Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How Dissenters Undermine The Sacrament Of Confession”

By BRIAN CLOWES

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of the book Call to Action or Call to Apostasy, consisting of a detailed description of the current forms of dissent and how to fight them, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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“The Church and the sacraments, according to the Modernists, are not to be regarded as having been instituted by Christ Himself. This is barred by agnosticism, which recognizes in Christ nothing more than a man whose religious consciousness has been, like that of all men, formed by degrees…for the Modernists, sacraments are bare symbols or signs” — Pope St. Pius X, encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (“On the Doctrine of the Modernists”), September 8, 1907, nn. 20-21.

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We have seen how dissenters use various tactics to undermine the Holy Mass and tinker with it, with the ultimate goal of deconstructing it until it is just a collection of superficial secular rituals and celebrations. The second major target of those who wish to deconstruct the Church is the Sacrament of Confession.
The Process of Apostasy. According to many expert observers, most Catholics who fall away from the One True Faith do so gradually. They do not jettison the precepts of the Church all at once; they usually become progressively lazier in one or more areas and begin to rationalize their behavior. Eventually, they become more and more lax until they fall away entirely. This incrementalism of sin leads to a deadly spiritual lassitude that spreads rapidly until it chokes off any remaining vestiges of fervor.
Lapsed Catholics cannot bear thinking about the possibility that their souls are in terrible danger of eternal damnation, so they deceive themselves into believing that their faith is still intact. They think that being “spiritual, not religious” is good enough. They may end up in liberal Protestant or other churches that de-emphasize the need for personal salvation and require no personal repentance. Such churches often openly boast, even on their signs, that they welcome and accept the person “just as they are.”
Unfortunately, they go no further; their purpose is to get the person to accept themselves “just as they are,” and to be “comfortable with themselves,” not to help them grow in holiness.
In almost every case, fallen-away Catholics begin the process of moral disintegration by questioning the need for the Sacrament of Confession.
There is a very logical reason for this, rooted deep in man’s fallen nature.
Accepting Sin in Others and in One’s Self. A dissenter’s “conscience” is a very flexible entity, a type of incorporeal Silly Putty, easily fashioned into any shape required to cover the sin(s) someone happens to be committing at the time. The most important purpose of this type of “conscience” is to salve the guilt the person is feeling due to his violations of the natural law.
Since the person has accepted these sins in himself, he necessarily becomes tolerant of the same sins in others, since to condemn these sins in others would cause him to be an inconsistent hypocrite — a capital sin to liberals.
Therefore, dissenters tend to accept in others whatever sins they practice themselves — even those that are explicitly condemned in Scripture, such as divorce, fornication, adultery, and homosexual acts.
The purpose of most dissident groups is to assuage the guilt their members feel by “empowering” them and “affirming” them in whatever sins they happen to be committing. Typical examples are Dignity USA, New Ways Ministry, and “Catholics” for [a Free] Choice.
Their language is sympathetic, nonjudgmental, and soothing, and contributes strongly to causing people to capitulate to their weaknesses and sins instead of fighting them.
Redefining “Sin.” The first step in the process of eliminating the need for personal repentance is to personally redefine the concept of “sin.”
Wisdom 7:17-22 and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1849) define sin as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.” Since by definition the eternal law does not change and is universal, the authentic definition of sin cannot change and applies equally to everyone.
In other words, what is sin for one person is sin for everyone. The definition of “sin” is a fixed standard. We cannot simply decide that our “conscience” standing alone can tell us what is right and wrong.
Yet this is precisely what the dissenters do. As “Catholics” for [a Free] Choice alleges, “Catholicism is based on a deep respect for the conscience, which each person must follow above all else when making a moral decision.”
This is a fatal error that could cost its followers their very souls.
A good example of this principle is provided by Dignity USA, an organization of unrepentant Catholic homosexuals, which first retools the definition of “sin,” then declares that one may disregard Church teaching regarding homosexual activity. Daniel Helminiak of Dignity claims that, since the person does not believe he is sinning, he actually is not sinning, and therefore has no need of the Sacrament of Confession:
“Sin is more a general attitude than any particular action. We sin when we deliberately do what we believe is wrong. Then in our hearts we opt for evil. Then we move away from goodness and from God, who is good…what you do may really be wrong. But if you don’t honestly think so and you do it, well, your heart is not really amiss….Many homosexual people simply cannot believe that gay sex as such is wrong. So they do what for them is ‘the best they can do,’ though Church teaching says homogenital relations are wrong.
“Still, according to the same Church’s teaching on conscience, they do not sin in their hearts nor before God. Then they need not confess what is not sin, and they may participate in the Sacraments of the Church.”
This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to all of the sin in the world today. Under Dignity’s or CFFC’s way of thinking, a person could easily justify fornication, drug use, or drunkenness “because I can’t control myself”; adultery because “my spouse doesn’t understand me”; shoplifting because “they won’t miss these little things”; and cheating insurance companies and the Internal Revenue Service “because they can afford it.”
But what about people who torch abortion mills or shoot abortionists? Obviously, they were just following their consciences, deformed or warped though they may have been. But you will never hear a dissenter supporting such a person’s exercise of his conscience.
In fact, dissenters often condemn all pro-life activities, no matter how inoffensive they may be, from speaking at colleges to helping women with crisis pregnancy center work. These denunciations are frequently accompanied by long-winded (and often amusing) explanations of why liberals must have complete freedom of conscience while conservatives should have a long list of limitations on theirs.
Regardless of what they may claim, dissenters are even more dogmatic and inflexible than the orthodox Catholics they so loudly criticize. They really do believe in a form of objective truth, and conscience cannot excuse those who violate their version of the “truth.”
This proves that “conscience” has absolutely nothing to do with it. Once again, what is allowable in the eyes of the liberal “god” entirely depends upon whether or not the liberals and dissenters agree with it. Conscience has absolutely nothing to do with it.
The Sad Results of No Confession. To cease going to Confession is to profess that we are not accountable to anyone above ourselves, and that we may freely choose whatever course of action feels good or does us good, just so long as we can justify it with our “consciences.” This is not a truth-based, but a feeling-based, way of life.
The results of this type of thinking are contrasted at Call to Action conferences and Call to Holiness conventions.
At Call to Holiness, virtually every speaker emphasizes the need for personal repentance and conversion. At least two priests are kept busy for hours each day hearing Confessions and giving Catholics advice on how to lead holier lives.
At Call to Action, there is not a single scheduled session of Confession, despite the fact that hundreds of priests attend. Nor is Confession mentioned in any of the talks except in a contemptuous manner. When orthodox Catholics approach CTA priests and lay members in attempts to discuss the value of Confession, they are frequently met with bemused stares, statements like “You can’t be serious!” and lectures on how Confession was part of “the old paradigm” that demanded “submissiveness of some people to others.”
Perhaps the dissenters reject Confession because they have to say to a priest, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Unfortunately, this attitude has infected the American Catholic Church in general, and this is why there is so little recourse to Confession. As Pope Pius XII said, “The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The agenda of modernist dissenters has led to this loss.