Recently a newspaper here in Ireland, featured an interview with a traditional priest. The priest criticised the view of some clerics, who claimed that regular confession was not important. That is, instead of a situation where Catholics had once gone very regularly to confession, now once or twice a year was thought sufficient.
The priest objected. The point he said, was not whether people were in grave sin or not. The point was how often they received the strength given by the Sacrament **following** confession.
Actively promoting less frequent confession, he claimed was tantamount to: ‘stifling an increase in Sanctifying Grace in the individual.’
I am very moved by this. What moves me is that the effects of the Sacrament are taken absolutely seriously in this case. There is not a vague notion of confession being good for the soul, with a meagre faith in the presence of Christ.
Rather there is vital concern for **what really happens** when people receive Christ’s presence, via the absolution given by the priest.
What really happens, according to this priest - in alignment with centuries of tradition and experience - is that Sanctifying Grace makes its presence felt in the soul. And this is certainly my own humble experience as well …
What really happens … I have emphasised these words, because I think there is a crying need to take the Sacraments seriously. This is particularly important, I think, if we are Catholic and if we care not only about the sake of our own souls, but also the sake of the soul of the world.
The Sanctifying Grace of Christ is the grace of divine humanity. Is this not important in a society that seems ever less human?
Now I write these words as an American in Ireland. Ireland is the fifth nation I have lived in. But none of the countries I lived in before, prepared me for what hit me here. The legendary quality of Irish humanness is absolutely true. I am still regularly astonished by the kindness of strangers, the continuous goodwill everywhere evident. I have simply never experienced any culture like it.
Surprising facts leap out as one glances at Irish history. This is a country that until the 1980’s never had a right-wing party like the Republicans in America or the Conservatives in Britain and elsewhere. Ruthless capitalism only gained a political party here in the last twenty years, which still only polls around 5% of the vote.
The social conscience of the Irish is most marked in other ways, as well. Even when Ireland had incredible poverty, it gave amazing amounts of money to the third world in comparison with other countries.
And although Ireland is now rapidly secularising, the presence of Sacramental Christianity powerfully remains. Last year, I lived near Limerick, population 90,000. I walked around the half-dozen or so churches in the city centre. Churches which each had daily mass, often two or three times a day.
Close to a hundred people could be in **each** of these **weekday** masses, receiving the Sacrament. After the priest had departed, one heard in every church, the collective tones of ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace …’ Sincerity and devotion were palpable.
Yes, I am aware of many seeming contradictions to what I am about to suggest. Catholic cultures that were not nearly so human ... to say the least. There have certainly been dark sides to Irish Catholicism, as well.
Nonetheless, I believe that over fifteen hundred years of the Irish people regularly receiving the Sanctifying Grace of Holy Communion and Penance has not been without effect. In a dehumanising world, I salute the faith of this traditional Irish priest most deeply.
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