In the New Testament there is no description of a ritual or ceremony associated with Penance or Reconciliation. The only ritual of forgiveness known to the earliest Christian community was Baptism. Today in fact, biblical scholars view just about all the texts that speak of a call to repentance as a call to Baptism, and moral rectitude after Baptism. Penance was seen as part of Baptism. There was no separate sacrament as we have it today.

The early Christians clearly understood that Jesus began his ministry with a call to repentance (Mark 1:15). To those who showed sorrow for their sinfulness he announced that they were forgiven by the power of God (Luke 5:18–26; 7:36–50). When asked how many times people should forgive one another, Jesus said, in effect, “every time.”

By the second century, Bishop Ignatius Theophoros of Antioch (died c. 110) and other second-century bishops continued to speak of personal correction and praying for others as a means of combating sin. Polycarp the Greek bishop of Smyrna (69  – 155) wrote that pastors should be compassionate and merciful to the sheep in Christ’s flock who went astray.

Later in the second century, however, there was a new development. There could only be one penitential reconciliation after Baptism, for the serious sins of apostasy, murder, and adultery. The public sinner would have to confess sins to the bishop. During liturgies,  the public sinner had to sit behind the community and wear penitential clothing. The public sinner was not allowed to stay for Eucharist and had to leave after the Gospel.

By the third century, a general pattern for the public reconciliation of known sinners began to appear in many Christian communities. Those who wanted to rejoin the community went to the bishop and confessed their error. But before they could be readmitted to the ranks of the faithful they had to reform their lives. They had to perform works of repentance, fasting and praying, and giving alms to the poor to show that their repentance was sincere. The period of their penitence could be a few weeks or a few years depending on the penitential customs of their community. In effect serious sinners were thrown out of the community: excommunicated. When their time of penance was over, the bishop imposed his hands on their heads as he had done after their Baptism.

There were extremes in interpretation. The rigorists claimed that excommunication for sins like apostasy and adultery should be permanent.

Penance, by the late fourth and fifth century, became a very public matter. But it was still normally received only once in a lifetime. The majority of Christians, however, felt no need for public penitence. They were not great saints but they were not great sinners either. During this time, therefore, we see a new development especially in Ireland.

Christianity first came to Ireland in the fifth century, around 431 CE. Missionaries, most famously including Saint Patrick, converted the Irish tribes to Christianity. The Celtic practice of Penance became the seeking of private spiritual advice. Devout Christians were encouraged to personally confess their shortcomings to a spiritual “guide” or “physician” who would give them direction in works of prayer and repentance. The person to whom they went, note well, was not necessarily a priest. Confession could be made to a layperson, but was usually to a monk or a nun.

Penitential books containing rules concerning Penance were also first developed by Celtic monks in Ireland in the sixth century. They gave lists of sins and the appropriate penances prescribed for them. They became a type of manual for spiritual guides. The number of penitential books and their importance is often cited as evidence of the particular strictness of Celtic spirituality in the seventh century. Depending on the penitent’s social status, a penance could be harsher or more lenient. For example, if a member of the clergy murdered a person, how long he had to fast depended on his position in the hierarchy. A bishop had to fast for twelve years, a priest or monk had to fast for ten years, and a deacon had to fast for seven years. And no matter the clergyman’s status, they were defrocked.

In the twelfth century, the rules changed. Only priests could listen to the confession of sins. Only priests had the “sacramental power.” But fortunately, people could receive the sacrament of Penance many times during one’s life. The formula that the priest used after hearing a person’s confession changed as well. What had been “May God have mercy on you and forgive you your sins” was changed to “I absolve you from your sins.” Thomas Aquinas, with his limited knowledge of the early centuries of Christian life, mistakenly asserted that the changed formula was in fact an ancient formula.

It was also in the twelfth century that the understanding of “purgatory” developed. Medieval theologians said sins were forgiven but that, after death, sinners’ souls still needed to be cleansed before they could enter heaven. Purgatory was suggested and presumed to be a place of a cleansing or “purgatorial fire,” outside the gates of heaven, to enable the deceased to achieve the holiness necessary for them to enter the joy of heaven.

At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Western Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, but the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt the doctrine. [Much later, Popes John Paul II (1920 – 2005) and Benedict XVI (1927 – 2022) wrote that the term “purgatory” does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. But neither pope could acknowledge that “purgatory” was simply an imaginative thirteenth century conjecture.]

In any case, it was in the fifteenth century that indulgences — from the Latin verb indulgere meaning “to forgive” or “to be lenient toward” — were introduced as a way to reduce the “days” of purgatorial punishment one had to undergo before entering heaven.

One could get an indulgence for saying special prayers, visiting holy shrines, performing good deeds, and later by contributing money to the church. The main funding for the early stages of building St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, for example, came from the sale of indulgences. The German Dominican friar Johan Tetzel (c.1465 – 1519) gathered indulgence money for the St. Peter’s building project. Although it is now disputed, the old legend was that Tetzel had said: “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

When Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521) excommunicated Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) from the Catholic Church in 1520, the bill of excommunication also condemned forty-one of his ideas, including six on indulgences and twelve on penance.

In the mid-16th century, the bishops at the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) stressed private confession to a priest as the approved approach to the sacrament of Penance. In fact, Trent’s bishops – not always historically aware ecclesiastics – stated that private confession dated back to the early days of Christianity. They simply presumed that the historic Jesus had created the sacrament of Penance as they understood it.

The Council of Trent’s medieval conception of sin and its remission through the confession of guilt and the performance of penitential works lasted into modern times because the Catholic Church, for a long time, retained its medieval cultural form, while the world around it changed.

The Roman Catholic approach to Penance began to change after the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965) when the name of the sacrament was changed from Penance to Reconciliation, and the rite allowed for a meeting of priest and penitent that was more like counseling than confession.

How should Christian communities practice Reconciliation today? People do need to acknowledge their sinful behavior and seek forgiveness. But forgiveness also requires reconciliation.

I suggest that at the local parish level, Christian communities should devote resources and personnel to focus on conversion and reconciliation about racism, misogyny, and homophobic discrimination. They should also focus on reconciliation within families: between husbands and wives, between parents and teenagers, between brothers and sisters who are angry with each other, and perhaps even between extended family members.

Sacramental forms and ministers can be adjusted to fit contemporary needs and circumstances. Such a ministry of reconciliation would require specially trained men and women as Ministers of Reconciliation. Then indeed the local Christian community would truly exercise sacraments of Reconciliation.

 

Jack