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Confession Question


Brother Adam

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Why on earth would someone who fully intends to commit a horrible deed seek forgiveness prior to committing the deed?

Certain conditions must be met in order to receive forgiveness:
1. The person must be truly sorry.
[i]He can hardly be truly sorry if he intends to go through with the sin, now can he?![/i]
2. He must do penance.
[i]The priest can impose a penance of turning himself in to the police, etc.![/i]
3. The penitent must have a firm purpose of ammendment. In other words, he must have a plan in mind to avoid this particular sin in the future!
[i]You can't have a firm purpose of ammendment, if you have a firm intention to commit the sin in the future![/i]

So confessing prior to the crime would be totally ridiculous.

But of course, so would planning to kill someone.... :blink: :unsure: :cool:

Pax Christi. <><

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The penitent may not actually be fully sorry and have firm purpose of ammendment when he confesses it. He may be trying to seek forgiveness for the act before he commits it (an impossibility, but its possible that that is his reasoning).

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[quote name='willguy' date='Apr 3 2004, 11:17 PM'] The penitent may not actually be fully sorry and have firm purpose of ammendment when he confesses it. He may be trying to seek forgiveness for the act before he commits it (an impossibility, but its possible that that is his reasoning). [/quote]
But surely no priest would give him absolution if it was obvious he had that type of attitude, right?

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I would assume so. I would also assume that a priest would have a long talk with and try to convince otherwise anyone who confessed the intention of commiting a crime. I wonder if their penance would be to not commit the crime...

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We are all sayin alot of I think

Here is an authority

[url="http://www.catholicherald.com/saunders/99ws/ws991118.htm"]http://www.catholicherald.com/saunders/99ws/ws991118.htm[/url]

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Can. 980 If the confessor has no doubt about the disposition of the penitent, and the penitent seeks absolution, absolution is to be neither refused nor deferred.

Can. 983 §1. The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.

Can. 987 To receive the salvific remedy of the sacrament of penance, a member of the Christian faithful must be disposed in such a way that, rejecting sins committed and having a purpose of amendment, the person is turned back to God.

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The last part about the sinner being disposed in such a way is really pertinent.

To say that you are going to sin means that you are not repentant.

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[quote name='Colleen' date='Apr 3 2004, 07:54 PM'] A little off topic, but has anyone seen Alfred Hitchcock's [i]I Confess[/i]? It's a story about a priest who hears a muderer's confession and then gets accused of murder, but he refuses to break the seal of Confession. It's excellent. [/quote]
That sounds like a true story. I've never seen the movie, but I know there was a priest who had a murderer confess to him that he had killed someone. The priest told him to turn himself into the police, but instead the murderer hid the knife in the priest's bed and called the police and told them that the priest had murdered the person. The priest never said the truth. He ending up dying in prison, and after, the true murderer told the police the truth. The priest is now a saint.

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[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 4 2004, 10:20 PM'] so who does the pope confess to? [/quote]
Any priest or bishop! Heck, he has his own confessor, I believe.

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[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 4 2004, 10:25 PM'] so if the pope sins, how can he be infallible? [/quote]
Paul sinned. Yet the books he wrote that are in the Bible are infallible. The Pope is not infallible in all aspects of his life. The infallibility of the pope only applies when he speaks "ex cathedra" on matters of faith. See the reference section for more.

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