Confession has been one of the Catholic practices
most intriguing to the wider public. That's not surprising.
It is
associated with secrecy, sin (subtext: sex) and sacerdotalism.
So
recently the Confession app for the iPad received predictable publicity
and led to speculation whether confession could be made virtually as
well as virtuously.
In fact the app simply helps people prepare for confession.
But it
also shows how new communications technology is shaping church
practices, and in the process is raising more fundamental questions
about them.
The internet has become an accepted field for personal spirituality. The Irish Jesuits' site Sacred Space,
which offers reflection and images to accompany the text chosen each
day, has been enormously popular.
So has the English Jesuit podcast, Pray as you Go.
It offers music, text and questions for reflection.
Retreats now are increasingly offered electronically.
Input for
reflection is sent each day, and guide and retreatant can exchange
reflections.
In addition all manner of YouTube videos, blogs, ringtones and
websites are designed to help people name, understand and enter their
faith more deeply.
So it would seem a small step to make confession available online.
Indeed, even in the Mexican religious persecution of the 1920s, many
people confessed by telephone. Yet the Catholic Church has insisted that
confession be made face to face.
This insistence is not simply a matter of sticking to outmoded
technology. It rests on the conviction that the sacraments involve
bodily contact and communication.
In the Catholic outlook it follows
from the belief that God has taken on our bodily existence in Christ. It
is natural that we meet Christ in the Church through bodily actions:
eating and drinking, being washed or anointed, marrying.
So Catholics have resisted the privatisation of faith, whether this
is expressed in finding God simply in one's heart instead of going to
church, marrying without public ceremony, or simply saying sorry to God
in one's heart without need to say it face to face.
Faith should be
expressed in bodily and communal ways.
It is often hard to make this argument cogently within the Catholic
Church, however, because its theology and practice so often privileges
the individual soul over the shared bodily condition.
Particularly in
ritual, bodiliness is formalised and etherealised. The treatment of
confession offers a good example of this. Its public and bodily shape
has been eroded over many centuries.
The earliest forms of confession were mainly for public sins that
were destructive of the community and any claim it made to live by
Christ's values.
Typical sins were denying Christ during persecution,
adultery and murder.
The sinner needed to be reconciled both with God
and with the Church community. The process of reconciliation was
protracted, with penitents publicly identifiable and excluded from the
Eucharist until they were publicly welcomed back.
The public dimension of reconciliation fell into the background in
succeeding centuries when emphasis was put first on the performance of
severe penances measured to each sin, and then on the accurate
confessing of all major sins.
Confession to a priest remained a symbol
of the reconciliation with the church, but the priest was usually
portrayed as representing God rather than the Church.
In the ritual, contact was minimised and disembodied by the
confessional box. Confession was experienced as the exchange of whispers
in the dark.
After the Second Vatican Council the communal dimension was
re-emphasised, and was embodied in communal forms of reconciliation.
After permission for these popular rites was withdrawn, however, the
transaction has again been popularly presented as a private encounter
with God through the priest as God's representative.
Little attention is
given to the communal and bodily dimension.
Actually, the communal rites were open to criticism on the grounds
that they too were fairly disembodied.
Certainly those who participated
gathered as a community, but the ritual was largely through listening to
and speaking words without much bodily involvement.
In contrast, for example, we could imagine the power of a ritual in
which the whole congregation prostrated themselves in penance, as has
been done by the celebrants in services asking forgiveness for sexual
abuse within the church.
But unless the bodily and communal dimension of the sacrament of
reconciliation is emphasised, the prohibition of virtual confession will
seem to be no more than a quixotic refusal to acknowledge new
technologies.
And the distinctive earthiness of the sense of what it
means to be Catholic will come under increased pressure.