Father Mike Responds to "General Absolution"
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2022
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you're Catholic, you know the drill: we sin, we break our relationship with God, and then he offers us the incomprehensible mercy to restore that relationship with him. You can see this beautiful grace most Saturday afternoons at parishes around the world in the Sacrament of Reconciliation—or, Confession.
But have you heard of "general absolution"? Is it a way to skip the confession line and get "bulk forgiveness"?
Today, Fr. Mike dispels the confusion around general absolution and redirects us to the true source of reconciliation that Christ has given his Church.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When I asked some people, like, hey, I'm going to talk about general |
| 0:02.3 | obsolution for one of these videos. |
| 0:04.4 | I've talked to some youth pastors, youth ministers. |
| 0:06.9 | I said, when do you guys think about it? |
| 0:07.8 | And they said, it's dumb. |
| 0:09.0 | I said, well, why tell me why it's dumb? |
| 0:11.1 | They said because it takes out the relationship. |
| 0:22.9 | Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitts, and this is a censorship |
| 0:24.6 | presence. So it is the season right now. |
| 0:26.7 | At the end of Lent, that's where I'm filming this. |
| 0:28.5 | At the end of Lent for reconciliation, right, for confession, for the opportunity |
| 0:33.0 | to come before the Lord and have our sins forgiven through the ministry of the priest. |
| 0:36.6 | Now, we know that that's a real thing because we know that Jesus, after he had died, |
| 0:41.3 | rose when the dead on that Easter Sunday, he said to his apostles, he said, |
| 0:45.9 | he breathed in the midst of receive the Holy Spirit, those who sins you forgive are forgiven them, |
| 0:49.7 | those who sins you hold bound or held bound later on. |
| 0:51.9 | James, he writes in James chapter five, and he says, |
| 0:54.6 | if anyone sick among you, let them send for the priest of the church, |
| 0:57.1 | priest will pray over them essentially. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. |
| 0:59.7 | If they've committed any sins, those sins will be forgiven. |
| 1:02.2 | The next line is, therefore, confess your sins to one another. |
| 1:04.8 | We've already covered this, I think, in a different video, but the reality, of course, is two things. |
... |
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