In this video, Joe Heschmeyer responds to a caller who asks for advice defending the Sacrament of Confession in a conversation hosted by Cy Kellett.
Transcript:
Caller: My mother is Baptist. I’m Catholic. I’ve been Catholic for a few years now, but my mother is Baptist. And I’ve been going back and forth with her for a while, trying to convince her to come on board. One of the main sticking points on her end is confession. She does not understand why exactly confession through a priest specifically is necessary. My answer to her was essentially, Jesus gave the apostles the authority to forgive sins and to not forgive sins. The apostles passed down their authority through the bishops who appoint priests to act on their behalf. So, you know, the Bible tells us who has the authority to forgive sins, and that’s that. But that wasn’t quite enough of an answer for her. So I was hoping to get a little bit of help on the subject.
Joe: Yeah, I think the first thing to establish is that when we sin, we don’t just harm our relationship with God; we harm our relationship with our neighbor and with the church. The easiest way to see this is to think about it in the opposite direction. Think about what St. Paul says in regards to the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12, that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer. When one part rejoices, we all rejoice. So this is verse 26.
When you are who you are meant to be by God, when you’re the great saint you’re meant to be, you can see very clearly the way other people benefit from that. So every time you stop short of being that person, you are hurting other people, even if just by the absence of not being the person you were meant to be. Even if it’s just by burying your talent, you’ve done an injustice to the person you’re meant to spend that talent on. Every time you were called to evangelize and you didn’t, someone else was harmed, even if they had no idea this was going on.
So every sin, even the most private sin, harms our neighbor and harms the body of Christ. One of the reasons for confession in general is because we need to acknowledge that we’ve hurt others, even if it’s less direct than, “Oh, I stole money from you.” Even if that way I’ve harmed others is just not being the person God made me to be, which would have been a boon to others. I’ve fallen short of that.
In James, chapter 5, verse 16, we’re told, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” It then says the prayer of a righteous man is efficacious or has great power in its effects. So a second reason we’re given to go to others for confession is to have the intercession of the righteous. If you have fallen out of favor with God through your sin, then the biblical way to restore that is by going to someone who is in good standing with God.
Now, you can also and should also—do not misunderstand me here—you should also go directly to God and plead mercy from Him. But we can see from the Old Testament, places like Job, the last chapter of Job, his friends have to go to Job, who will intercede for them and make them right before God. You can also see from Lot and his family, who are saved not because of their own holiness, but because of the intercession of Abraham.
From passages like James 5 in the New Testament, we see that one of the reasons we go to other people is because we believe their prayers are very powerful. Their intercession is very powerful. This is why in 1 Timothy chapter 2, St. Paul tells us to be continually making intercessions for one another. So that’s true of just going to anybody.
So why go to a priest in particular? I think it’s important to kind of lay that foundation because we often have a very individualistic view of Christianity that is very unbiblical, but is very American. It’s just me by myself. I’m a self-made man. None of that is biblical. We are part of a body bigger than us, and we are reliant upon one another within that body. Some people have been given the ability to forgive sins. How do we know that? Because in John chapter 20, Jesus said so. He breathes on the apostles and says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
Then He tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Now, I think it’s important to tie those two ideas together. On the one hand, they have been sent. This idea of sending is very important throughout the New Testament. If you read Acts 15, you’ll see the difference between St. Paul and Barnabas, who are sent by the Church, and the Judaizers, who are not sent by the Church.
This is repeatedly referenced: the Church sends Paul. He has authority because he’s been sent both by Christ directly and by the Church. The Judaizers don’t have this authority. They didn’t get a divine apparition telling them to go preach their heresy, and they weren’t sent by the Church to do that. The ones with the authority of this sending are also the ones He is entrusting with this ability to forgive sins.
Some Protestants are going to read that and think that just means, “Oh, you have the power to proclaim the gospel, and then people will respond to that, and that will forgive their sins.” But that is a very convoluted way of nullifying John 20 because then Jesus wouldn’t have had to breathe the Holy Spirit upon them to tell them, “Keep preaching like you have been doing.” Rather, He’s giving them a spiritual authority, which we then see them exercising and their successors exercising as well.
So you should go to others because Christianity is communal and because you’ve hurt the Church. Because they can intercede for you, you should go to a priest because, unlike your other neighbors, the priest has been given this sending by the Church and has the power to forgive sins.
Caller: Okay, all right. That’s actually tied together very nicely. Good job.
Joe: Well, thank you very much.
Cy: Finally, Joe got a good grade. Congratulations, Joe. Thank you, Daniel.
Joe: If you’d like to get a book, I’m shamelessly susceptible to flattery. I will have your pick of any of the books I’ve written. If you wanted to stick around on the line, hang on, and we’ll send them to you.