Tuesday, January 31, 2006

GKC and Confession

The Anchoress invokes GKC:

As Voltaire said: ‘Repentance for our faults can alone take the place of innocence, and that, to show ourselves repentant, we must begin by declaring them.’ Few Catholic customs have been subjected to greater criticism than that of going to Confession. One can do no better than to initiate this discussion with the sneering comment of George Bernard Shaw to G.K Chesterton after his conversion: ‘Your portly kneeling figure’ in the confessional would be ‘incredible, monstrous, comic.’ More enlightened was Chesterton’s answer: ‘When a Catholic comes from Confession, he does truly, by definition, step out into that dawn of his own beginning… in that brief ritual God has really remade him in His own image. He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old.’

1 comment:

Michael J. Farrand said...

Thought you might enjoy my poem on the topic entitled "Confession".