Echo of an Ancient Rite

The extraordinary scene of Pope John Paul II huddled in intense conversation with his would-be assassin had an emblematic quality for hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics. In appearance, if not content, it echoed an ancient tradition of the church: confession of personal sins to a priest.

That encounter was not, however, meant to administer the Catholic sacrament of penance. Mehmet Ali Agca's education in his own faith, Islam, apparently is spotty, but he probably has a general awareness of its teaching that God will weigh each person's deeds on the Day of 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).

The formal practice of confession goes back thousands of years in Judeo-Christian tradition. Jewish Scripture and liturgy include ancient prayers of confession of sins, and the most solemn period in Judaism's ceremonial calendar is Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement. In Catholic Christianity the sacrament reached its classic form by the 11th century; five centuries later the custom developed of holding confession in a booth, with penitent and priest speaking to each other through an opening in a partition. So strict is the privacy that a Catholic priest is forbidden even to reveal knowledge about crimes acquired under the confessional "seal."

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.

The 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 to do so.

John Paul designated 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 in a booth. The Vatican allows a communal rite of "general absolution," but only in extraordinary circumstances (for example, on battlefields or in mission areas that lack priests).

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), 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've sinned seriously, or if they do, they believe penance is not necessary. Or they believe that nobody goes to Hell."