RE: Australia church abuse: Priests 'must report' confessions
August 14, 2017 at 1:24 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2017 at 2:27 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(August 14, 2017 at 12:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(August 14, 2017 at 12:48 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: CL:
What value is a confession where the confessee has no intention of making meaning restitution and take socially mandated consequences for his crime?
It's only purpose is to allow the confessee to undeservedly feel better about himself while leaving the victim just as victimized and uncompensated before, while the church benefits from this grotesque transaction by binding the criminal more closely to the self-aggrandizing, self enriching purpose of the church.
Except when the priest instructs the confessee to turn themselves in, they are required to do so if they want their confession to be valid. You need to be truly sorry for what you have done in order to be forgiven in confession. If you are truly sorry for a crime, you will turn yourself in. If you don't, that means you weren't truly sorry and therefore won't be forgiven.
And if they don't turn themselves in?
And what good is the empty gesture of airily proclaiming the criminal Unforgiven when the victim still wait in vain, in church facilitate vain, for justice and compensation?
The victim deserves to keep on being uncompensated, while justice deserves to keep on being unserved, if the criminal is not truly sorry and ignored the kindly suggestion by the happy priest to turn himself in?
Isn't somewhat perverse for the church to be more concerned that the criminal who is not truly sorry is shielded from his just punishment in this world, then whether his victim could benefit from a system of compensation this world has taken, though no help of the church, taken centuries to develop?
