Adelaide's Archbishop Faulkner attacks South Australia's abortion figures, saying more have been killed than the population of Mount Gambier. See page 3.
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PERTH. WA: 3 — 9 January, 1985 • t,
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WASHINGTON (NC) — The world today has lost its "sense of sin," and "the sacrament of penance is in crisis," Pope John Paul II says in a major new document, Reconciliation and Penance. Pope John Paul warns against ideas of "social sin" that would reduce personal freedom and reponsibility.
Special reports from the worldwide services of NC News look at the pope's new directive on sin and penance. See page 2.
He reaffirms Church teaching on the existence and nature of mortal sin and venial sin.
He said it was "an essential element of faith" that Christ instituted the sacrament of penance as the ordinary means of forgiveness of sins after baptism.
C OMING NEXT WEEK: The Loreto sisters this month celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of their founder, Mani Ward. Special features and pictures look at Mary Ward's life and the impact of her teachings down through the centuries.
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1\1 SENSE HAS BEEN LOST TELEPHONE: (09) 328 1388
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It would be "foolish" and "presumptuous," the pope said, "to claim to receive forgiveness while doing without the sacrament" of penance. He reiterated Church teaching on the need to confess mortal sins individually and rejected use of general absolution except in extraordinary circumstances, under the strict norms spelled out in the Church's general and liturgical laws. Reconciliation and Penance is based on the discussions on that topic by the 1983 W orld Synod of Bishops. He says sin is "the radical cause of all wounds and divisions between people, and in the first place between people and God."
A t St Brigid's church, the crib takes literally the angelic phrase from St Luke that Christ's birth is a joy to be shared by the WHOLE people. Students from Santa Maria College let their imagination loose and produced more than 100 dolls to greet the new born Saviour.
He calls penance, conversion and reconciliation the only ways to overcome such divisions. "Personal conversion is the necessary path to harmony between individuals." He deals at length with the relationship between personal and social sin, one of the most controversial issues the synod faced. Other difficult issues with which he deals include debates over the theology of sin and penance. the decline in use of the sacrament of penance. general absolution, and the pastoral
It would be "foolish" and "presumptuous," the pope said, "to claim to receive forgiveness while doing without the sacrament" of penance.
care of persons who have married outside the Church and are unable to receive the sacraments. While insisting "sin, in the proper sense, is always a personal act," the pope says "from another point of view. every sin is social, insofar as and because it also has social repercussions . . . There is no sin, not even the most intimate and secret one, the most strictly individual one, that exclusively concerns the person committing it." He spelled out several specific senses of "social sin" which he said correctly describe certain aspects of sin or certain types of sin. He warned, however, "there is one meaning sometimes given to social sin that is not legitimate or acceptable." • Cont page 12 • See also page 2
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