Confession

I recently went on a retreat with the Catholic Student Center here at Duke. The Awakening retreat happens every semester, and Duke just had their ninth one. Texas A&M, who passed the retreat tradition on to our school, will have Aggie Awakening #82 in the spring.

Although the whole weekend was an incredible experience for me—in ways I could not have anticipated or even hoped for—one thing in particular that we did the first night of Awakening got me thinking. After we had all been introduced, we ate dinner and heard a talk from a fellow student. Then the priest, Father Joe, stood up and announced that we would be participating in the sacrament of reconciliation that night.

I was fascinated. Having grown up United Methodist, I was used to the communal prayer of confession that we say together during worship, so the idea of confessing individually to a priest was new for me. I asked a friend if I could confess even if I were Protestant (the only one there, I should add), and when he said yes, I went in to see one of the priests who were stationed in various rooms around our retreat site.

As soon as I sat down, I announced that I was Protestant and had no idea what I was doing. The priest was very friendly and helpful, explaining the practice of confession to me before listening to me talk. When I was done, he said that they usually assign penance. Penance?! I thought. How cool!! I had to say three Our Fathers and was told to work on a relationship I had confessed to have been neglecting.

Since this experience, I've thought a lot about what it means to confess one's sins, and whether Protestants are missing out on an important part of the Christian life by foregoing individual confession. Certainly to confess the corporate sin of the church in one voice is vital, especially before taking part in the Eucharist. Then, too, many Protestants participate in accountability groups that require them to be honest about their sins and to be held to a standard of Christian living by fellow believers.

I wonder if it would behoove all Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to confess not only to the sins of the whole body of Christ but also to their own specific sins. Confessing to that priest encouraged me to take specific actions to ameliorate a situation with a loved one. On the ride home, I listened as one of the freshmen I was driving called her parents and asked their permission to take part in an activity about which she had been lying to them. She had confessed this to the priest, he had told her to be truthful with them—and she had done it.

The corporate prayer of confession may be an important way for a worshiping body to acknowledge shared sin, but does it motivate the individual to make real changes to combat his or her own shortcomings? Even if it means doing something as simple as being in truth-telling relationships of Christian accountability, I think Protestants especially ought to explore possibilities for confessing individual sin and being held responsible for answering to them.