On Confession

Today was my first confession. Suddenly the priest put on a purple fabric loop and turned his head down and I said my sins as best I could. Everyone raves about how good this is.

The idea of doing penance and healing the separation between us and God and us and ourselves and us and the Church is beautiful. There is a searching for unity and wholeness and harmony that is important and perhaps only possible in the Church and not in the state. It seems consistent with a Voegelinian understanding of always turning toward or away from the Divine Ground of being. The Catholic understanding is that we can't separate the divine from the others we are turning with. We have to turn ourselves and also as part of the body of Christ.