Confession and Communion

What - in this preparation - is the place of sacramental confession? We must ask this question and try to answer it because in many Orthodox Churches there developed, and is commonly accepted today, the doctrine which affirms that Communion for laity is impossible without sacramental confession and absolution. Even if someone wishes to receive Communion frequently, he must each time go to Confession or at least receive sacramental absolution.

The time has come to state openly that whatever the various and sometimes serious reasons that brought this doctrine and this practice into existence, they not only have no foundation in Tradition but, in fact, lead to very alarming distortions of the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, of the Eucharist, and of the Sacrament of Penance itself.

To be convinced of this one has to recall the initial understanding by the Church of the Sacrament of Penance. It was and, according to the essential teaching of the Church, still is the Sacrament of reconciliation with the Church, of the return to her and into her life of those excommunicated, I.e., excluded from the eucharistic gathering of the Church. At first the high moral standard of life expected from the members of the Church, and the very strict ecclesiastical discipline, allowed for only one such reconciliation: “After that great and holy calling [of Baptism] if anyone is tempted by the devil and sins, he has but one penance,” we read in The Shepherd of Hesmas, a Christian document of the second century, “for if anyone should sin and do penance frequently, to such a man his penance will be of no avail.” Later on, and especially after the massive Christianisation of the Empire following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, the discipline of Penance was somewhat relaxed, but the understanding of the Sacrament itself was in no way altered: it was for those alone who were excommunicated from the Church for acts and sins clearly defined in the canonical Tradition of the Church. And that this understanding of the Sacrament of Penance remains that of the Church even today is clearly seen in the very prayer of absolution: “...reconcile him (her) with Thy Holy Church in Christ Jesus our Lord ...” (This incidentally is the prayer of absolution used universally in the Orthodox Church. As to the second one, unknown to many Orthodox Churches - “...and I, an unworthy priest, by the power given unto me, do forgive and absolve…” - it is of Western origin and was introduced into our liturgical books at the time of the acute “Latinisation” of Orthodox theology.)

Does this mean that the non-excommunicated, the faithful were considered by the Church to be sinless? Of course not. It is indeed the teaching of the Church that no one, save God, is sinless, and “there is no man who lives and sins not.” But it has always been the teaching of the Church also that while certain sins do excommunicate a Christian, some other sins do not lead to this separation from the body of the believers and from the participation in the Sacraments. Nicolas Cabasilas writes:

There are sins which are not mortal according to the teaching of St. John. And this is why nothing prevents those Christians, who have not committed sins separating them from Christ and leading them to death, from communion to Divine Mysteries and the participation to sanctification, not only externally, but in reality, for they continue to be living members united to the Head ...

It is not that these sins - the general sinfulness, weakness and unworthiness of our whole life - need no repentance and no forgiveness; the whole preparation for Communion, as we have seen, is indeed such repentance and a cry for forgiveness. What they do not need is sacramental confession and sacramental absolution, the latter applying only to those excommunicated. Our “non-mortal” sins and our general sinfulness are confessed by the members of the Church each time we gather together for the sacrament of Christ's Presence, and the whole life of the Church indeed constitutes this constant repentance. During the Divine Liturgy itself we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness in the Prayer of the Trisagion:

...Forgive us every transgression, voluntary and involuntary. Sanctify our souls and bodies and enable us to serve Thee in holiness all the days of our life ...

As we approach the Holy Chalice, we ask for forgiveness of “sins voluntary and involuntarily committed in word and in deed, knowingly or unknowingly,” and we believe that, in the measure of our repentance, we are forgiven by partaking of the very Sacrament of forgiveness and healing. It must be clear then that the doctrine which declares the Sacrament of Penance to be a sine qua non condition for admitting the lay members of the Church to Communion is not only a deviation from the initial and universal Tradition of the Church, but also a mutilation of the Orthodox teaching on the Church, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Penance itself. It mutilates the doctrine of the Church because it de facto divides her members into two categories, for one of which (the laity) the regeneration through Baptism, the sanctification in the Holy Chrismation, the becoming “fellow citizens with the Saints and of the household of God” are not considered as imparting full membership, i.e., the participation in the Sacrament in which the Church fulfils herself as the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It mutilates the doctrine of the Eucharist because, by setting for Communion conditions other than membership in the Church, it makes it virtually impossible to see and to experience the Eucharist as the very Sacrament of the Church, as the act by which, in the words of St. Basil's Liturgy, “all of us who partake of the one Bread and one Cup are united to one another in the communion of the Holy Spirit.” Finally it mutilates the Sacrament of Penance itself because by having become a formal and, in fact, the only condition for Communion, Confession replaces the true preparation for Communion which consists, as we have seen, in true inner repentance.

The emphasis, the whole experience of this Sacrament, shifts from repentance to absolution, and is understood in terms of an almost magical power. It is this formal, half-magical, half-legalistic “absolution,” and not reconciliation with the Church from which his sins have excommunicated him, that one seeks today in Confession; and he seeks it not because his sinfulness troubles him (he usually finds it natural and inevitable), but because it “entitles” him to approach the Holy Gifts in good conscience. Having become a mere “condition” for Communion, the Sacrament of Penance - so crucial, so awesome in the early Church, has in reality, lost its true function and place in the Church.

How could such a doctrine appear in the Church and become a norm, defended by many as almost the quintessence of Orthodoxy? Three main factors share the responsibility for this. We have already mentioned one of them: it is that nominal, minimalistic, and lukewarm approach to the demands of the Church, that neglect of the Sacraments which the Fathers denounced and which led first to less and less frequent communion, and finally to its understanding in terms of a “once-a-year obligation.” Thus it is obvious that a Christian approaching the Divine Mysteries infrequently, and who for the rest of the time is quite content with his de facto “excommunication,” must be reconciled with the Church and cannot be accepted to Communion except through the Sacrament of Penance.

The second factor, entirely different from the first one, was the influence within the Church of monastic confession - the spiritual guidance by an experienced monk of a less experienced one - which was based on a constant “opening of the thoughts” of the latter to the former. The “elder” entrusted with such spiritual guidance and confession was not necessarily a priest (in its original form monasticism in fact was thought of as incompatible with priesthood), and this confession was in no way related to the Sacrament of Penance. It was an integral part of the monastic life and discipline based on total obedience,, on the monk’s renunciation of his will. Thus, according to the Byzantine monastic typica of the 12th and 13th centuries, a monk was forbidden both to receive Communion and to abstain from it by his own decision, without the permission of the abbot or of his spiritual father, for, to quote one of these typica, “to exclude one’s self from communion is to follow one’s own will.” In women’s monasteries the same power belonged to the abbess. Thus we have here a confession of a non-sacramental type, comparable mutatif mutandis to what today we would term “counseling” or “spiritual guidance.” Historically, however, it made a great, indeed a decisive impact on sacramental confession. At a time of spiritual decadence (the scope of which one can see for example in the canons of the so-called Quinisext Council in Trullo, held in Constantinople in 691 AD) and the loss by the “secular” clergy of their moral and spiritual authority, the monasteries became virtually the only centers of spiritual guidance and the monks the only spiritual counsellors of the Orthodox people. Thus the two types of confession - the “sacramental” and the “spiritual” - little by little merged into one: the “spiritual” becoming a preparation for Holy Communion, and the “sacramental” including spiritual problems previously excluded from it.

This development, however justified historically and spiritually, however beneficial within the conditions in which it took place, contributed nevertheless to a confusion which today, in our present conditions, is likely to do more harm than good. There can be no question about the essential need in the Church for pastoral and spiritual guidance and counselling. But the real question is: is this need met in our present short three-to-five-minute confessions with a line of once-a-year penitents waiting to “fulfil their duty,” with the obvious impossibility of getting to the heart of the matter, with the ambiguity of the confession ceasing to be confession and not quite developing into spiritual conversation? And then the other question: is every priest, especially a young one, sufficiently experienced, adequately “equipped” to solve all problems and even to understand them? How many tragic mistakes, how much spiritually harmful advice, how many misunderstandings could have been avoided if we had kept the essential Tradition of the Church, reserving sacramental confession for the confession by the penitent of his sins and finding some other time and context for the most needed pastoral and spiritual counseling which, among other things, would enable the priest to realize his own inadequacies in certain cases and himself seek help and guidance - from his bishop, from another priest, from the spiritual experience of the Church.

The third and, alas, decisive factor was once more the influence of the Western scholastic and juridical understanding of Penance. Much has been written about the “Western captivity” of Orthodox theology, but few people realize the scope and the depth of the distortion caused by these Western influences in the life of the Church and, first of all, in the understanding of Sacraments. It is this Western influence that led to the shift (mentioned above) from repentance and reconciliation with the Church as being the essence of the Sacrament of Penance, to absolution, conceived almost exclusively in terms of a juridical power. If in the initial Orthodox understanding absolution stems from the priest being the witness of repentance, of its authenticity and reality, and therefore the authorized announcer and “sealer” of divine forgiveness, of the penitent’s “reconciliation with the Holy Church in Christ Jesus,” within the Western legal framework absolution becomes a “power in itself” so much so that there developed here and there a truly strange practice of asking for and receiving “absolution” without any confession! The initial distinction - the one mentioned by Cabasilas - between sins resulting in excommunication and those not separating a man from the Church, was rationalised in the West as a difference between, on the one hand, “mortal sins” - depriving man of the “state of grace” and therefore requiring sacramental absolution - and, on the other hand, “venial sins” - not affecting the “state of grace” and for which an act of contrition is sufficient. In the Orthodox East and especially in Russia (under the influence of the Latinising theology of Peter Moghila and his followers) this doctrine resulted in a compulsory connection between Confession and every Communion.

It is ironic, indeed, that this most obvious of all Latin “infiltrations” is believed by many Orthodox to be the very norm of Orthodoxy, while a mere attempt to re-evaluate it in the light of the genuine Orthodox Tradition is often denounced as a Roman Catholic deviation!