Father Kenneth Doyle
By Father Kenneth Doyle • Catholic News Service • Posted January 12, 2021
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.