l your secrets to a friend, and if you afterwards
offended him he would probably reveal all you told him. The priest asks
no reward for the service he gives you in the confessional, but loves to
help you, because he has pledged himself to God to do so, and would sin
if he did not. Some enemies of our holy religion have tried to make
people believe that Catholics have to pay the priest in confession for
forgiving their sins; but every Catholic, even the youngest child who
has been to confession, knows this to be untrue, and a base calumny
against our holy religion; even those who assert it do not believe it
themselves. The good done in the confessional will never be known in
this world. How many persons have been saved from sin, suicide, death,
and other evils by the advice and encouragement received in confession!
How many persons who have fallen into the lowest depths of sin have by
the Sacrament of Penance been raised up and made to lead good,
respectable lives--a blessing to themselves, their families, and
society!

187 Q. What is the Sacrament of Penance?
A. Penance is a Sacrament in which the sins committed after Baptism are
forgiven.

One who has never been baptized could not go to confession and receive
absolution, nor indeed any of the Sacraments.

*188 Q. How does the Sacrament of Penance remit sin, and restore the
soul to the friendship of God?
A. The Sacrament of Penance remits sin and restores the friendship of
God to the soul by means of the absolution of the priest.

"Absolution" means the words the priest says at the time he forgives the
sins. Absolve means to loose or free. When ministers or ambassadors are
sent by our government to represent the United States in England,
France, Germany, or other countries, whatever they do there officially
is done by the United States. If they make an agreement with the
governments to which they are sent, the United States sanctions it, and
the very moment they sign the agreement it is signed and sanctioned by
the authority of our government whose representatives they are, and
their official action becomes the action of the United States itself.
But when their term of office expires, though they remain in the foreign
countries, they have no longer any power to sign agreements in the name
and with the authority of the United States.

You see, therefore, that it is the power that is given them, and not
their own, that they exercise. In like manner Our Lord commissi