THE FUTURE OF THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE
By Fr Frank O’Loughlin, St Pauls Publications, $27.95
Reviewed by Terry Oberg
THE blurb for this book states that “the sacrament of penance has fallen on hard times over recent decades”.
Few Catholics would disagree and yet many have a good idea as to, at least, a partial remedy – the reintroduction of the banned Third Rite.
The author doesn’t directly mention this form of the sacrament until his last two paragraphs.
The previous 10 chapters imply some of the theological and pastoral advantages of penance’s communal aspect, but one has the distinct impression Fr O’Loughlin is reluctant to declare himself a fan.
Let me declare myself. I am a regular at confession. I front once a month.
My fellow penitents are about my age. Our time inside the confessional averages about three minutes.
My guess is our lists of sins elicit about the same response from the confessor.
One lady recently told me, as we waited our turn in the cathedral pews, that it was “a chore” to be undertaken as part her “practice of the faith”. Another spoke of “an ordeal”.
That it has some spiritual and psychological value is beyond doubt. That the sacrament could be so much more than what we as individual sinners experience is also certain.
In the days before Rome listened to a dissatisfied, vocal minority and forbade the Third Rite, we were able to experience the unique riches of community reconciliation and forgiveness.
How and why this sense of community fulfilled the specific wants and needs of modern Catholics is clearly explained in Part 2 of this book. This follows an uncomplicated, but not oversimplified, history of the sacrament, taking the reader from when it was just one of a long list of sacramentals to its inclusion in the seven sacraments with which we are familiar today.
The history in Part 1 is a necessary prelude to the spiritual riches that comprise the second section.
Here the theology of the sacrament is explained with particular emphasis on its relationship to the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ. All is aimed at the concluding chapters in which suggestions are put forward as to how the contemporary Church may be re-acquainted with the necessary graces that come from the right reception of Penance.
A significant number of Catholics resented the loss of the Third Rite.
As the final paragraph implies, Catholics have now been reduced to “penitential celebrations”.
As efficacious as these are, they still fall short of what the forbidden rite provided.
However, their popularity is obvious and so we may have another example of God’s people voting with their feet.
Perhaps what we are now seeing is modern Catholicism responding to its cultural milieu, which is another agent provocatively examined in this work which could be read with benefit by anyone interested in our Church and its immediate future.
