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The Sacrament of Penance (also commonly called the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession) is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church (known in Eastern Christianity as sacred mysteries), in which the faithful are absolved from sins committed after baptism and reconciled with the Christian community. During reconciliation mortal sins must be confessed and venial sins may be confessed for devotional reasons. According to the dogma and unchanging practice of the church, only those ordained as priests may grant absolution. Nature The church teaches, based on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, that confession is not a tribunal or criminal court, where one is condemned by God like a criminal, but a "wedding banquet hall, where the community celebrates Easter, Christ's victory over sin and death, in the joyful experience of his forgiving mercy." In confession, the church believes, God judges a person in the sense of bringing to light his or her sins, by granting the person the ability to confess his or her sins to the confessor, then grants the person repentance and, through the confessor, grants the person forgiveness. God's forgiveness restores the person to "the brightness of the white robe of baptism, a garment specifically required to participate in the [wedding] feast." History In the New Testament, Christians are admonished to "confess your sins to one another and pray for one another" at their gatherings, and to be forgiving people. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to the Apostles, after being raised from the dead, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained". The early Church Fathers understood that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was communicated to the Apostles and to their lawful successors, the bishops and priests, for the reconciling of the faithful who have fallen after baptism. Early practice In the middle of the 2nd century, the idea of one reconciliation/penance after baptism for the serious sins of apostasy, murder, and adultery is suggested in the book of visions, The Shepherd of Hermas. The episkopos (bishop) was the main liturgical leader in a local community. He declared that God had forgiven the sins when it was clear that there was repentance, evidenced by the performance of some penance, and the penitent was readmitted to the community. The need to confess to a priest is traced to Basil the Great. It was seen that God granted forgiveness through the priest. Before the fourth century confession and penitential discipline were a public affair "since all sin is sin not only against God but against our neighbor, against the community.": 140–41  By the time of Cyprian of Carthage, confession itself was no longer public. Lifelong penance was required at times, but from the early fifth century for most serious sins, public penance came to be seen as a sign of repentance. At Maundy Thursday sinners were readmitted to the community along with catechumens. Confusion entered in from deathbed reconciliation with the church, which required no penance as a sign of repentance, and the ritual would begin to grow apart from the reality. Beginning in the 4th century, with the Roman Empire becoming Christian, bishops became judges, and sin was seen as breaking of the law rather than as fracturing one's relationship with God. A new, more legalistic understanding of penance emerged at episcopal courts, where it became payment to satisfy the demands of divine justice. According to Joseph Martos, this was facilitated by a misreading of John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18 by Augustine of Hippo and Pope Leo I, who thought it was the "disciple" and not God who did the forgiving, though only after true repentance. The acts of councils from the fourth to the sixth century show that no one who belonged to the order of penitents had access to Eucharistic communion until the bishop reconciled him with the community of the church. Canon 29 of the Council of Epaone (517) in Gaul says that from among penitents only apostates had to leave Sunday assembly together with catechumens before the Eucharistic part commenced. Other penitents were present until the end but were denied communion at the altar of the Lord. A new approach to the practice of penance first became evident in the 7th century in the acts of the Council of Chalon-sur-Saône (644–655). Bishops gathered in that council were convinced that it was useful for the salvation of the faithful when the diocesan bishop prescribed penance to a sinner as many times as they would fall into sin (canon 8). Celtic influence Because of its isolation, the Celtic Church for centuries remained fixed with its forms of worship and penitential discipline which differed from the rest of the Christian Church. It had no knowledge of the institution of a public penance in the community of the church which could not be repeated, and which involved canonical obligations. Celtic penitential practices consisted of confession, acceptance of satisfaction fixed by the priest, and finally reconciliation. They date back to 6th century. Penitential books native to the islands provided precisely determined penances for all offences, small and great (an approach reminiscent of early Celtic civil and criminal law). Walter J. Woods holds that "over time the penitential books helped suppress homicide, personal violence, theft, and other offenses that damaged the community and made the offender a target for revenge." The practice of so-called tariff penance was brought to continental Europe from Ireland, Scotland and England by Hiberno-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks. The Celtic practice led to new theories about the nature of God's justice, about temporal punishment God imposes on sin, about a treasury of merits in heaven to pay the debt of this punishment, and finally about indulgences to offset that debt (a practice that would be eventually condemned). Late Middle Ages With the spread of scholastic philosophy, the question arose as to what caused the remission of sins. From the early 12th century Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard reflected the practice that contrition and confession (even to laymen or, in rare cases, a nun or beguine) assured of God's forgiveness, but remorse for one's sins was necessary. Absolution referred only to the punishment due to sin. But at this time Hugh of St. Victor taught on the basis of the "power of the keys" (John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18) that absolution applied not to the punishment but to the sins, and this hastened the end to lay confession. From "as early as the third century devout Christians were sometimes encouraged to reveal the condition of their soul to a spiritual guide." This led to a private form of confession that bishops finally put a stop to by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that made confession to a priest obligatory within a year of the sinning, and has enshrined the practice of private confession ever since. In.... Discover the Joseph Martos popular books. 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