- 56 - Or do God’s spirit messengers direct the priest, as they did the prophet Nathan and Christ, when to grant and when to deny absolution? Does the priest perhaps have some other supernatural gift to guide him in this decision? Can he read in the hearts of those confessing whether God has forgiven their sins? The Catholic priesthood must admit that it is not so gifted. How can they assure their fellowmen that God has pardoned their sins, when they have not the slightest grounds for knowing whether this is true or not? The priest can neither read the heart of the sinner, nor know the will of God. Although you say that absolution is contingent on the condition that the person confessing truly repent of his sin and earnestly strive to mend his ways, the absurdity of priestly absolution lies in the very fact that the priest is never in a position to know whether the confessor is sincere. • A priest can never, therefore, say: ‘I absolve thee of thy sins.’ At the most he can say: ‘May God absolve thee of thy sins!’ One need not be a priest in order to utter a wish of this kind. Anyone can do so. It is merely the expression of a desire and exerts no effect. However, the priest says explicitly, ‘I absolve thee of thy sins’, and thereby pronounces a judicial sentence of whose validity in the eyes of God he knows nothing. What would you think of an earthly judge who pronounced sentences without the force of law behind them? That would be a farce, wouldn’t it? So is the Catholic doctrine of the remission of sins through a priest, as your common sense must tell you. The truth of the matter is this: • Whoever sincerely repents of his sins and turns to God will be forgiven by Him, regardless of whether or not he has received the forgiveness of a priest, and whoever does not repent will not be forgiven by God, no matter how often he may have received priestly absolution. Your doctrine of the remission of sins by priests is therefore one of the greatest human fallacies that have crept into religion in the course of time. In support of its contention that its priests have the power of granting absolution, the Catholic Church invokes a spurious Biblical passage, to which I called your attention on the occasion of our first meeting. This reads: John 20: 23: ‘If you forgive the sins of others, they are forgiven unto them; if you do not forgive their sins, they are retained.’
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