went on to say that, unlike the Church says, confession isn't really freeing, but rather imprisoning because of the fact that, once you confess something, another person knows about it. The conversation shifted before I could object, but it did get me thinking about confession and what comes with it.
First of all, the most important point about confession is not the "feeling" that comes along with it. Yes, it often does feel liberating to tell someone and know that you're forgiven, but that's not why Catholics confess. We confess to take ownership of the things that we have done wrong and to ask God's forgiveness for them. I know that personally, I'm a crier. I'm that girl that comes out of the confessional with mascara lines down my cheeks because the process of calling my sins to mind and telling another person about them is difficult and often embarrassing. I also cry because I feel so bad that I've done what I've done; however, there are a few things that I know for certain when I leave the confessional:
1. My sins are forgiven. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 18:18 that "Amen, I say to you, whatsoever you bind on earth , shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." The priest has the power to forgive sins because he is a direct descendant of the Apostles and is given this same power when he is ordained by his bishop.
2. The priest will never tell anyone my sins. He can't, because of the seal of the confessional. I don't ever have to worry about someone finding out my sins because the priest is forbidden to tell anyone ever, even in a court of law.
3. Once the words of absolution are pronounced, I am right with God again. And that is where the feeling of freedom comes in, for my soul is in a state of grace and I am completely united with God again. If that's not freedom, I don't know what is.
I think the problem that came up in class was the fact that most people associate liberation or freedom with not being tied to anything. However, we are a social creature and no one can exist completely on his or her own, which would be what makes them totally free. The paradox here is that I am free because I choose to live according to the teachings of the Church. I think Fr. Stan Fortuna, CFR, summed it up in his song "Libre" from the album "Sacro Song II" (emphasis mine):
Oh my beloved world
You have given me so much and yet so little
Always offering an answer to my questions
Always with a comeback for where I come from
And yet here I stand
Still full of questions of self
For your responses my world,
Have been an unread subscription
That lingers on the coffee table
With images that grab.
But your answers do not fill
So I just wanna say, “Yo soy libre”
Because I have been freed by the great I Am.
For I am as the cobblestone on
The Grand Concourse that call out
From breaks in the asphalt
What was once suffocating
From sinful tar and stony heart
Has been freed from the heat of Grace
I now see through the melting-pot holes
And now by my presence I call out
To the world that this land on the
Surface is not all there is or was
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
I am Carravagio spray painted
On the Spanish-Harlem wall
The beauty is unquestionable
And it calls out to all
But some choose to dismiss it
As Medieval graffiti
Chaining themselves up
With the fetters of false ideologies
Worshipping the beauty of creation
While executing in their hearts the Creator
Who has freed me
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
I am one who stands in awe of the martyrs,
But my tastes have changed
For once my heroes were
Pancho Villa, Che and Trotsky
For these died for what they believed
But man cannot find his end in himself
I too have envied the rich
Wishing it were I instead of they
For these lived for what they achieved or received
But man cannot be his own measure
So I have traded in the rhetoric of empowerment
For the contradiction of the Cross.
And now I know what freedom is
Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado
¡Libre!
For what the Lord has kept from the wise and learned
He had revealed to mere children
That one must lose his life in order to gain it
Now my heroes are
A wrinkled blue and white
Flower from Calcutta
A bishop of a war torn land
Killed for preaching peace
And a man who goes throughout the world
Clothed in white
Saying, “Do not be afraid”
Lord, help me not to be afraid…
Lord, I need you to help me to not to be afraid…
Porque Yo soy libre,
Tu me has liberado.
Libre.
(http://www.francescoproductions.com/lyrics/sacrosong2/libre.html)
For more on confession, see the Catholic Encyclopedia entry: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11618c.htm
