reconciliation

and Eastern Orthodoxy, confession, or penance, is a sacrament. The power to absolve lies with the priest, who can grant release from the guilt of sin to sinners who are truly contrite, confess their sins, and promise to perform satisfaction to God. In the New Testament the grace of forgiveness…

First, in the sacrament of penance it did not suffice to have the guilt (culpa) of sin forgiven through absolution alone; one also needed to undergo temporal punishment (poena, from p[o]enitentia, “penance”) because one had offended Almighty God. Second, indulgences rested on belief in purgatory, a place in the next…

…many medieval practices—such as regular penances or fasts obligatory on all, a common uniform, and the choral recitation of the liturgical office—in the interest of greater mobility and adaptability. Other innovations included a highly centralized form of authority with life tenure for the head of the order, probation lasting many…

…baptism and a time of penance for grievous sinners who were excluded from receiving Holy Communion and were preparing for their restoration. As a sign of their penitence, they wore sackcloth and were sprinkled with ashes. This form of public penance began to die out in the 9th century. It…

…care in the sacrament of penance led to certain deficits in practice: the exclusion of the laity by emphasis upon the central role of the priest and the distortion of its original spiritual purposes of prayer, repentance, and forgiveness of sins by the introduction of paid indulgences. The indulgence abuse…

…Middle Ages, in administering ecclesiastical penance. (The name penance is applied to both a sacramental rite and acts performed in satisfaction for sins.) Penitentials contained (1) detailed lists of sins that the priest was to consider in assisting an individual penitent with his examination of conscience and confession during the…

…was considered a work of penance.

marriage, ordination, confirmation, penance (now called repentance), and extreme unction (now called anointing of the sick). Although Protestants did not abolish all these rites, their churches did deny that all were sacraments. Thus the Protestant teaching on marriage was normally as “high” as Catholic doctrine and may be…

Canonical penance, as it evolved in the West, was predicated on the belief that even forgiven sins incur specific punishments and that satisfaction not completed during life must be made after death. Indulgences granted by the church from the “treasury of merits” (Christ’s infinite merit and…