THE MIRACLE OF PRIESTS FORGIVING SINS
Absolution is the rite in the Catholic Church by which the priest takes sin away
in the name of God. What business has God and priests forgiving big sins against
me in confession or whatever without my consent as if I was never harmed?
Catholics believe in people making amends to God for the sins of others in their
place. Surely then God should ask me what penance I want the person to do for
me. Surely the priest who absolves should or tell the penitent to ask me first
and get back to him. What business has God making these decisions as if I had no
right when he cannot even prove that he can be loved or should be? When you get
married you have to make sure you know the person but you don’t know God at all
and he is so mysterious and does things that look evil. But that does not stop
him being domineering.
The priest doesn’t ask God to pardon you when he absolves. He does it on his own
authority for he says, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is an extreme case of man standing
in the place of God. It is blasphemy of the highest order to suggest that God
would leave people at the mercy of men.
This sacrament was supposedly started by Jesus after his resurrection when he
told the apostles in the John gospel that any sins they pardoned would be
forgiven and any they did not forgive would not be. "If you forgive the sins of
any they are forgiven," Jesus said. This means if you forgive in your own name
the sins will also be forgiven by God. Those theologians who deny that priests
forgive in their own name do not understand Catholicism. If you don't like this
doctrine that priests forgive in their own name then you need to find an
interpretation of the verse that rejects the idea of priests having power to
forgive sins. We will look at one in a moment.
Suppose the Catholics are right. There is no evidence that the apostles passed
the power to absolve or forgive sin on or were meant to and it is possible to
translate it as saying that they can only forgive sins that have been forgiven
already which would mean that they are not forgiving sins in the Catholic sense.
If the gospel did mean the Catholic interpretation then the problem is that only
one gospel says it. It is a very serious doctrine and you need two independent
eyewitnesses according to God’s law.
The apostles would have been barred from the Temple for absolving sins for that
was a serious blasphemy in Jewish theology. They were not barred at all which
shows that they did not know of the Catholic sacrament and it is a later hoax.
It is claimed by Catholicism that Jesus gave his apostles unique guidance from
the Holy Spirit so that they were covered by infallibility and could write
infallible scriptures if they wanted to. If that is true then the apostles may
have been given the power to read hearts. So Jesus could have meant, “Receive
the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven (they are in
the condition or state of being forgiven, that is they have been forgiven
already and are still in a forgiven state)” as in “I give you the Holy Spirit so
that anybody you forgive and allow into my Church and accept is forgiven by God
for you will be inspired to see that.” That shows they are not causing God to
forgive when they do what Jesus asked. Jesus didn’t say he meant they would
forgive sins in God’s place as if they were God. It is totally dishonest of the
Roman Catholic Church to use a text like that to bolster the outrageous claims
of the Church.
There are two different kinds of forgiveness that Jesus would have believed in.
There is forgiveness by the community as a community of sinners. And there is
divine forgiveness, God forgiving sins. Nobody sees who God forgives so the
former kind of forgiveness is necessary to have a community. Jesus then was
giving the Christians authority to reject sinners and receive them back in
forgiveness. It need not be an infallible authority, just an authority. It is just
for order and Christ commands that it be respected.
God either forgives or he does not. If somebody said they would forgive you for
doing wrong if you tasted their porridge that is not real forgiveness. A God who
won't forgive until a priest does a ritual is not forgiving at all but mimicking
forgiveness.
Catholics have to confess their sins to a priest and tell him how often they
committed them so that the priest can forgive their sins in the name of God.
The Catholic is compelled to tell all mortal sins or serious sins to the priest
truthfully or be guilty of the grave hell deserving sin of telling a lie to the
Holy Spirit.
The Church says it needs to be told the sins before it can decide to pardon them
which is an untruth because what matters is the person being sorry for all the
sins. The priest being told the sins has nothing to do with his deciding to
pardon them. That is only done on the basis that the penitent claims to be
sorry. Confessing is no good without repentance.
The Church says that when you confess to a priest you are really confessing to
God not the priest and the priest only serves as a witness. If it is really God
who forgives then how can the Church argue that it needs to be told the sins? It
is up to God to see if the confessing person is sincere and admitting all his
sins to him.
The person confessing sins does not mean he repents them. No examination takes
place as to why the person repents and what steps they have taken to avoid the
sin. The Church then is lying pure and simple that it needs to hear the sins.
How could it need to when there is little concern for testing the person's
profession of repentance?
Confession is an invasion of the conscience and a bad thing to put children
through. The Catholic doctrine that the priest is needed to remove sins is cruel
for it must terrify those who find themselves dying alone after a car crash.
The sacrament of confession forces priests to be accessories to crime for the
priest is forbidden to go to the police even if he hears in confession that a
mass-murder is about to be committed by a person who confessed to him.
Confession implies that we have a duty to obey the Church even if it seems evil.
Confession is a tribunal – the priest has to find you guilty of your sins and
find your repentance sincere and then he absolves you. The seal of the
confession prevents the priest from telling what went on. There are no witnesses
and nothing to stop a priest from lying that you permitted him to discuss what
you told him and that you were the one that told him with all and sundry. A
priest indeed should lie that he got such permission. He should not be putting
the alleged sanctity of the confessional before human life.
If you had a sexual feeling you would have to explain to the priest how you
could have avoided it and what caused it and what you did with it and how many
times. Confession is a grave invasion of the conscience and of privacy and it is
an enforced invasion because if you don’t confess and tell all your serious sins
you will go to Hell to burn forever.