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.