Mărturisire și iertare în Evul Mediu occidental

Abstract

The Sacrament of Penance, throughout the history of liturgical and spiritual life of the Church, has known various developments in East and West. If Eastern Church managed to keep a balance between confession of sins, repentance for them, penance and spiritual and material formalism, the Western Church has slipped slowly but surely starting from the IXth-Xth centuries, down the slope of formalism, by introducing innovations such as the redemption of sins by paying money, buying indulgences, donating huge amounts of money or a significant part of the wealth to the Church. The theological argumentation of these practices was made through dogmatic innovations such as teaching about the primacy and papal infallibility, the theology of satisfaction and superimposed merits and purgatory. The situation thus created has led not only to formalism towards the Sacrament of Penance, but also to serious moral slippage of sacramental hierarchy members of the Western Church, such as luxury, immorality, social injustice, lack of response to the challenges of time or aggressive reaction – Inquisition and Crusades, struggle for power etc.
All these reasons have contributed to the estrangement of many believers from the Church, to the loss of lives and souls, to the emergence of reform and splitting of the Western Christianity in many religions and denominations.