The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1899-12-23
Che Practice Of Confession
In De Catholic Church


! ing purchaser. They are in line with
the universal practice Of the trade in
the city where he dWells, and without
them his business would be liable to be
ruined. What is he to do under these
/ difficult circumstances? Or, to take a
! very different case. 4 girl is living
at home with her mother and sister.
/ She is not necessary to her mothers
! happiness or comfort, but, without
! doubt, she adds much to it, She has,
/ however, for some time felt strongly
! drawn toward consecrating her life to
God among the good Sisters of Charity
! whose self-sacriicing devotion to the
poor has made their white caps and
gray dress dear even to Catholics.
What ought she to do? Is she bound
! to obey the voice within and to leave
those dear to her, in order to follow
| out at any cost What she believes to be
| her vocation? Or is it all a delusion her
! real duty being to he the solace of her
mothers advancing years? How con-
/ ducive, how necessary to her peace of
mind that some wise counselor should
help her in deciding the question she
cannot decide for herself! Children, too,
have their own difficulties. Every con-
fessor of boys has been asked: Father,
| is it a sin to go out of bounds without
! leave? is 1t d sin to use a crib? Is it
! a sin to have q fight with another boy ?"
| Even little girls are sometimes perpleX-
ed in conscience. Father, is it a sin
to slap my little sister when she is
naughty? Is it a sin to take choco-
lates out of mothers work-boX?" Some
times the questions are on matters of
more serious import. for the voice
within does not always clearly promul-
gate even the preceptS of the natural
law. In all these questions, great and
small it is of incalculable benefit to
young and old to be able to resort to
one who will clearly draw the line be-
tween right and wrong, and set at rest
the troubled conscience.
COUNSELOR OF THE CONFESS
SIGNAL.
In all such cases the confessional fur
nishes &. counselor who is perfectly I'M
prejudiced, whose one and only desire
is to promote the happiness and we'll
being Of his penitent, who speaks with
the authority belonging to his office,
whose long experience gives weight to
his words, and who, above ALL knows
the severe account that Almighty God
will exact of him, and the awful res9On-
sibility of the task entrusted to him. He
knows that if he sweIves one hairs
breadth from the law of God in the
advice given, out of any human respect,
or desire to please, or any other infer
ior motive, he will he guilty of q great
sin before God. What better means
than this could possibly be devised for
giving peace to troubled souls. or for
settling doubts and difficulties that, to
those who are entangled in them, often
seem insolube? l do not mean to say
that the confessor is infallible, or may
not judge the case wrongly. But there
is every possible chance that his judg
ment will be the right one. and that
he will be able to give such advice as
may release the perpleXed conscience
from its difficulties and dangers. My
own experience is that seldom have |
encountered any problem as to future
action, however apparently hopeless,
which did not admit of a solution that
was not only practically possible, but
that could be carried out without any
serious difficulty by the person asking
advice.
Another benefit attaching to the pTac-
tice of confession is one that, I think,
cannot fail to be appreciated by any
one who calls himself, even in the wild
est sense, a Christian. One of the great
dangers of the present day is y. want
of sufficient appreciation of the evil of
sin as an offense against Almighty God.
Utilitarianism holds pernicious sway
over the opinion of modern society re-
speeding right and wrong. If the law
of God forbids any course of conduct
which utilitarianism declares to be BEN
eficial to society, well, so much the
worse for the law of God 1 do not
mea to say that any except an extreme
school of modern theorists would put
the matter in this crude form; but it
underlies a great deal of the opinion
now prevalent respecting right and
wrong. This or that course of action
cannot be bad, because it does no pos
sible harm to others; it must be good,
because it can be shown to be advan-
tageous to socity. Why should we re-
greet any of our actions in the past if
neither we, nor anyone else, are, as far
as we can judge, a whit the worse for
them?
HATEFULNESS OF SIN.
This habit of mind is one that is fos-
tered by career OF prosperity and
success. 1t is all very we'll to say that
we all have within US the dread tri-
bunal of conscience. declaring, with a
voice that cannot be silenced, the guilt
of sin and it's hatefulness in the sight
of God, apart from any evil results that
may proceed from it. This is true;
but conscience, if it be disregarded,
soon ceases to speak with the same dis
tinctnesS, OF, else the deafened ears fail
to hear it's sentence of condemnation.
1t needs an external sanction, human
voice without, that shall be the echo of
the voice of God within. Tt needs, more
over, the help of some authoritative
tribunal, outside of him, which
take counsel of his conscience and
reckon up with it's help the different
occasions on which he has disobeved
its voice, in order that he may obtain
forgiveness by a, full and frank con-
fe?ssion of them ali to one who must,
as Gods representative, take cogni-
zaRce of them all, and pass on the
guilty accuser Of himself a sentence of
punishment which shall in some way
correspond TO the heinousnesa Of his
sin. One of the most valuable elements
of confession is the examination of con-
science that necessarily precedes it.
1t brings a man face TO face with his
sins as nothing else can. He knows
that if they are to be forgiven, not one
must be concealed; and he knows, too,
that he musr use all care and diligence
TO see that none is, through any negli-
gence on his part, omitted from the
black list. They must all be told, the
number however great, and the kind of
sin however disgraceful and humiliat-
ing. / can scarcely imagine anything
that has d greater power to quicken the
sense of the Nervousness of sin than
this necessity of first coming face to
face with it in careful self-examination,
and then putting into words the results
which that seIf-examination has reveal
ed. And here I may remind my read
ers that this advantage is altogether
lost unless the integrity of confession
is strictly enforced Once allow the pen
itent to tell what seems good to him,
and to omit whatever he is reluctant
to confess, ana the value of confession,
as enforcing a sense of the evil of sin,