JPI 758
Confession: Reconciliation and Communion
The communion of persons to which man is called is a process carried forward along several stages. Reconciliation plays therein an important role, as attested to by the place of the sacrament of penance in the Christian life. This sacrament is also called confession because of one of its central parts, which will be the object of our course. The act of confession will be situated in its sacramental context, in relationship with the redemptive act of Christ. After considering the dogmatic foundations, we will continue our analysis by a reading of St. Augustine's Confessions and the works of other authors of the theological and philosophical tradition (St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Paul Ricoeur, Joseph Ratzinger). All this will allow us to understand the place of confession in the dynamism of communion, as the retrieval of that original transparency that is part of God's plan from the beginning.
