This document discusses the Catholic sacrament of healing and reconciliation. It addresses why the Church is a sign of reconciliation, and lists other means of reconciliation such as prayer, preaching, and witnessing. It states that reconciliation comes only from God, and discusses the threefold distinction of sins as venial, grave, or mortal. It also covers topics like the loss of sense of sin, how personal sin relates to structural sin, how secularism contributes to the loss of sin, and the role of confession in reconciling with the Church and restoring fraternal communion.

1. Sacrament of Healing
Tampson

2. Why the Church is great of sacrament of
salvation?
• The Church is a sacrament, that is, a sign and means of reconciliation
in different ways, differing in value, but all contributing to achieving
what God's initiative of mercy wants to give humanity. It is also a
sacrament through service as guardians and interpreters of Scripture,
which is good news of reconciliation insofar as it speaks to each
successive generation of God's loving plan. God and show each
generation the ways of universal reconciliation in Christ.

3. Other means of reconciliation?
• The first means of this salvific action is that of prayer.
• Preaching
• Witnessing, which is almost always silent.

4. Reconciliation comes only from God?
• Those who accept this appeal enter into the economy of
reconciliation and experience the truth contained in that other
affirmation of St. Paul, that Christ "is our peace, who has made us
both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility..., so
making peace" that he "might reconcile us both to God."(51) This text
directly concerns the overcoming of the religious division between
Israel-as the chosen people of the Old Testament-and the other
peoples, all called to form part of the new covenant. Nevertheless, it
contains the affirmation of the new spiritual universality desired by
God and accomplished by him through the sacrifice of his Son, the
word made man, without limits or exclusions of any sort, for all those
who are converted and who believe in Christ.

5. Threefold distinction of sins
• Venial
• Grave
• Mortal

6. Loss of sense of sin and conscience formation
• sense is rooted in man's moral conscience and is as it were its
thermometer. It is linked to the sense of God, since it derives from man's
conscious relationship with God as his Creator, Lord and Father. Hence, just
as it is impossible to eradicate completely the sense of God or to silence
the conscience completely, so the sense of sin is never completely
eliminated. The loss of the sense of sin is thus a form or consequence of
the denial of God. Conscience is one of the important factors that allows an
individual to take his decision. Our moral decision-making process and its
effect in the concrete life situations, depends on our capacity to do
discernment in the conscience. So, the formation of the conscience is
important, because if the conscience is not well formed, it will lead to
wrong decisions in life. Adequate formation of moral conscience is
important in the moral decision making or moral discernment.

7. Relationship between personal sin and structural
sin?
• The social consequences of our sin can build up and become what the
Catholic Church calls “structures of sin.” The Catechism describes it
this way: “Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are
contrary to the divine goodness. 'Structures of sin' are the expression
and effect of personal sins.

8. Secularism contributing to the loss of sin
• Secularism is essentially and by definition a movement of ideas and
behaviors in favor of a humanism completely devoid of God, entirely
centered on the cult of action and production and caught up in the
fervor of consumption and pleasure-seeking, indifferent to danger. of
“losing this Secularism can only weaken guilt. At the most sin will be
reduced to that which offends man. namely that man can build a
world without God, but this world will turn its back on him. " is
therefore the reality of God, which reveals and exemplifies the
mystery of man. guilt.

9. The sacrament of confession reconciles us with the
Church, restoring fraternal communion.
• This sacrament reconciles us with the Church. Sin damages or even
breaks fraternal communion. The sacrament of Penance repairs or
restores it. In this sense it does not simply heal the one restored to
ecclesial communion, but has also a revitalizing effect on the life of
the Church which suffered from the sin of one of her members. Re-
established or strengthened in the communion of saints, the sinner is
made stronger by the exchange of spiritual goods among all the living
members of the Body of Christ, whether still on pilgrimage or already
in the heavenly homeland. CCC Article 4, 1469.

10. Sin is not an individual affair
• We can talk about the fellowship of sin. Thereby the soul humbled by
sin drags the Church, and, as it were, the whole world. In other
words, there is no sin even in the most intimate, secret, and most
strictly individual sins, which affect only the sinner. More or less
violent, more or less harmful, all sins affect the entire ecclesiastical
community and the human family. All sins can definitely be
considered social sins.

11. Role of Conscience
• Conscience is one of the important factors that allows an individual to
take his decision. Our moral decision-making process and its effect in
the concrete life situations, depends on our capacity to do
discernment in the conscience.
• “Etymologically, conscience breaks down to ‘con’ and ‘scientia,’ that is
‘with - knowing’. This moral knowledge is self-reflexive and socially
connected, knowing that is accountable to my deepest self, to human
communities, and ultimately to God.” Gaudium et Spes defines
conscience from the different perspective. It defines conscience as
“the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with
God, Whose voice echoes in his depths.”

12. Pope Francis sayings on Sacrament of Confession
• Confession is the sacrament of the tenderness of God, his way of
embracing us.
• Do not be afraid of confession!
• Confessing our sins may be difficult for us, but it brings us peace. We
are sinners, and we need God’s forgiveness.

13. Thank You