The role of the confessor in the formation of conscience

Abstract

The post-conciliar epoch was a breath-taking period both for the renewal of the Church's life in all its aspects and for the inevitable crisis of passage. The sacrament of Penance was not foreign to the fate of the times. Paul VI' s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) and the spirit of change and newly-acquired freedom in the wake Vatican II brought about a serious authority crisis. Theologians felt the need to dissent publicly from the Pope's teaching on birth control and based their claims on the right to act on one's own conscience. The positive effect of this debate was the subsequent mine of literature on conscience. This period saw also a growing awareness that the sacrament of Penance was in crisis because its frequentation by Catholics was dwindling continuously. In 1983, Pope John Paul II convened a Synod of Bishops to discuss this problem and issued a post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Reconciliationem et Paenitentiam. Participants in the synod focused mainly on the adoption of a novel form of the Sacrament that responds more naturally to present day climate. Many of them were calling on the Church to adopt the General Absolution form of celebrating the sacrament without the need of privately confessing to a priest. Cardinal Ratzinger resisted the succumbing to the modem trends of depersonalisation and collectivism. I agree with the Cardinal's comment since, to my mind, the drive to bypass the actual confession of sins misreads the signs of the times. As a matter of fact we are witnessing the steady rise of psychotherapy and the need of people, lonely in the crowd, to be listened to [...].