Sunday, April 10, 2011

Thoughts on Confession


Blaise Pascal, 1623 – 1662

The Catholic religion does not oblige us to reveal our sins indiscriminately to everyone; it allows us to remain hidden from all other men, with one single exception, to whom it bids us reveal our innermost heart and show ourselves for what we are. There is only this one man in the world whom it orders us to disillusion, and it lays on him the obligation of inviolable secrecy, which means that he might as well not possess the knowledge of us that he has. Can anything milder and more charitable be imagined? And yet, such is man’s corruption that he finds even this law harsh, and this is one of the main reasons why a large part of Europe has revolted against the Church. -Blaise Pascal, Pensée 978

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