REVERTING TO CONFESSION.

New Zealand Tablet, 31 July 1919, Page 28

REVERTING TO CONFESSION.

An association which styles itself "The Federation of Catholic Priests," but which is really a federation of Anglican parsons, having its habitat in Birmingham, has sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury and York a letter "advocating an earlier age for Confirmation" (says the Irish Catholic). In the course of this document —remarkable, indeed, as showing that what was once the byword, and bete noire of Protestantism, the practice of auricular Confession, is coming to be recognised as possessing that value for the soul which the Catholic Church has ever taught belongs to it. The letter, having dwelt on the value Confession has in preserving the hearts of the young from moral contamination, says:— ■"There will be some who object to the practice of Confession still. We speak of it, because we feel that it removes one objection which might be taken to early Confirmation and Communion. The practice certainly tends to secure adequate moral preparation, and relieves children of a responsibility of walking alone, for which they are not yet ready and which is unnatural to lay upon them." So far so good, but there is nothing in the letter which suggests the value of Confession for the grownup as well as for the young. All this, of course, postulates that. Confession is a Sacramentotherwise its efficacy would be sadly crampedyet this is a doctrine the Church to which the Federation of Catholic Priests (!) belongs emphatically denies. Perhaps it is due to the Federation to say that it is defined in the letter as "a society now numbering some 600 priests of the Church of England, and formed for mutual support in the defence and furtherance of Catholic Faith and Order."