"With a full trust in God's mercy": an Old High Church response to a request for private confession and absolution

Every time I enter into an #Anglican parish and ask to see a priest for confession, most vergers reply “Sorry, we are not Roman Catholics”...

The confession to a priest is a sacramental practice LITERALY [sic] written in the Book of Common Prayer.

This recent Tweet and the responses to it caught my attention.  The Tweeter went on to say:

I’ve met a priest from the Diocese of London who never heard one confession in his life. 12 years of ministry...

When it was suggested that in evangelical parishes someone would offer to "pray with you", the Tweeter responded:

“Pray with you” ? Meanwhile I ask a priest to fulfil his duty ? Weird.

What, of course, is weird is the assumption that private confession and absolution would be a regular ministry in the office and work of the vast majority of Anglican priests. In the 21 years since my ordination as a priest, I have been asked on only three occasions for what the Irish BCP 1926 terms "the benefit of absolution, together with spiritual counsel and advice". In each case, it was a response to particular events.  In each case, this ministry was a 'one off', with no expectation that it would be a regular discipline.  

Until the later Tractarian movement, there was no notion that private confession and absolution - rather than being a special medicine in particular cases - would be a normative, regular part of the spiritual life of Anglicans.  As Christopher Wordsworth, then Bishop of Lincoln, said in his 1874 pastoral letter of the BCP's provision for this ministry, a superb statement of High Church teaching on the matter:

But surely, to infer from these two exceptional cases, that the Church of England authorises her Ministers to recommend private Confession as a regular practice is strangely to pervert her words, and to affirm that she intends her Clergy to feed her children with medicines which she has provided for the sick.

Amongst the responses to the Tweet, most significant was that of theologian Andrew Davison, who drew attention to phrases in the Common Worship and 1662 Ordinals.  He drew attention to the 1662 use of the dominical words at the laying on of hands - "Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ..." - and the Common Worship reference to the ministry of presbyters in calling "their hearers to repentance and to declare in Christ’s name the absolution and forgiveness of their sins".  

The problem is that the use of the dominical words in 1662 was consistently interpreted by the High Church tradition not as referring to private confession and absolution to the presbyter's wider ministry of reconciliation.  In the words of the Laudian Richard Montague, "Reconciling by the whole office and function of the ministry".  Another Laudian voice, that of Jeremy Taylor, declared of these words in the Ordinal, "they are comprehensive of the whole power and ministry ecclesiastical".  Wordsworth provided an apt summary of this teaching:

they contain a commission and a power derived from the Holy Ghost, given by the Eternal Son of the Father - to remit sin by applying those means which Christ has instituted and appointed for its remission; namely - (1). The sincere Word of God duly preached. The declaration of remission of sins in Christ's name to all those who repent and believe. (2). The Holy Sacrament of Baptism duly administered. (3). The Holy Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist rightly consecrated, and fully and freely dispensed. (4). The prayers of the Priesthood for the forgiveness of sins.

Against this background, we must similarly interpret the references to absolution in contemporary Anglicans ordinals.

Also of importance is the traditional High Church insistence that the absolution pronounced by priests at Mattins, Evensong, and Holy Communion is just as efficacious as an absolution pronounced in the context of private confession.  This flows from Hooker's insistence:

the difference of general and particular forms in Confession and absolution, is not so material, that any man's safety, or ghostly good should depend upon it - LEP VI.4.15.

As Wordsworth emphasised, the Tractarian practice of promoting private confession and absolution as normative undermined the gift of absolution as ordinarily received by Anglicans:

It is much to be deplored that these two forms of Absolution viz., in the daily office of our Church, and in the Holy Communion, are now disparaged and despised by some among us, as if these forms were almost powerless and valueless, and had little relevance to the question of Confession and Absolution.

So what would be a pastorally appropriate Old High Church response to a request for private confession and absolution, such as indicated by the original Tweet quoted above?  To begin with, there would be reasons for some caution.  The 1662 Exhortation in the Holy Communion, in offering "the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice", advises "come to me, or to some other discreet and learned Minister of God's Word": this means the Parson with pastoral responsbility for and knowledge of a parishioner or another cleric who the person knows to be "discreet and learned".  In other words, if it is not the priest with pastoral responsibility for the person, discernment needs to be exercised before approaching another cleric for this ministry.  Visiting a church and asking a verger for a priest for confession is not exercising discernment.  

It is notable that when the 1634 Irish Canons - with a pronounced Laudian influence - referred to this ministry, they explicitly set it within the context of the parish or cathedral community and related it to the quarterly administration of the Holy Communion:

And the Minister of every Parish, and in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches some Principal Minister of the Church shall, the Afternoon before the said Administration, give warning by the tolling of the Bell, or otherwise, to the intent, that if any have any scruple of Conscience, or desire the special Ministry of 

Reconciliation, he may afford it to those that need it.

This crucially recognizes the pastoral relationships underpinning this "special Ministry", ensuring that clergy were not providing "ghostly counsel" to strangers, unaware of their pastoral situations.

A second area of caution regards how an individual might approach their confession.  As Jeremy Taylor warned, there is no compulsion or necessity in an Anglican context for an individual approaching this ministry to divulge all their sins.  He condemned any such perceived necessity as "the rack of consciences, the slavery of the church".  It would be appropriate, therefore, to counsel the penitent before private confession that the freedom of the Gospel places them under no such compulsion.  Particular burdens can be shared: there is absolutely no duty or need to catalogue 'all' sins.

Thirdly, it would appropriate to remind the penitent at the outset that private confession and absolution is no necessary condition for receiving forgiveness.  It is a ministry which can provide assurance of forgiveness to those who are penitent, but it does not bestow that which is absent.  As Taylor counsels:

True it is, he prays to God for pardon, and so he prays that God will give the sinner the grace of repentance; but he can no more give pardon than he can give repentance; He that gives this gives that. And it is so also in the case of absolution; he can absolve none but those that are truly penitent: he can give thanks indeed to God on his behalf; but as that thanksgiving supposes pardon, so that pardon supposes repentance; and if it be true repentance, the priest will as certainly find him pardoned as find him penitent.

The person coming to this ministry repentant has already been pardoned by God: this special ministry assures them that, being penitent, they have been forgiven.  

With such cautions graciously stated at the outset, and on the basis of the teaching in the 1662 Exhortation that the ministry of private confession and absolution can quieten the conscience and "aid with the avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness", an appropriate Old High Church response to such a request as indicated in the Tweet would be to offer this ministry.  Immense caution would, however, be required in offering "ghostly counsel and advice" to a complete stranger, when the priest has no knowledge of their spiritual life or mental health.  Referring them to their own clergy or to someone with whom they have an established pastoral relationship may, in most cases, be a necessity.  

Finally, there is the absolution.  Which form should be used?  The form used in the 1662 Order for the Visitation of the Sick is peculiar to those circumstances: serious illness and/or approaching death.  As the High Church Secker warned, this form of absolution "is not appointed ever to be used" outside of such contexts.  Taylor also noted that "in the old penitentials and usages of the church ... the priest did not absolve the penitent in the indicative or judicial form".  Much more appropriate, then, to the nature of this ministry of private confession and absolution is the declarative form of absolution found in the Holy Communion (as in the Irish BCP 1926), testifying to the comfortable truth that God's forgiveness is not dependent on either private confession or priestly absolution, and that this ministry is one of assurance.

Caution, then, is right and proper when a stranger approaches an Anglican priest asking for private confession and absolution. This, however, does not prevent the ministry being sensitively offered, with wisdom, reserve, and prudence, offering assurance of God's forgiveness.  In the words of the Preface to the Irish revision of 1878:

no power or authority is by [the Formularies] ascribed to the Church or to any of its Ministers in respect of forgiveness of sins after Baptism, other than that of declaring and pronouncing, on God's part remission of sins to all that are truly penitent, to the quieting of their conscience, and the removal of all doubt and scruple; nor is it anywhere in our Formularies taught or implied that confession to, and absolution by, a Priest are any conditions of God's pardon.