Ottawa Archbishop Marcel Gervais has clamped down on what the Pope says has become an all-too-common practice: the abandonment of individual confessions in favour of group absolution.
In a letter to the archdiocese’s clergy and faithful,
the archbishop said John Paul II "insists that general absolution should
be restored to its original purpose as an extraordinary means of receiving absolution
(of sins)."
Archbishop Gervais is just one of several Canadian bishops
trying to curb the trend toward overuse of general absolution.
However, that doesn’t mean an end to communal reconciliation
services, followed by individual confessions, he said. Archbishop Gervais said
he wants to encourage these communal services. [Full
Story]
Good for him. It has been amazing how everything that was extraordinary became
ordinary such as Extraordinary Eucharist Ministers and those things that were
ordinary such as individual confession has became extraordinary.
