From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part seventeen of a series. Read part sixteen.

Roman Catholicism's false teaching about absolution of sins is rooted in its view of the priesthood. But under the Roman system, who can dispense forgiveness of your sins depends on who you are and what you did. A local priest can absolve a genocidal maniac, but some sins only the Pope can forgive.

The Vatican's Sin-Absolving Bureaucracy

The notion that only a church can absolve an individual of his sins is an essential part of the fabric of Roman Catholicism, although it is shrouded in mysteries and technicalities. Under the Roman system, who can dispense forgiveness of your sins depends on who you are and what you did. If you're a run-of-the-mill mass murderer or genocidal maniac, your local priest can dispense absolution. But if you're a priest who commits fornication and then offers absolution to your partner in the confessional booth, the Vatican says that only the Pope can bail you out.

A January 2009 Associated Press article gave rare insight into the workings of the Vatican's sin-absolving bureaucracy:

One of the Vatican's most secrecy-shrouded tribunals, which handles confessions of sins so grave only the Pope can grant absolution, is giving the faithful a peek into its workings for the first time in its 830-year history.

The Vatican has long lamented that fewer and fewer Catholics are going to confession, the sacrament in which the faithful can receive forgiveness if they sincerely confess their sins to a priest.

To combat the decline, the so-called "tribunal of conscience" invited the public into the frescoed halls of its imposing 16th-century palazzo for a two-day conference that ended Wednesday.

The aim was to explain what the Apostolic Penitentiary actually does, and thereby encourage more of the faithful to go to confession, said Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the tribunal's No. 2 official.

"Even though it's the oldest department of the Holy See, it's very little known - specifically because by its nature it deals with secret things," he said. "We want to relaunch the sacrament of penance."

By lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding the tribunal's work, the Vatican hopes to emphasize the fundamental role the sacrament plays in saving souls, the Vatican's No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said in a paper delivered at the conference.

"Today it seems as though the sense of sin has been forgotten," he said.

Confessions of even the most heinous of crimes and sins - such as genocide or mass murder - are handled at the local level by priests and their bishops and are not heard by the tribunal.

Its work involves those sins that are reserved for the Pope - considered so serious that a local priest or bishop is not qualified to grant absolution, said Cardinal James Francis Stafford, an American who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary.

These include defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ. Stafford said this offense is occurring with more and more frequency, not just in satanic rites but by ordinary faithful who receive Communion and then remove the host from their mouths and spit it out or otherwise desecrate it.

Others include a priest breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who sought penance, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offered forgiveness for the act.

These sins bring automatic excommunication from the church. Once absolution is granted, the excommunication is lifted, Stafford said.

A fourth type of case that comes to the tribunal involves a man who directly caused an abortion - such as by paying for it - who then seeks to become a priest or deacon, Stafford said.

"That is an irregularity and it means he should not receive the ordination without a dispensation from the Pope," he said.

Vatican officials frequently point to a study carried out by Italy's Sacred Heart University that found that 47 percent of people in Italy - a majority Roman Catholic country - never went to confession or did so a long time ago.

"We cannot hide that the sacrament of penance is threatened in this time of secularization," Girotti said. But he stressed that it remained "fundamental for salvation and the sanctification of souls."

For the most part, clerical sex abuse cases are handled by another Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with more public issues of discipline and orthodoxy.

What makes the Apostolic Penitentiary unusual by Vatican standards is the speed with which it dispenses decisions, Girotti said - very often within 24 hours, or two to three days maximum.

The palazzo where it operates, in the heart of Rome's historic center, also houses two of the Vatican's other main tribunals, the Roman Rota, which decides marriage annulments, and the Apostolic Segnatura, the Holy See's highest court.

Taking up nearly an entire city block, it is just steps away from one of Rome's most profane piazzas - Campo dei Fiori, filled with bars catering to tourists and college-age Americans studying abroad.¹

Alter Christus: "Other Christ" - The Catholic View of Priesthood

All of this hinges upon the Roman Catholic view of the priesthood. Former Roman Catholic (now Evangelical minister) Robert M. Zins describes this in his book, Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He notes that Catholic spokesmen are often upset that non-Catholics do not "understand that [in the confessional] Catholics do not tell their sins to the priest but to God. Rather [they say], Catholics tell their sins to God through the priest." But Zins explains that this is a false distinction, because

Catholics allege that the priest is an alter Christus, or other Christ, standing in the place of Christ. Surely the reader will understand that whether a person is confessing his sins through the priest to God or to the priest, the emphasis is the same. The point is that people involved in the Roman Catholic religion understand that forgiveness of their sins comes from God by way of the priest. They believe that Christ has ordained a system of confession and penance which must go through the priest. The priest is the central figure in the Catholic method of obtaining forgiveness of sins. The priests hear the penitent's confession and then prescribe penance for the sins committed.²

No Assurance - The Catholic View of of Salvation

Elsewhere in the same book, Zins states the truly vital point that is above and behind the difference between the Roman Catholic system and Biblical Christianity:

At the outset, we see that Christians [and Roman Catholics] presume the exact opposite understanding of assurance. The Christian dares not "presume" that he could add one single solitary thing to the death of Christ for his own salvation. The Catholic dares not "presume" that God could possibly be satisfied with Christ's death alone without exacting an extra pound of flesh from the sinner by way of penance. Which presumption betrays the Gospel? Both cannot be right. Something has to go.³

Scripture makes it clear which has to go.

What Does Scripture Say?

Roman Catholicism considers its priesthood to be the necessary continuation of the Old Testament Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system. But the Word of God declares that the Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system were temporary. They could not permanently deal with sin. They were symbolic of Christ who would come as the great High Priest to deal with sin once for all.

Contrary to this, Roman Catholicism alleges that the Mass is the continuing sacrifice for sin. It alleges that bread and wine, transformed into the body and blood of Christ through mystical power conferred by the church upon a human priest, are offered as a new sacrifice of Christ each time the Mass is celebrated - at least once a day in hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic churches around the world. If you do the math, you will find that this adds up to a trillion or more alleged fresh sacrifices of the body and blood of Christ, just in the 500 years since the Reformation.

In contrast, Scripture tells us that Christ has died once for all. Scripture condemns legalizers who "crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame" (Hebrews 6:6). There is no more need of a human priesthood, and to place a sinful human being as mediator between man and God is pure blasphemy:

But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. (2 Peter 2:1-3)

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6)

For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another - He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come- In the volume of the book it is written of Me- To do Your will, O God.' " Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every [human] priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them," then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 9:24-10:23)

In a time when the Roman Catholic church is gaining and reclaiming adherents by once again asserting the illegitimate authority to offer plenary indulgences and other forms of absolution for sins, Bible-believing Christians must join their Reformation forbears and shout the Gospel message from the rooftops: Christ has died, once for all! He alone has made full atonement for sin! Sinners may approach God directly through the mediation of Christ! There is assurance of eternal salvation in Christ!

Next: Is the True Church Visible or Invisible?

References:

1. Nicole Winfield, "Vatican Secret Confession Tribunal Opens Up," Associated Press, January 14, 2009, as viewed on WorldWide Religious News, http://wwrn.org/article.php?idd=30004.

2. Robert M. Zins, Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Third Edition (Rutland, Vermont: A Christian Witness to Roman Catholicism, 2002), page 270.

3. Zins, page 62.

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