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Question Corner: How are non-Catholics forgiven?

A man is shown in a confession booth for the sacrament of reconciliation. Adobestock.

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Changing a child’s godparents

Q. I was wondering whether you’re allowed to change your child’s godparents and, if so, how to go about it and have it be acceptable to the church. The situation is this: When we chose our daughter’s godparents, seven years ago, they were Catholic and went to church. But over the years, they stopped going to church, and I’m not even sure that they still consider themselves Catholic.

My daughter will soon be receiving her first Communion, and she has begun to ask questions about her godparents. I would like to be able to tell her that they are faithful religious people who are setting a good example for her, but I can’t honestly say that. It’s further complicated by the fact that my son’s godparents are very strong Catholics, and my daughter wants to know why her own godparents are not like his. Any advice as to what I might do? (Gering, Neb.)

A. You are not allowed to change your daughter’s godparents. They are the ones who served as official witnesses to her baptism and the ones who, at the time, along with the parents, asked to have the child baptized into the church. Their names are inscribed on your daughter’s baptismal certificate and in the parish’s baptismal registry, and history cannot be undone.

However, you understand correctly the proper role of godparents, which is to assure the religious and spiritual development of the child, particularly if anything should happen to the parents, and there are some options.

You could ask someone else to step into that role, perhaps a trusted friend or family member who might serve as an example of religious fidelity and help guide your daughter’s growth as a Catholic.

Also, in a few years, your daughter will receive the sacrament of confirmation, and although the church’s Code of Canon Law in No. 893.2 says that it is “desirable” to have the same sponsor as at baptism, it is not required.

So, you could pick someone else as the confirmation sponsor. That new person would then become responsible for monitoring your daughter’s religious development and, in many parishes, would attend confirmation preparation classes with your daughter.

How are non-Catholics forgiven?

Q. Catholics are blessed to have the sacrament of reconciliation. But what about other faiths? How do non-Catholics have their sins forgiven? (Honolulu)

A. The Catholic Church has a long history of the confession of sins. In the earliest centuries, confession was actually done in public, the thinking being that when we sin, we damage not only our own friendship with God but our relationships within the community of faith; but around the sixth century Irish monks began hearing confessions one on one, and that practice spread to the church universal.

Though most Catholics may not know this, there are types of individual confession in other religious groups as well. Eastern Orthodox priests, for example, hear confessions not in a confessional but in the main part of the church, before a Gospel book and an icon of Jesus Christ. (This serves as a reminder to the penitent that the confession is really made not to another human being but to God himself.)

Lutherans have a form of confession known as “Holy Absolution,” that is done privately to a cleric upon request. After the penitent has confessed his or her sins, the minister declares: “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In the Anglican tradition, confession and absolution is usually done by an entire congregation as part of a eucharistic service, but certain Anglicans, particularly Anglo-Catholics, do practice private auricular confession.

The Catholic Church teaches that lesser sins can be forgiven by prayer and acts of charity, but it requires individual confession at least annually for grave (mortal) sins and encourages penitents to confess lesser (venial) sins also, as a way to grow in holiness.

It’s noteworthy to mention that during the pandemic, in March 2020 the Apostolic Penitentiary (the Vatican tribunal that deals with maters of conscience) urged Catholic priests to remind the faithful that, when they find themselves with “the painful impossibility of receiving sacramental absolution,” they can make an act of contrition directly to God in prayer. If they are sincere and promise to go to confession as soon as possible, said the Vatican tribunal, they “obtain the forgiveness of sins, even mortal sins.”

Better to go to church or be kind?

Q. Who is a better person? Someone who attends Mass every Sunday and receives Communion but is not nice to people (rude, insulting, doesn’t help the poor)? Or someone who attends Mass sporadically but is a kind, considerate and helping individual? (Gahanna, Ohio)

A. Is it better to walk on your right leg or your left leg? That question, in my mind, matches your own (whether it’s better to go to church or to be kind). Obviously, we need both legs to walk correctly and well. And similarly, the church is committed to regular sharing in the Eucharist — not only because that was Christ’s command to us, but because it is from the strength of the Eucharist that we are enabled to live our lives unselfishly.

Jesus, of course, did say: “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34). He even suggested in Matthew 25 that the final standard on which each of us will be judged is whether we have helped people when they needed it most.

But Jesus also, on the night before he died, gathered the apostles to share his body and blood at the first Eucharist and told them that they should “do this in memory of me.” The church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has determined that for Catholics this means the obligation of celebrating Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

In doing so, we are following the example of the early believers who “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:42). So church attendance or daily kindness is not an “either-or” proposition. We are not forced into making this false choice. In fidelity to Jesus, we do both — and, in so doing, make steady progress in the Christian life.

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