Lent Penance & Confession DONE RIGHT: Species, Number, Circumstances ~ Fr. Ripperger

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in the name of the father and of the son

and of the holy spirit amen direct all

Lord all our actions by thy holy

Inspirations and carry them on by thy

gracious assistance so that every prayer

and work of ours may begin from thee and

by thee be happily through Christ Our

Lord amen virgin most prudent pray for

us in the name of the father and of the

son and of the holy spirit

amen so we begin the major penitential

season lent and lent of course is one of

those things that it goes on for 40 days

usually you're in two weeks into it

you're like we're only two weeks in

but I do want to talk about Penance in

the context of common things that a lot

of people are Catholics especially fall

into that are being not paid too much

attention to because if we're going to

do real

Penance for our sins but also for our

defects because Penance isn't there to

punish us we don't do Penance to to

flatulate ourselves we actually do

Penance in order to correct ourselves to

to amend our life and by that we mean to

straighten out the things that we're

doing and to stop doing things that we

should not be doing and so for the next

two nights I'm going to go through a

series of things that I think that a lot

of Catholics are actually falling into

on a regular basis without even seeing

the fact that they're even doing it but

before we get to that I want to talk a

little bit about

confession because many of these things

hopefully this will create lines of

confession when we're done

but this is one of those things where

the the confession is this is as we've

as time goes

on except for in a few places the

confessions are getting sloppier and

sloppier you're seeing people when they

come into the confessional they're not

very well prepared which you need to

prepare for it you should spend a little

bit of time if you're doing an

examination of conscience every single

night before you go to bed which is what

the church had always recommended as a

practice then what will happen is is

that when it comes time to do your

confession it's all going to be clear

it's going to be on your mind so doing

an examination of conscience and even a

confidor or an act of contrition before

you go to bed each night is a good solid

practice but when you go to confession

they used to say that you want to

confess species number and

circumstances what's the species well

the Council of Trent says it has to be

the lowest species what do we even mean

by that the species is the nature of

what you did and so one of the common

experiences of priests is that people

will come into the confessional and the

Council of Trent puts a series of

requirements on the priest about what he

has to make sure he gets out of the

penitent to make sure that their

confessions are even valid and so this

is he has to watch for these particular

things and so the species when we say

the lowest species you have to be

specific about what you've done doesn't

mean details it means specific so a very

common one that you'll see there's

people will come into the confessional

and they'll say I was

impure what does that even mean is that

fornication is that adultery is that

pornography is that you can go down the

whole Litany of all the different forms

it's too broad and a lot of times people

are trying to

hide the shame that they have for these

particular sins behind kind of a

generality or

vagueness and so very often you have to

tell people the council Trent requires

us to be specific when it comes to

Mortal sins specifically confess venial

sins you can confess

generically but mortal sins have to be

confessed

specifically

why well what most people don't realize

is that the confessional is technically

speaking a tribunal it's a court you are

going to court literally the judge which

is the priest sits on the bench this is

why even civil judges actually wear what

looks like a castle

that's where it came from and so they

sit in they sit in a throne which is an

indicator that it's their place to judge

you come in and you AC there's an

accuser you ACC there's a prosecutor

that's you you accuse yourself of

specific crimes against God that you've

committed and then uh the pre the the

judge has to take a look at this did

this guy really anti up everything that

he actually all the crimes that he

actually committed did he do it

accurately you know or is he just hiding

or is he lying to me because sometimes

people will even come into the

confessional and they don't want to tell

the full truth but they still want the

Absolution which means they're not going

to get the ABS the Absolution is not

going to be

valid so then the judge has to judge two

things because people say oh you know we

it's not our place to judge that's

actually not true it's not our place to

judge the interior state of somebody

because in order to judge somebody you

have to have knowledge and authority

over them this is the whole problem with

st of eonism people are passing judgment

about the Holy father's uh doctrinal

statements in about his interior State

regarding them not the statements

themselves because we do have an

obligation to take a look at those but

when we're talking about the actual

interior State they don't have the

authority over this man to be passing

judgment like this and that's what

declaration of heresy actually is it's a

passing of judgment on the obstinacy

which is an interior state of of the

individual so he has to judge but the

the the priest has to judge the uh that

the person has confessed ingly which

means that you confess everything you're

supposed to confess and that means the

church teaches us that we have to

confess all our mortal sins to the the

degree that we can remember our venial

sins then we can confess

those uh we're not required to confess

them but it's very salutary which I'll

talk about here in a minute and then we

can also even confess our defects which

we'll see again here why in a minute but

the confession he has to judge that

you've confessed properly and then the

second thing he has to do is Judge that

you are actually sorry for your sins and

how does he do that by your demeanor how

you come in how you confess and then

that's why he'll ask you make an act of

contrition but the species he's got to

make sure that you've confessed it

properly and then he's got to get the

number cuz somebody could come into the

confessional and say oh yeah I you know

I committed forn or I committed adultery

well committing adultery once is not

nearly as bad I mean it's bad but it's

not nearly as bad as 20 times and again

people will hide behind the vagueness so

that they don't actually have to take

the shame of actually what they did when

they need to confess the precise number

in relationship to Mortal sins if they

can't remember then they estimate the

church says in relationship to venial

sins it's also good to give a good

number if for no other reason for you to

remember this so why do we confess

venial sins and even defects because

sometimes priests will say well I don't

need to hear those actually he does need

to hear them nothing irritates me more

when some priest you know he says that's

not a sin that's not a yes it is all

right so and this is the this is the

whole point his job is to judge based

upon what the church says not what he

thinks