The "cleaning" of confession

[~Anastasia~]

It's actually not so far from something I've heard voiced somewhere along my path, but I've been so many places I can't pin it down. I suspect it's espoused somewhere within the Pentecostal umbrella. The idea being that if one commits a sin again, one obviously didn't actually "repent" and so any further forgiveness is revoked. Rather makes it seem as though God can't know one's actual heart ... ?

I didn't want to muddy the waters by mentioning it though. And that may not be the only group that teach this. I just recognized that kind of thinking is all.

 

[All4Christ]

Again, I'm very sorry if I caused any confusion. Thank you for addressing it.

No worries at all! I will write more soon when I have a bit more time, but wanted to make sure to respond to your comment. It has been a bit crazy the past few days; I can't seem to get enough time to actually sit down at my laptop at home.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Oh I understand! Sometimes I can be here (no work today - and I didn't make it to Church for which I feel badly), but other times I can barely log in and read a few posts for days at a time.

I hope things are going well for you, dear sister!

 

[Wryetui]

Exactly my reason for posting what I did, too.

It was just to say that I have never heard this view of the matter voiced in either a Roman Catholic or Episcopal church. That's a statement of fact. It wasn't meant as a rebuttal to anything you wrote or as an exposition of my own thinking on the issue.

I actually believe that the sacrament of confession is the same (in how it is understood, not in if it is effective or not) in both Catholic and Orthodox Church. We Orthodox believe that in order for the priest to take away the sins of the one confessing must touch the head of the confessing with his hands or just one, if not, the sacrament isn't valid. A practice that doesn't exist in the Catholic Church (with the confessionaries) where there is a physical barrier between the priest and the penitent.

I don't know about the Anglican Communion.

 

[Albion]

I actually believe that the sacrament of confession is the same (in how it is understood, not in if it is effective or not) in both Catholic and Orthodox Church. We Orthodox believe that in order for the priest to take away the sins of the one confessing must touch the head of the confessing with his hands or just one, if not, the sacrament isn't valid. A practice that doesn't exist in the Catholic Church (with the confessionaries) where there is a physical barrier between the priest and the penitent.

I don't know about the Anglican Communion.

There are some churches which have private confession and, if so, it's normally done in the Roman style. However, there is no authorized rite or ritual for such a thing and the only prayerbook references to Confession are: 1) it's not a sacrament of the Gospel, and 2) it is allowed in exceptional cases in which the penitent can't find solace or a reassurance of being forgiven even after confessing and being absolved during the liturgy. Such a private confession is not supposed to be done routinely.