In 1973, twenty-eight years ago, the Roman Catholic Church issued a complete revision of how we celebrate the Sacrament of Confession. According to some scholars, this was the first time this was done in four hundred years. According to most scholars, it's the first time it was done ever! But it wasn't in reaction to the sharp decline in people going to confession, that we talked about last weekend.

In 1965, by the close of the Second Vatican Council, it had called for the reform of the rite of celebration of each and every sacrament, from Baptism and Eucharist to Marriage and the Anointing of the Sick, not so much to get in sync with the times, but to get in sync with the Gospel and with two thousand years of the best experience of Catholic tradition.

The result, for the Sacrament of Confession, was a clearer and more accurate name for what we were doing. The title "Reconciliation" now replaces "Confession." And, also, (there is) not just one way, but now four ways of celebrating Reconciliation. The first way, the familiar, private, anonymous way of going to Confession was kept as an option to respect those who want privacy, confidentiality, and complete anonymity.

The second way is private but face-to-face reconciliation, which called for remodeling all our confessionals into reconciliation rooms. And now, this looks more like two people praying together than a penitent reporting to a judge. And it allows for sharing of Scripture and prayer and recovers something of the earliest origins of private confession, which originally came from the monastic practice of spiritual direction and shared prayer in the early Church. My own experience is about seven out of ten people who come to Reconciliation choose to go face-to-face. The other thing, this way of celebrating it implies it will take longer than the average two minutes that we talked about last weekend, and that most people would choose to do this longer confession, but less frequently.

The third way is the celebration of communal Penance or communal Reconciliation, which returns to something of the original form of the Sacrament which was meant to be the public celebration of Reconciliation, not just with God, but with the entire Community and with the Church. My own observation is this way of celebrating the Sacrament is quickly becoming the most common way for the largest number of Roman Catholics. It doesn't include a public confession, but we'll be having it here Thursday evening at 8, and it includes shared songs, scripture, and examination of conscience. We'll have up to fifteen priests, and people go, almost as in Communion lines, up to the priest of their choice, mention one area of sin in their lives, briefly, and receive individual absolution.

The fourth and final way of celebrating is general absolution. It was already familiar to GI's during the Second World War, where Chaplains would regularly give general absolution to a hundred or a thousand men before they went into battle. But now it is proposed as a more frequent pastoral option, still fairly limited in the circumstances and times we do it, but, given the decline in the number of priests, just watch this one! I think it will grow and grow in frequency.

So the way we celebrate Confession has changed, and some of the why we celebrate Reconciliation has changed. We no longer go because of some constant guilt or fear that we might be in mortal sin. We no longer go because we think we have to before going to Communion. But we do celebrate the Sacrament of Confession, first of all, as part of our spiritual growth. (For example, you wouldn't go to a doctor just when you have a mortal illness. You'd go with some regularity on some occasions throughout your whole life.) We go also to celebrate God's loving forgiveness, along with the whole community, in special times like Advent and Lent, Christmas and Easter. We also go at major turning points or crises in our lives, and we go whenever we feel the need to reflect on our patterns of life or to experience the gift of God's grace and energy in our lives.

One theologian, John Dwyer, says, "Every Christian has the right to hear God's forgiveness announced and proclaimed to them personally, individually by name." For most Catholics, Reconciliation no longer is a weekly or even monthly experience, but it's still a valuable and powerful instrument of forgiveness and grace for our spiritual growth and for our life's journey.