The sacrament of confession. / Katholischer Pfarrverband Neunkirchen‒Seelscheid [Catholic Parish of Neunkirchen‒Seelscheid] 00, 2018‒03‒01
In the sacrament of Confession, Christ extends to us his hand in reconciliation.
There are different ways of dealing with guilt. You can sweep it under the carpet and say, "It’s
something that everybody does". That shouldn’t happen in Confession. The Christian way of dealing with
guilt means recognizing it and acknowledging it ‒ and obtaining forgiveness for it by the priest,
through whom God gives us the assurance of forgiveness. If you think you have forgotten exactly how to
go about this, just tell the priest, who will be happy to help you.
In Confession, God himself, speaking through the priest, gives you the assurance that your guilt has
been forgiven.
Christ instituted this sacrament when he conferred on his apostles the power to forgive sins, in the
following words:
"Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven
them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained." (Jn 20, 22 f).
Pfarrverband Neunkirchen – Seelscheid
[Parish composite of Neunkirchen‒Seelscheid]
In the above commentary, the Catholic sacrament of Confession is explained in detail by
a Catholic priest. First there is a completely appropriate exhortation that we should not sweep our own
guilt "under the carpet", and then comes another correct observation:
"The Christian way of dealing with guilt means recognizing it and
acknowledging it ‒ and obtaining forgiveness for it… "
So far, so good.
The conclusion of the sentence, however ‒
"… by the priest, through whom God gives us the assurance of forgiveness"
‒ highlights the complete mistake, or complete imposture, of the Catholic church on this
exceptionally important issue of Christian faith and of the Bible. We are concerned here with the
question where in Scripture an "assurance" on the part of God may be found that a Catholic priest can
forgive the sins of human beings. And of course, following on from this, the fundamental question also
needs to be raised whether the true, biblical Christianity even permits the function of a clerical
priesthood at all.
The argument of the Catholic church here is that the priestly office is passed on as a continuous
succession from the apostles (the "apostolic succession"):
"The apostolic succession refers to the continuous passing on of the mandate
of the apostles and their successors up to the present day, and legitimizes the traditio apostolica
‒ fidelity to the original Christian tradition and the unadulterated passing on of the tenets of faith." (WIKIPEDIA)
But if we examine the Bible, we cannot find a single bit of evidence for the "continuous
passing on of the mandate of the apostles" claimed here, and so there is no evidence either for the
conferring of the "power to forgive sins" on the Catholic priests and the Catholic clergy. As
biblical Christians we do have the mandate to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of the
whole world. But this mandate is not the biblical passage arrogated to itself by the Catholic church in
Jh 20,22‒23, quoted earlier, but rather the Lord’s Great Commission which is to be found in Mt 28,16‒20:
The Great Commission.
And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
Mk 16,9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of
the week (sunday), He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. 16,10
She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and
weeping. 16,11 When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to
believe it. 16,12 After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they
were walking along on their way to the country (Emmaus). 16,13 They went away and reported it to
the others, but they did not believe them either. 16,14 Afterward He appeared to the
eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their
unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after
He had risen.
16,15 And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all
creation. 16,16 "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who
has disbelieved shall be condemned. 16,17 "These signs will accompany those who have
believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; 16,18
they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them;
they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." 16,19 So then, when the Lord
Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of
God. Mk 16, 9 – 19.
The true Great Commission, then, is not that authority quite personally conferred on the
apostles in Jh 20,22‒23, empowering them not to forgive the sins of people who have sinned
against them. ‒ The forgiveness of sins itself is of course an absolute obligation for any
correctly believing Christian (cf. Mt 18:22). But in order to retain somebody’s sins, because in their
heart of hearts they are not really sorry for having committed them – for example, the then
sanctimonious scribes (Mt 23,27-28) -, calls for spiritual insight which only the Holy Spirit can give ‒
the Holy Spirit whom the Lord here breathes into the apostles in Jh 20,22‒23.
But the Catholic church ‒ as so often in its history (Love of our neighbor, apostolic succession, Purgatory (indulgences)1), etc.) – has completely falsified the background to these
biblical statements, claiming that this authority has been passed on to itself and its priests in consequence of this (equally illegitimate) apostolic succession. And this in spite of the fact that in this very scriptural passage there is not the slightest suggestion that this authority of the apostles should be passed on in succession to any specific persons of a specific church.
The truth is the very opposite of this. Our Lord Jesus Christ would not first have described the Jewish
clergy, with its scribes, priests and high priests, as a "brood of vipers" and "sons of the devil", only
to summon into existence yet another nest of serpents in the form of the Catholic church, with its
priests, bishops, cardinals and popes.
You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Mt 3,7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Mt 3, 7;
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?
Mt 23,32 "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 23,33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Mt 23,32-33;
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.
Jn 8,43 "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. 8,44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father
of lies. Jn 8,43-44
The "Historic Costumes Society" has just changed the names!
 Jewish high priest
Catholic bishop The former members of the Jewish clergy our Lord Jesus Christ described as With their imitators in the Catholic clergy, he still needs to add "money launderers", "homosexuals" and "child molesters". The prophecy that they will not escape hell, however, applies to both "hypocrisies". |
Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes.
Lk 20,45 And while all the people were listening, He said to
the disciples, 20,46 "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and
love respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues
(churches) and
places of honor at banquets, 20,47 who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake
offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation." Lk 20,45 – 47;
This warning against the scribes in the Jewish Sanhedrin applies equally to their
successors in the Catholic church (in this case their successors in a very real sense), right up to the
present day ‒ as a warning about the pedophile Catholic priests who rape children, or the corrupt
cardinals who practice money laundering and financial speculation in the Santo Spirito Vatican Bank (the
Bank of the Holy Spirit!!)..
When Jesus Christ sent out his disciples, he said to them, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst
of wolves." (Mt 10,16).
Now has the Catholic church, in the entire duration of its existence, ever given the impression of being
a "sheep"? Never and no way! The Catholic church has always been a wolf among wolves. In its striving
for power it has always competed with emperors and kings, and indeed has even nominated emperors and
kings. And that is why we can’t find in the Bible, either, any kind of indication that God has given
"assurance" of the forgiveness of sins by a Catholic priest, or even any suggestion of an instruction
given to the apostles by our Lord Jesus Christ to appoint successors in their office.
Those persons therefore who are consecrated as priests in the Catholic church are in no way successors
of the apostles. And this likewise explains why it is that their numbers include those Catholic priests,
all over the world, who abuse the children put into their care. This is already costing the Vatican
hundreds of millions of dollars in fines imposed by the courts.
And yet the church is unwilling to exclude these criminal persons from the church by excommunication,
but instead transfers them from one parish to another, where they can then ‒ still wearing the long
black cassock and white dog collar ‒ resume their activities and live out their "different sexual
orientation". This is actually confirmed by a report on WIKIPEDIA, a report very well worth reading:
‘ Das Buch der Schande. Kinder, sexueller Missbrauch und die katholische Kirche’ [‘ A Gospel of Shame:
Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church’], which investigates these incidents involving the
Catholic church all over the world.
"On the occasion of the appearance of the German translation of the American
case history collection by Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni entitled ‘A Gospel of Shame: Children,
Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church’ in 1995, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported three court
cases in the years 1993 to 1995, and criticized the actions of Bishop Josef Stimpfle and Vicar General
Eugen Kleindienst in connection with a case in the bishopric of Augsburg, where a diocesan priest was
jailed for four years. In general terms, the article’s judgment of the practice of transferring
pedophile priests was that it amounted to ‘ indulgence toward the perpetrators, indifference to the
victims and deliberate suppression of the truth’."
(WIKIPEDIA)
The Apostolic Succession of the Catholic church?By apostolic succession, the Catholic Church understands
the uninterrupted transmission of the sacrament of Holy Orders by the laying
on of hands back to the apostles. This applies in a special way to bishops,
but also to priests and deacons. Catholic priests who in hundred of thousands of cases worldwide have
dispensed the "transformed" eucharist with their hands in the
Mass have proceeded, with those same hands, to abuse and violate children
(1Cor,6:9). Catholic bishops who earlier had blessed the "sheep"
of their flock, have gone on to be arrested for corruption (Vatican Bank,
see report in Der Spiegel of 6.28.2013).  Of course it is true that you find black sheep everywhere. But when the "very reverend" violators are shielded and hidden in the ranks of the church for decades, and even corrupt "shepherds" holding office as bishops have to be unmasked by the police, this shows up the organization itself as being altogether without conscience, depraved and corrupt (Mt 7:16-20). Having the face to speak of the "Apostolic Succession", in the light of these facts, is the most egregious insult to the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. |
With this invention of the "Apostolic Succession", the Catholic church has falsified the Word of God, maliciously deceived the faithful and so has fallen away from the Christian faith. And our Lord Jesus Christ did warn us about this very thing. But he also showed us a quite simple way of finding out whether a person or an organization is disseminating lies, or is really based on biblical foundations and so entitled to call itself "Christian".
Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
Mt 7,15 "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in
sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 7,16 "You will know them by their
fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 7,17
"So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 7,18 "A good
tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 7,19 "Every tree
that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 7,20 "So then,
you will know them by their fruits. 7,21 "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord,
Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in
heaven will enter. Mt 7,15-21;
So we can know them by their fruits. Well, among the fruits of the Catholic church are
the following:
o TThousands of cases of abuse worldwide by Catholic priests of the children
in their care. These priests are supposedly in the line of the "apostolic succession", and so are meant
to be successors of the apostles of Jesus Christ! The apostles of the Lord would turn their backs in
horror.
o As a result of these cases of child abuse by Catholic priests, the Catholic
church has been had fines imposed by the courts amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars ‒ and of
course these are being paid for out of church collections. So donors in the Catholic church are
financing child abuse by Catholic priests..
o As a result of church taxes and collections from the Catholic faithful, the
clergy can afford grand residences and a life of ease, with all comforts laid on and a fat and fulsome
lifestyle. Meanwhile the Vatican has accumulated assets amounting to 220 billion euros! ‒ And instead of
making some of this available voluntarily, the Pope still encourages people to go on being generous with
their donations.
o The "Santo Spirito" (Holy Spirit!!!) Vatican Bank has been proved to have
engaged in money laundering for its clients (perhaps including the Mafia??), and is suspected of having
commissioned the murder of a banker. If he was ever present in this church at all, the Holy Spirit has
abandoned it long since
You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good?
Mt 12,34 You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For
the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. 12,35 "The good man brings out of his good
treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. Mt 12,34-35;
It is and remains a phenomenon that, in spite of all these proofs and facts, more than a
billion people still belong to this church. They are the ones in the last resort who really suffer, in
the truest sense of the word. Not only in their lifetimes, when they have to reckon with the abuse of
their children, but also and above all in their life of faith. Everything the Catholic church has
promised them, from the forgiveness of their sins by Catholic parish priests and the intercession of the
"mediatrix" Mary to Purgatory and indulgences and so on, it’s all lies.
In the end they will stand before our Lord Jesus Christ and he will say to them:
‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; DEPART FROM ME, ALL YOU EVILDOERS.’ Lk 13,27;
As we have seen from the above analysis, forgiveness of sins by a Catholic priest (absolution) is quite simply a fraud on the part of the Catholic church, and not a single one of the sins "forgiven" in this way is actually forgiven or atoned for. It is a fact that Catholic teaching is deliberately aimed at depriving people of the most important thing in Christian faith or distancing them from it ‒ faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It does this step by step and unobtrusively, on the basis of freely invented teachings and dogmas.
This can be seen in its spurious forgiveness of sins, in prayers to the dead (the
"saints"), constituting a kind of cult of the dead, and in the Catholic "Mary" (not the mother of
Jesus!), who is not referred to in the Bible as a "bringer of salvation" or "mother of grace" at all,
but who was dogmatically declared in 431 AD to be deserving of worship. And the Catholic church has then
step by step invented attributes for this idol ‒ like birth without original sin (1854), resurrection
and ascension into heaven (1950) ‒ which are the exclusive prerogative of the Son of God.
The aim of this is to divert the faith of the laity more and more from Jesus Christ the Savior (who
becomes prettified as the "Child Jesus") and toward the "mediatrix" Mary (the "Queen of Heaven"). But
seeing that faith in the Son of God is the only possibility of being saved for us human beings, the true
intention of the Catholic church is clear: to keep as many people as possible away from the grace of
God.
There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
1Tim 2,5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1Tim 2,5
No one comes to the Father but through Me.
Jn 14,6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the
life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. Jn 14, 6;
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Mt 28,18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All
authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Mt 28,18;
For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the
Son.
Jn 5,22 "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has
given all judgment to the Son, 5,23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the
Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Jn
5,22.23;
But it can easily be seen that a religion where a hierarchy separates the people from the teachers (Pope / cardinals / bishops / priests / laity), has nothing in common with true Christianity. Even if the Catholic church always hypocritically pretends to be a "Christian" church, it has long ceased to be anything of the kind! It deceives people with its churches, some of them massive, where services are held with pomp and glory. But these ceremonies do not come ‒ either in the case of the priests, or that of the majority of the congregation ‒ from the heart. And so these services, in spite of all the ceremony, are lacking the most important thing ‒ God.2)
So if the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic church is an imposture, the question naturally suggests
itself how sins can actually be forgiven in the biblical sense. .
(See also Discourse 123 "Biblical Christianity.")
And here we have an indication from our Lord Jesus Christ, showing us how sins should be
forgiven among brothers and sisters in Christ:
Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
Mt 18,21 Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often
shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" 18,22 Jesus said to
him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." Mt 18,21-22;
There can be no doubt that this "up to seventy times seven" doesn’t just mean 490 times,
but purely and simply amounts to "always". So all correctly believing Christians must always forgive a
brother or sister in Christ who has sinned against them. But what biblical commentators often fail to
observe, after this, is the parable told by the Lord to Peter to illustrate the point.
So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me’.
Mt 18,23 "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 18,24 "When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 18,25 "But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. 18,26 "So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 18,27 "And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. 18,28 "But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’
18,29 "So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 18,30 "But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. 18,31 "So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. 18,32 "Then summoning him, his lord sad to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.18,33 ‘Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ 18,34 "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to
the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. 18,35 "My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart." Mt 18,23-35;
We see that in both cases the debtor "… pleaded with him, saying, ‘ Have patience with
me’." So it emerges clearly from the context that the Lord was on no account thinking of an impersonal,
perhaps even undesired, "automatic" forgiveness of sins ‒ it is rather the case that forgiveness must
always be asked for by the guilty party. This is the one, and also the only condition of
forgiveness among correctly believing Christians: it has to be asked for.
We can draw the same conclusion from the following biblical passage:
And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.
Lk 17,1 He said to His disciples, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! 17,2 "It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little
ones to stumble. 17,3 "Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 17,4 "And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him." Lk 17, 1- 4;
As the Lord tells us here, a request for the forgiveness of a sin must always be
accompanied by contrition on the part of the sinner. So you can’t have forgiveness through a third
party, as taught by the Catholic church ‒ not by a Catholic priest, bishop, cardinal or the Pope
himself. The forgiveness of a sin can only be brought about through the person who has been affected by
this sin. If your house is burgled, you wouldn’t pardon the perpetrator, surely, just because he tells
you he has already apologized to the neighbor next door.
And this insight now refutes the trick of the Catholic church when it tries to persuade its faithful
that sin can be forgiven urbi et orbi ‒ "to the city and to the whole world"3) ‒ on the "watering can principle". Because only in this way would it be possible to smuggle in a completely uninvolved third party, a Catholic priest, between the persons affected ‒ the injured person and the sinner ‒ and then invest this third party with a supposed "power to forgive sins" and so allow them to pronounce forgiveness (absolution: "ego to absolvo", I absolve you) when in fact the only person who can grant forgiveness is the one against whom the sin was committed.
The institution of "auricular confession", in which the priest is able to learn the most intimate
secrets of churchgoers, has undoubtedly proved very useful to the present day as a source of information
for the church with its ever growing avidity for power.
And just as a sin against a human being can only be forgiven by the same human being, so a sin against
God can only be forgiven by God. For this, the sinner must go to God (in prayer), feel contrition and
ask forgiveness in the name of the redeeming sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross for the sins of
all men who invoke it.
This prayer for the forgiveness of sins by God should also include sins against people where forgiveness
cannot be obtained for various reasons ‒ perhaps because the person has died, or cannot be contacted
personally. And then of course there are those people who do not feel obliged to observe these commands
of our Lord ‒ for whatever reason.
So in the light of the Bible it is not possible for a Catholic priest to forgive those sins which a
Christian has committed against God or against another person. These sins can always only be forgiven by
God and/or those persons who have been injured by these sins.
The sad conclusion to be drawn from this is that, as a result of the deception of the Catholic church,
many Catholics have not had their sins forgiven, and so have had to die or will die with unforgiven sins
to their account, and that is how they will stand before the Son of God in the Last Judgment.
Is the Catholic Church a Christian church?When the unbelieving world speaks of Christianity, in nine out of
ten cases what is meant is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has become
practically synonymous with Christianity in the eyes of the world. This is a massive
error! Jude 1:7 
LUCIFER WORSHIPED IN VATICAN (Video) Pope Francis on gays: "Who am I to judge them?" The Bible on gays: Rom 1,26 For this reason God gave them over to
degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which
is unnatural, 1,27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function
of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men
committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of
their error. |
1)In view
of the relative unfamiliarity of the subject, when it comes to biblical statements on the
end of the world we do not find – fortunately – so many false teachings in circulation,
apart from the dogma of "purgatory" which was quite willfully invented by the Catholic
church. This goes back to the 15th and 16th centuries, when based on the "indulgence" of
the papal bull Unigenitus of 1343, the church tried to extract money from the pockets of
the faithful for the construction of St. Peter’s in Rome – claiming that if they paid for
an indulgence, they would not have to go to eternal damnation but would only have to spend
a few million years (!) in the fires of purgatory.
2)"Christianity does not consist in words but rather in the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer. The pillars of the temple are not those who attract the admiration of their hearers with their public utterances of ‘Lord, Lord’, but rather those who – at home, in the stillness of their own room, and without any audience – address their prayers to the Lord: these are the ones who really support the congregation."
(Gottfried Daniel Pomacher, a revivalist preacher from Wuppertal)
3)Heading of the address and blessing given by the Pope from St. Peter’s on certain solemn occasions.