I also think it helps if we discard the Western forensic model of sin in favor of the Eastern medicinal approach, in that all sins are diseases; it is equally bad from God’s perspective for us to be afflicted by any disease, but some diseases cause us more harm. This is why in the New Testament St. Paul specifically warns in Romans 1:16-32 about numerous sins, such as idolatry, fornication, murder, backbiting, conceit, homosexuality, adultery, theft, pride, envy, and other sins that harm others, while not mentioning various forms of self-destructive sins, such as sloth, gluttony, despair, and so forth, perhaps because these sins are either, in the case of despair over our salvation or crises of faith, primarily self-destructive, whereas the Seven Deadly Sins mentioned in the Roman Scholastic Theology, aside from Pride, Lust and Envy, are not enumerated completely, with Sloth and Gluttony being absent, but these sins I think were originally understood by the Roman Church, before Roman hamartiology became overly forensic due to an overemphasis of St. Augustine and an underemphasis of more traditional Latin hamartiologists such as St. John Cassian, St. Isidore of Seville, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Hippolytus, St. Vincent of Lerins, and Pope St. Gregory the Great (venerated by the Eastern Orthodox as St. Gregory Dialogos), and the Greek and Syrian fathers (and the largely Coptic pre-schism Desert Fathers), was that these sins tended to be progenitors of the severe sins St. Paul enumerates: for example, lust leads to homosexuality, fornication and adultery, wrath leads to murder, backbiting, slander, and invention of evil things, avarice and covetousness lead to theft, more backbiting, and so on, while sloth is largely self-destructive but leads to one neglecting important things around them, and covenant-breaking, and gluttony is a dangerous sin because it is wasteful of food, and the waste of food when others go hungry is a distressing failure of society.
Where the Roman model errs I think, is that the sins enumerated by St. Paul are not moral failings that are the progenitors of worse sins, moral failings that are endemic to the population, but rather specific acts of misconduct, often grave misconduct, which can cause a multiplicity of sins in response to the initial sin. The Early Church historically penanced sins on a variable scale, but the Orthodox Churches, from what various priests have told me, increasingly does not penance sins, except for those which harm the congregation, or destroy marriages, or cause some objective external harm, that must be amended for spiritual healing, and is more interested in a pastoral care technique to medicinally treat the sin, and this can be accomplished, as St. John of Kronstadt demonstrated, without penancing anyone; in his church, because of the flock of pilgrims who came to see him to partake of the Eucharist and experience the fullness of Russian Orthodox spirituality* were directed to shout their sins in a sort of hybrid of auricular and general confession**, the noise this produced providing a degree of privacy.
This showed that penances were not as important as confession, in terms of spiritual health, and nowadays, the prevailing Russian Orthodox model is to encourage auricular confession and the Eucharist as frequently as possible, especially in Lent. This was also the ancient model, at least in the Eastern Orthodox Church (During Lent, only Armenian priests take communion, and the altar is concealed from view by a curtain, however, this is a specifically Armenian practice), but early Christians had much more faith and endurance, for the Church was a refuge from worldiness, so penances may have been more frequent, but they were never required in the Eastern churches, under the principle of spiritual economy, or
oikonomia, which is one of two ways the canon law of the Eastern Churches can be applied, the other being I think
akrivia @GreekOrthodox is that the right word? - which means something like precision or exactitude, with the choice of how to apply the canons left to the confessor.
An important difference here arises between the two great strands of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Greek and Syrian (Antiochian) tradition, and the Russian tradition, with the Russians stressing high frequency confession, and aRussian priests being authorized to hear confessions, whereas in the Greek, Antiochian, and other “south-Eastern Orthodox” churches***, in that all Russian Orthodox priests and priests in that general tradition, such as priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Latvian Orthodox Church, the Japanese and Chinese Orthodox Churches (the latter is suppressed in the PRC but still operational in the Republic of China, on the island known historically as Formosa, but now called Taiwan, and in the Hong Kong SAR, for now, and perhaps Macau), the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCOR), the the Belarussian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of America (which is auticephalous; all the other churches I mentioned are autonomous provinces of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church is a bit like that of Bermuda, Gibraltar or the Falklands or Channel Islands with the United Kingdom), are confessors. In contrast, only experienced priests are confessors in the “south-Eastern Orthodox tradition”, which include the Church of Greece (which itself consists of all those parts of Greece, such as Athens, where its Archbishop resides, which became independent in the Civil War of 1929), the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (which consists of the rest of Greece, a tiny dwindling community in Turkey, mainly in the Phanar district of Istanbul, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Metropolis of Thyatira and Great Britain, the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia, South America and New Zealand, and also several autonomous churches), the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, the Orthodox Church of Cyprus (which like Antioch, Alexandria and Rome, is one of only four churches to have been continually autocephalous since the fourth century), and the Albanian Orthodox Church.
In these churches, you can tell if a priest is a confessor by whether or not he wears an
Epigonation when fully vested for the Divine Liturgy, whereas in the Russian/ Northern Orthodox tradition, the Epigonation is usually an award for meritorious services.
This has an impact on the frequency of confession in the South-eastern churches, in that not all parishes have a confessor present at every liturgy, and these churches tend to either require annual confessions, or confessions when the penitent feels inclined to make one. Auricular confession is not seen as a prerequisite to receiving the Eucharist like it is in the Russian Orthodox Church, and like in the Anglican, Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions, and indeed most other Orthodox churches, there is a general confession in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, as well as penitential prayers in preparation for communion.
The South-eastern Orthodox tradition is also, in all probability not coincidentally, the tradition of the Coptic Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox churches, which are the Oriental Orthodox counterparts to the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, and the Antiochian Orthodox Church, respectively. The Catechism of the Syriac Orthodox Church, which is the only one of which I have an English language copy (I found a Coptic catechism online, and downloaded it, but I seem to have forgotten where I saved it, perhaps
@dzheremi could help) requires the Syriac Orthodox faithful to confess and receive communion annually. My understanding from personal experience is the Coptic Church follows similar principals.
I don’t know if this is the case in the Armenian church but perhaps
@ArmenianJohn could help.
The Assyrian Church of the East in theory still has auricular confession, but in practice Assyrians who I have spoken to about it claim their church does not have it. This is a bit like the theoretical icons and theoretical monasticism in the Assyrian church; they are things the church had but centuries of poverty and persecution since the genocide of Tamerlane and the oppressive rule of the Ottoman and Persian states have caused it to temporarily lose, although efforts are being made to restore these practices.
*In the 19th century this underwent a revival, following the spiritual disaster of the 18th century, with the schism with the Old Believers, who started to be reconciled with the canonical church in the early 19th century, and the disastrous mismanagement of the church by the Imperial Procurator, who in the absence of the Moscow Patriarchate, dominated the Holy Synodm which consisted of only three bishops. By the time of St. John of Kronstadt things were better, however, the really pious Russian Orthodox would still go out of their way on pilgrimages to visit the starets, or elders, of the era, as was always the case in Orthodoxy before the Soviet Union made such internal travel very difficult, and St. John of Kronstadt was especially popular, for unlike most parishes at the time, at his parish he encouraged everyone to confess and receive the Eucharist at every Divine Liturgy. And this turned into the model for Russian Orthodox spiritual health, with laity encouraged to confess at least monthly and receive the Eucharist every time.
** Auricular confession is private confession made in the witness of a priest, which in Roman Catholicism invariably involves while general confession is the the congregation collectively confessing following a preset formula, followed by the priest, who in either case pronounces absolution acting in persona Christi, in accordance with the directive to the Apostles in Matthew 16:18-19, Matthew 18:18-19 and John 20:22-23. In some forms of related prayer, sometimes called confiteor, the priest confesses his sinfulness and that of the congregation (declaring himself the chief of sinners in the Eastern Orthodox church, which us a remarkably anti-clericalist act of humility, of being “less holier than thou”), and then simply pronounces absolution for any sins committed by himself and the congregation, again using the powers conferred on ministers of Christ’s church in Matthew 16:18-19, Matthew 18:18 and John 20:22-33.
***basically the sort that use Byzantine chant and whose priests don’t wear the Russian or Ukrainian style vestments with the raised collar, but instead wear vestments which hangs down over the shoulders like most chasubles or copes (a chasuble, such as requested by St. Paul in one of his last epistles before his execution, is called a
Phelonion in Greek).