This thread is super interesting to me — here are a few reasons why: https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1246189712206737410

QC, and the people in the thread, recognize the need for, and power of, the sacrament of confession. This is good! But forgiveness from one’s fellow humans fundamentally lacks the depth that absolutions from God have.

I often think of the power of religion as a human technology. A religion that says “you can be forgiven” and “God loves you” is a very beautiful, powerful force for human betterment. So many secular attempts to capture this miss important parts, but the needs are very real.

Those needs — and those attempts to fill those needs by creating parallel secular sacraments — can be good insofar as they lead people to The Church, which is already offering the things that people are searching for.

The word confession has colloquial usage, but “absolution” means something very specific, and can only happen through the actions of a priest. Non-sacramental “absolutions” concern me, but I understand why people are searching for it. I get to be absolved, it’s so beautiful!

Some of what’s being confessed here isn’t technically a sin, but *is* an opportunity for self-improvement. This is a useful way to think about self-improvement, although I’m not sure that it’s a useful way to think about absolution.

In the post-Enlightenment era, the institutionality of The Church makes it hard for people to see it as anything but an institution. The beauty of the sacraments and the teachings of the Church are obscured by secular prejudice and superstition.

If The Catholic Church contained The Truth, would you know?

I respect and love everyone in this thread, and QC for starting it. I also want to find a way to express something to them, a thought that helped bring me back to The Church: if something is absolutely beautiful, could that make it absolutely true?