Word: confesser
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...Judgment. A practicing Muslim invokes the Almighty's mercy during the five prescribed daily prayer sessions. But for John Paul, penance and absolution have very precise meanings. Penance is one of the Catholic Church's seven sacraments. Baptized Catholics, before receiving Communion, are required to confess contritely all then- "grave sins" (for example, adultery) to a priest, and they are encouraged to confess lesser misdeeds. The priest absolves penitents on God's behalf. The priest also directs sinners to perform deeds of "penance" (hence the sacrament's name...
Eastern Orthodoxy shares a similar tradition of sacramental confession before a priest. Anglicanism allows for, but does not require, private confession, in addition to the general confession and priestly pronouncement of absolution in liturgical rites. Although Martin Luther advocated private confession, Protestantism rapidly abandoned it, on the ground that the individual should confess sins directly to God in public worship or personal prayers, without the intervention of clergy...
...Pope is required to confess his sins in private, just like the humblest of his parishioners. John Paul not only visits Rome's prisons and parishes but hears confessions at St. Peter's Basilica on Good Friday; he is the first modern Pope...
...penance as the topic for last October's synod of bishops, not only because he stresses the sacrament's importance but because its practice nowadays is in a state of flux and confusion. Theologians disagree over what sort of sins require absolution, and whether young children should confess before making their First Communion, as the Vatican desires, or a few years later when they may have a better understanding of the nature of sin. A majority of U.S. parishes now offer face-to-face confession with a priest as an alternative to the austere, anonymous meeting...
...American Catholics "walked away in droves from the sacrament of penance," says Russell Shaw, a layman who is public affairs secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference. Shaw speculates that some of the defectors are married couples who use birth control, and "they don't want to confess it, but they don't want to not confess it." More generally, though, the dwindling attendance at confession seems to suggest that lay Catholics have a diminishing sense of their own sinfulness and of the redemptive power of the sacrament. As Shaw puts it, "They don't believe they...