Hi
Protestants will tel you that you can have a personal relationship with Christ, and that’s all you need. That’s unbiblical.. they can’t show you that in Scripture, and it is the farthest thing from the Truth. God throughout the O.T. and N.T. always stresses community. There is no private relationship Ever! How do we witness Christ privately?
Adam had a private relationship, yet, God recognized his loneliness.
If Adam didn’t blame Eve, and Eve the serpent, and just opened up to God and confess,”I am I sin” hey who knows how the world would have turned out.
Sin was always confessed openly – to get back with God’s community. When you walked through the neighborhoods to Temple, with a Cow, a calf, Bull, two chickens bleating, clucking mowing everyone knew where you were going and depending on the size of your sacrifice, how big a sin against God you committed.
Protestants wil also tell you there is no biblical basis for Confession.
Show them this and they will reason it away, keep in mind a ministry is the work of a minister of religion!
A Biblical example of Confession turn to 2Cor 5:18,
2Cr 5:18
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us [b:4k2bde4x]the ministry of reconciliation;[/b:4k2bde4x]
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that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
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So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
IN BRIEF
CCC# 984 The Creed links “the forgiveness of sins” with its profession of faith in the Holy Spirit, for the risen Christ entrusted to the apostles the power to forgive sins when he gave them the Holy Spirit.
CCC #985 Baptism is the first and chief sacrament of the forgiveness of sins: it unites us to Christ, who died and rose, and gives us the Holy Spirit.
CCC# 986 By Christ’s will, the Church possesses the power to forgive the sins of the baptized and exercises it through bishops and priests normally in the sacrament of Penance.
CCC#987 “In the forgiveness of sins, both priests and sacraments are instruments which our Lord Jesus Christ, the only author and liberal giver of salvation, wills to use in order to efface our sins and give us the grace of justification” (Roman Catechism, I, 11, 6).
Baptism works for past sins, nobody’s perfect and we do fall prey to the world of temptation. (In Church history the Royalty put off confession til the last possible moment).
The Jews made atonement for their sins once a year, because that was God’s law.
In Christ God reconciles Himself to us Through the Flesh and Blood of Christ incarnate.
Sin damages our relationship with God. Guilt is of God, He let’s us know we have done a wrong./ made a mistake.
Sin takes you farther than you’re willing to go
sin keeps you longer than you want to stay
Sin cost more than you’re willing to pay
Shame is of the Devil, it tells us we are a mistake.
To hide sin only does us more harm, we isolate to protect our faults from those we have harmed.
When we approach confession we are admitting to God, Church and community we are sinners, that we have fallen short. and Seek forgiveness.
Protestants have taken confession out of the Church, they made it a one time confession of faith in Christ, and made it a personal experience, but then wind up seeing therapists for their ‘problems.’
Personal confession is not working for them. We as Catholics confess our sin receive Christ’s forgiveness and can leave the Church with a clear conscience, and possibly a way to make amends with those we hurt in our sin against God.
We don’t sin against one another, we only sin against God.
But in doing a wrong we break God’s command of brotherly love.
[quote:4k2bde4x]CCC# 980 It is through the sacrament of Penance that the baptized can be reconciled with God and with the Church:
Penance has rightly been called by the holy Fathers “a laborious kind of baptism.” This sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after Baptism, just as Baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have not yet been reborn.
CCC# 980 It is through the sacrament of Penance that the baptized can be reconciled with God and with the Church:
Penance has rightly been called by the holy Fathers “a laborious kind of baptism.” This sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after Baptism, just as Baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have not yet been reborn[/quote:4k2bde4x]
From the Book of James:
Jam 5:16
[b:4k2bde4x]Therefore confess your sins to one another[/b:4k2bde4x], and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.
St. James taught us that we must go to the [b:4k2bde4x]”presbyters”[/b:4k2bde4x], and not to just anyone, to receive the “anointing”, and the remission of sins. First, he told us to go to the presbyters, or priests, in verse 14.
Verse 16 continues with the word “therefore”, so that word is a conjunction that connects verse 16 back to verses 14 and 15. It is the priests to whom St. James told us to confess our sins.
‘Presbyters’ is where we get the name Priest from.
One other thing, As you put it:
[quote:4k2bde4x]Maria3eliz3, “Why do you need to go to confession to confess your sins to a priest when you can just pray to God and ask for forgiveness yourself?[/quote:4k2bde4x]
Ever hear of the foxhole prayer? You get to deep, to scared and pray If you get me out of this, I’ll never do it again?
Well, they don’t work.. God gets us out and then we afll back in the same hole! Why? Because we haven’t with our Mouth’s/ words to another person. You see, if you believe in Reconciliation, and have to keep going back and confessing the same sin, eventually, you may tire of the sin knowing you have to back and confess it again and again…
The holy Spirit works though us, yes! And he works through others, the preist being your confessor may and can offer some help to get you through.
All 12 step programs are not about private confession. they are about open confession and seeking help not to fall away again. Where do 12 steps originate through the Oxford movement; William James who coined the term ‘Higher power’ that men need to find God and the help of others to become free of what possesses them.
No- one can help themselves, self- help programs are a joke! Books don’t change people! People change people, by example and exemplary behavior and compassion. God works through His Church, His ministers his community, his people.
Can you have compassion on yourself. God gives us compassion for others because we have possibly been similar situations and can help/show another how we overcame our fault.
On Prayer, Protestants believe all prayer is Worship… Biblically that is not so, prayer is petition. And it is perfectly okay to honor and venerate men of renown or those who have died in Christ. Yers agao people addressed each other out of respect by saying, Your lordship, your worship.. these terms of human respect does not take away from the Worship [cap W] of God. Not even the pagans worshipped their statues, they worshipped the gods they represented. Protestants take Catholic teachings which they do not understand or want to understand to heretical heights. They just don’t know ergo they are no authority on Roman Catholic teachings!
I am sorry this really turned out longer than I liked, but,
God bless,
John