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In a number of Christian traditions, including Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism, a confessor is a priest who hears the confessions of penitents and pronounces absolution. [1]
During the Diocletianic Persecution, a number of Christians had, under torture or threat thereof, weakened in their profession of the faith. When persecutions ceased under Constantine the Great, they wanted to be reunited with the church. It became the practice of the penitents to go to the Confessors, who had willingly suffered for the faith and survived, to plead their case and effect their restoration to communion.
Over time, the word came to denote any priest who had been granted the authority to hear confessions. Historically, priests were sometimes tested by officers of the church called examiners, before being granted this authority. [2] [3]
An individual may have a regular confessor, sometimes called a "spiritual advisor" or "spiritual father", to whom they turn for confidential and disinterested advice, especially on spiritual matters. Historically, this has been a common practice for Christian monarchs.
It is standard practice for a religious community of women, whether enclosed or just very large, to have one or several priests serving their spiritual needs, including being their confessor.
Donatism was a Christian sect leading to a schism in the Church, in the region of the Church of Carthage, from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid. Donatism had its roots in the long-established Christian community of the Roman province Africa Proconsularis and Mauretania Tingitana, in the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian. Named after the Berber Christian bishop Donatus Magnus, Donatism flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries. Donatism mainly spread among the indigenous Berber population, and Donatists were able to blend Christianity with many of the Berber local customs.
Confession, in many religions, is the acknowledgment of sinful thoughts and actions. This may occur directly to a deity or to fellow people.
Penance is any act or a set of actions done out of repentance for sins committed, as well as an alternate name for the Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. It also plays a part in confession among Anglicans and Methodists, in which it is a rite, as well as among other Protestants.
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins". The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions…"
In Christianity, contrition or contriteness is repentance for sins one has committed. The remorseful person is said to be contrite.
In the Catholic Church, the Seal of Confession is the absolute duty of priests or anyone who happens to hear a confession not to disclose anything that they learn from penitents during the course of the Sacrament of Penance (confession). Even where the seal of confession does not strictly apply – where there is no specific serious sin confessed for the purpose of receiving absolution – priests have a serious obligation not to cause scandal by the way they speak.
The epigonation, or Pálitsa, is a vestment used in some Eastern Christian churches.
Sacred mysteries are the areas of supernatural phenomena associated with a divinity or a religious belief and praxis. Sacred mysteries may be either:
A penitential is a book or set of church rules concerning the Christian sacrament of penance, a "new manner of reconciliation with God" that was first developed by Celtic monks in Ireland in the sixth century AD. It consisted of a list of sins and the appropriate penances prescribed for them, and served as a type of manual for confessors.
Sacramentum Poenitentiae was an apostolic constitution promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV in 1741, discussing the offense of solicitation, which is the crime of making use of the Sacrament of Penance, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of soliciting sexual activity.
The Sacrament of Penance is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, 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.
The Seal of the Confessional is a principle within Anglicanism which protects the words spoken during confession. Confession has certain censures on disclosure as there is an understanding among the clergy that there is an inviolable confidence between the individual priest and the penitent. This principle should not be confused with the rarer practice of lay confession, nor with the public confession of sins which is an element of most eucharistic liturgies throughout the Anglican Communion. The "Seal of the Confessional" refers specifically to the private confession of sins by an individual, in the presence of a priest, the form of which is regulated by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and later liturgical sources.
Manifestation of conscience is a practice, in religious orders, of making one's superior, such as an abbot or prior, aware of the state of one's conscience. This is so the superior may know them intimately, and thus further their spiritual progress.
Approbation, in Catholic canon law, is an act by which a bishop or other legitimate superior grants to an ecclesiastic the actual exercise of his ministry.
William Henry Anderdon was an English Jesuit and Catholic writer, born in London.
Lay confession is confession in the religious sense, made to a lay person.
Confessor of the Faith is a title given by some Christian denominations. In Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, Christians who professed their faith in times of Christian persecution and therefore had to suffer persecution, expulsion, torture, mutilation and imprisonment, but not directly undergo martyrdom, are called confessors. Later, popes, bishops, abbots, kings and hermits were also counted among the confessors.
Papal appointment was a medieval method of selecting the Pope. Popes have always been selected by a council of Church fathers; however, Papal selection before 1059 was often characterized by confirmation or nomination by secular European rulers or by the preceding pope. The later procedures of the Papal conclave are in large part designed to prohibit interference of secular rulers, which to some extent characterized the first millennium of the Roman Catholic Church, e. g. in practices such as the creation of crown-cardinals and the claimed but invalid jus exclusivae. Appointment may have taken several forms, with a variety of roles for the laity and civic leaders, Byzantine and Germanic emperors, and noble Roman families. The role of the election vis-a-vis the general population and the clergy was prone to vary considerably, with a nomination carrying weight that ranged from nearly determinative to merely suggestive, or as ratification of a concluded election.
In the Lutheran Church, Confession is the method given by Christ to the Church by which individual men and women may receive the forgiveness of sins; according to the Large Catechism, the "third sacrament" of Holy Absolution is properly viewed as an extension of Holy Baptism. Unlike Roman Catholicism, the practice of private confession in the Lutheran Church is voluntary, not obligatory.
There are seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, which according to Catholic theology were instituted by Jesus Christ and entrusted to the Church. Sacraments are visible rites seen as signs and efficacious channels of the grace of God to all those who receive them with the proper disposition.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Synodal Examiners". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Confessor". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.| Authority control databases: National |
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