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Why Doubts Matter — Including Those of MAGA Voters
The Priest Was Wrong, but I Learned Something Useful
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If you are Catholic or know anything about Catholicism, then you are probably familiar with the general concept of the sacrament of confession, in which individuals confess their sins to a priest. Catholics believe that the priest acts as the person of Christ, and can absolve their sins.
You may also be aware of something called the seal of confession or the sacramental seal, which binds priests to absolute secrecy regarding the sins confessed during the sacrament.
But it doesn’t hold in the reverse. As a penitent, I can reveal to you what the priest said to me.
The last time I went to confession, I told the priest that I had tremendous doubts about the truth of some of the Church’s teachings, that I had begun to believe that the Church had become a political organization rather than a spiritual one, that the bishops’ support of Trump alienated me, and that I struggled to accept that the Catholic Church of today looks anything like what Jesus intended. I told him I was sorry for my doubts, but that I really didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t get rid of them.
