BIBLE DENIES PRIESTS FORGIVE SINS
The doctrine that priests forgive sins as if they were God is a core doctrine of Roman Catholicism.
Roman priests claim to possess the power to make God forgive our sin in the
sense that God won’t pardon certain penitents’ mortal sins until the priest
says, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit” to which the grateful reply is simply, “Amen” (Council
of Trent, Session 14, Chapters 1, 3, Canon 6, 7 and 9). He says, “I absolve
you”. He does it by his own authority. Catholics tell their sins to the priest
and say they are sorry and then the priest forgives their sins after giving them
something to do as a penance in order to make up for their debt of temporal
punishment.
Today, this sacrament is called the sacrament of reconciliation, but the older
term, the sacrament of penance, is still occasionally used.
The Church says that Jesus gave priests this power to forgive sins for the
gospels say so. But the texts may not mean what Rome would dearly love them to
mean.
Here are the lesser ones with their refutations following them:
Matthew 18:18 where we read that whatever the apostles bind on earth shall be
bound in Heaven and what they unbind on earth shall be unbound in Heaven. Since
this passage refers to whatever not whoever it is taken as confirmation that
Jesus conferred on his entourage the ability to take sins away.
But there is no reason to suppose that he meant sin. The promise was made in the
context of talking about Church discipline. Catholicism should stop taking
verses out of context. Jesus promised his disciples the ability to accept only
those he approved into his Church and to put the unwanted out of it. This could
only be done if they were infallibly inspired by him from Heaven. The apostles
needed this gift to keep unity among themselves and the Church and unity is more
important than doctrine in the sense that true doctrine is lost to some degree
if there is too much schism and it is brought into disrepute. (Rome knows this
doctrine but cannot confess it is true for it would mean that she is infallible
when she excommunicates and even she admits she is not infallible then.)
Yet the promise may be one of another kind of infallibility, protection from
error in order to teach the word of God and to have it written down. The
Catholic Church has no right using this text here to justify absolving when she
also uses it to persuade folks that she cannot err in her ecumenical councils
and when her pope speaks ex cathedra or from the chair of Peter.
The Church assumes that when Jesus gave the Church the power to bind and loose
so that what it bound or loosed would be bound or loosed in Heaven he meant it
could forgive sin. This is nonsense. The power was given in the present tense
before the time after the resurrection when Rome says he gave the power to
forgive sins to the apostles. The authority refers only to the power to accept
people or excommunicate them. Rome says Jesus forgave sins. Also Jesus didn’t
literally forgive sins as if he were God for he only told the man that his sins
were forgiven. He said that he had the authority to forgive sins but he doesn’t
say he had the authority to forgive sins in the person of God.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20 says that the apostles had the ministry of reconciling
people with God. Do marriage guidance counsellors who have a ministry of
reconciliation forgive the estranged husband and wife?
The final Catholic proof is the alleged mention of Paul absolving the sins of an
incestuous man in his letters (1 Corinthians 5; 2 Corinthians 2). Paul judging,
excommunicating and pardoning this man is hardly the same as giving him the
sacrament of penance! Paul never met this man and when he was able to judge him
he must have been able to read his mind by the power of the spirit. Catholic
absolution demands that the penitent be present for absolution. In 2 Corinthians
2, Paul wrote that he forgives in the person of Christ whoever the Corinthians
forgive. He means forgive in the matter of Church discipline because if he meant
absolution how could he absolve” persons absolved by the Corinthians? Notice too
how, “If you Corinthians forgive the sins of any I forgive them” which matches
what Jesus said in John “Whoever you forgive I forgive. And Paul is definitely
not telling the Corinthians that they can forgive for him as if they were him so
how could Jesus be doing that either? The Catholic Church says that distant
absolutions are futile for the person has to be near the absolver. A
Presbyterian minister could say the same as Paul concerning a reconciled rebel
who has broken Church law and he does not absolve.
Here comes THE text.
John 20:23 has Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples and telling them
that if they forgive the sins of any they are forgiven and if they do not
forgive they are not forgiven. It does not say that it means they can forgive
sins as if they were the ones the sins were against. It makes sense to say that
Jesus meant nothing more that if the disciples forgive then God will forgive AS
WELL. There are two forgivings not one. The apostles make their decision to
forgive and God makes his to forgive along with them. The text does not say that
Jesus gave them the power to forgive sins against God. It is against commonsense
to imagine that John can forgive you for Eddie when it was Eddie you hurt. The
Bible assumes we have the power to think.
When Jesus told the apostles after his resurrection that if they forgave the
sins of any they were forgiven he may have had the non-literal interpretation in
mind (John 20:23). Just as John can’t forgive Marty for hitting Sean for he is
not Sean so priests could not possibly literally forgive as if they were the
offended God. Jesus knew that though the paganism of Roman Catholicism has
forgotten that. Moreover, the Bible occasionally speaks of declaring an act like
it was performing it (Jeremiah 1:10; Isaiah 6:10). The John text could have been
using this peculiar method of expression. It may just mean that to successfully
declare a person pardoned by God is to forgive.
The Bible seems to teach that God saves you in this life and makes you holy.
Jesus never said he meant forgive as in give sinners salvation. In
Protestantism, you need forgiveness from God even if you are saved but it is not
about giving you salvation for you already have it. Roman Catholicism has
priests giving salvation when they absolve and that is going beyond the text.
The role of the priest is blasphemous.
There is no justification for the Catholic interpretation of the passages. Rome
says that baptism forgives sins, that we can all pardon sins for God by
baptising. If it does then Jesus could have just been giving it that power in
some of the texts or reminding the apostles of that power. Assuming another
sacrament is going too far.
It is asserted by a few that since the texts could mean absolution they must
mean it. They argue that it is the simplest interpretation and that when a text
has more than one meaning the simplest and safest must be taken. It is not safe
to start absolving people in case it is nonsense just because a text merely
seems to command it and looks can be deceiving.
BIBLE SAYS WE CAN GO STRAIGHT TO GOD
The Psalms and the Old Testament have people praying straight to God for
forgiveness and getting it.
When the Gospel is supposed to be good news it is clear that God could not and
would not have changed this structure to make it harder leaving one having to
look for a validly ordained priest and remember sins and fight the shame of
confessing to that priest.
Jesus told his apostles that they must pray the Our Father which pleads,
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The
prayers at the start, “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come”, are by
implication prayers for pardon too for they ask that God be fittingly praised
and his reign of righteousness will come. How could you want the name reverenced
and the kingdom to come now as Jesus wanted us to when you mean “forgive me God
but not now and wait until I get to confession”?
Rome says the Lord’s Prayer will get venial sins forgiven if you sincerely mean
it. The Lord’s Prayer would be meaningless to a person who had no venial sins
never mind mortal sins but Jesus wants all to use the prayer. It speaks of no
restrictions. The Lord’s Prayer refutes the idea that some forgiveness is the
priest’s domain.
The Catholic forgiveness system contradicts the urgency of the New Testament
message of conversion and even more so in the past when there were no cars and
when there was much persecution of Christians. If a person needed absolution in
times of persecution it was very hard to get and caused much terror. St Paul
said we could not get married for we had to prepare for the second coming. There
was no time for the Catholic system which only slows things. When the Bible
never denies that we must go straight it is enough to prove that it wants us to
go straight.
Conclusion
Priests forgiving sins is just another Roman Catholic doctrine that emerged from
its control freak antics despite being in contradiction to the Bible.
Jesus did not specify that the power to remove sins - if it was a power he was
talking about - belonged just to ordained individuals in the Church.
Luther said anybody can absolve but advised against it for it would lead to
disorder. Again that was an error for people forgiving sins does not need
regulation. Jesus however was not giving any power to forgive sins - he
was saying he had decided to forgive those who his listeners forgive. He
was doing the absolving not them.
BOOKS CONSULTED
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING Tony Coffey, Harvest House, Eugene,
Oregon, 2006
A PATH FROM ROME, Anthony Kenny Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985
BLESS ME FATHER FOR I HAVE SINNED, Quentin Donoghue, Linda Shapiro, McClelland
and Stewart, Toronto, 1984
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
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1976
CONFESSION, WHY WE GO, James Tolhurst, Faith Pamphlets, Surrey, 1975
DIFFICULTIES, Mgr Ronald Knox and Arnold Lunn, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1958
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Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
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Dublin 1981
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LIVING IN CHRIST, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne 1969
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic University of America and the
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
ORDINATION, Rev Willie Bridcut, Irish Church Missions, Dublin
PEACE OF SOUL, Fulton Sheen, Universe, London, 1962
PENANCE CONSIDERED Michael S Bostock, Wickliffe Press London, 1985
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Veritas, Dublin, 1985
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Doubleday and Company, New York, 1981
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Publishing Company, New York
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http://www.bibleissues.org/john20_1.html
BIBLE VERSIONS USED
The Amplified Bible