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Confession proves Christ is God

The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen on the requirement for Confession/Sacrament of Penance:

In order that there might be a Sacrament of Penance, two things are required, both of which are, from a human point of view, almost impossible to find. First, one must create the penitent and, secondly, one must create a confessor. To create a penitent, one must take a man in his pride, enveloped in a glacial silence, which refuses to unburden its guilt, and say to him: "Thou shalt come to a man and kneel before him—a man who is perhaps no better than you are—and you shall tell him what you hide from yourself and your children. You shall tell him that which makes you blush; and you shall do all of this on your knees."

However difficult it may be to create a penitent who will confess everything with a firm purpose of amendment, it is even more difficult to create the confessor. Where find one empowered by God with authority to forgive sins? How train the human heart to heal the wounds of others, and then seal his lips forever that what he has learned as God's representative be never revealed to men?

Only God could bring these two creations together, for outside of His power and mercy, we would say: "Humanity is too proud, you will never have penitents"; "Humanity is too indiscreet, you will never have confessors." And yet the sacrament exists. There are penitents because there are confessors, and there are penitents and confessors because Christ is God.

Related link: The Sacrament of Penance - I, II and III.

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