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The Typology of Sinners.

In this chapter will be given the common survey of the most frequent types of the repentant, and the brightest examples of those spiritual states, which require a wise pastoral word and thoughtful attitude.
A Simpleton. That is the rarely encountered type of a Christian in the world of civilization and epoch of the progress as an example of the repentant sinner. This is the model of the most easy to deal with sinner for a pastor. In old Russia and perhaps somewhere in the East, in the situation of everyday and patriarchal Christianity these people comprised to the majority of the repentant. Their mind is not overloaded with rational things; the heart is opened to the loving paternal word of a confessor. By the social position these are the people, not poisoned by the fuss of the urban life and by the illusory wealth of civilization. These are peasants, old nurses, servants from the patriarchal families and the mass of monastic simpletons from the disappeared from the surface of the earth, but numerous in the old world monasteries.

Realizing the sin and being culpable is very clear in these people. They probably did not read the treatises on the moral theology, works of ascetics, they did not hear about the categorical imperative of Kant, but their conscience is exceptionally sensitive and uncompromising. The sin burdens them; they are afraid of it and try to be freed through their sincere repentance and prayer of the confessor. Therefore they approach confession from the moral side. They will not plunge into discussion with a confessor on the different philosophical subjects, but they neither will disguise the sins. They, first of all, are resigned are meek. They eagerly listen to the homily of a priest and are very grateful to him. They easily innumerate their sins, frequently adding: “what to hide, father, each time I stepped, I sinned,” or “have sinned by a word, matter, thought, and all feelings,” and they will mention the most burdening sins. They do not have problems; a sin is undoubtedly a sin. They neither have ambiguity, such as: on the one hand, this perhaps is a sin, but, if one takes into account this and that, perhaps, this is not a sin. After confession of such person a priest is often surprised with clearness of the conscience of the repentant and even can find something edifying for himself in the subdued approach of this simpleton to the Church, God, a priest, and confession. This type of people increasingly disappears.

An Intellectual. This is the complete opposition to the image of a simpleton. With his past, education, cultural heritage, and according to his attitude to the Church and approach to the sin he bears something complex, painful for himself, and for the confessor this is the test for his pastoral patience and experience.

The highly intellectual type is characteristic of any culture and nation. A confessor always needs to approach such person differently than he approaches a person without intellectual demands. But the type of the intellectual is the product only of the Russian history, unknown to the western culture. It was affected by the historical, cultural, everyday life changes, not characteristic of the European civilization. This type in its classical appearance of the 19-20^th centuries will probably be swept from the face of this planet by the historical process, but in its essence it bears some typical Russian features, which will remain in life, however the history turns.

Here are these essential features of an intellectual: 1) the increased rationality, from where comes the habit to speak, quoting the authoritative writers; 2) the indiscipline of thinking and absence of that what distinguishes the people of the Roman culture, namely: the steadiness and the clarity of thoughts and formulations; 3) traditional oppositional character of any authority and hierarchical quality, whether it is the state or ecclesiastic; 4) the characteristic absence of the common life style and the fear of any settlement like a family, class, church society; 5) generally the tendency for nihilism, unlimited by the type of Bazarov and Mark Volokhov, but easily preserved in the spiritual life as well; 6) the influence of some acute tendencies, like the decadence, which is manifested in the brokenness and mutilation of the soul. It is possible to mention more things, but what is said seems sufficient.

In its approach to confession this type is frequently very difficult both for itself and for a priest. Almost no one could get rid of the dust of these former illnesses. The symptoms of the past frequently come up to the surface and the unhappy feels himself a prisoner of the ex-habits. This confusion of the soul is born in the way of thinking and method of expression. Such people are often not capable of clearly formulating their soul state. They almost always are in the captivity of their moods, experiences, problems. They do not even know how to mention their sins, they beat around the bush, sometimes accept the fact that they do not know how to confess. They do not have clear consciousness of the sin, although they are not completely deprived of the moral feeling. Vice versa: this is the part of people with the high moral level, punctilious to themselves, incapable of any prejudicial act; they are in particular the carriers of the public honesty, the people with “crystal-clear souls.” But in the internal life they are in the captivity of reasoning and mundane wisdom. Their confession bears the rational character; they love to find reasons, not to agree with the given opinion. They are prepared to start debates at the confession and to keep to the “special opinion.” They bring their excellent dialectics to the confessionary table. From their diffuse confession (“somehow, to a certain degree, I thought, how to explain this?”) they pass over to the remote co-questioning. Without considering that people stand in the long line for confession, they go into the theological philosophizing, forgetting, that confession in no way is a convenient moment for this. One might hear: “The question about the sufferings of people terribly torments me, why God allows the sufferings of the innocent children?” And so on. They frequently complain of their “doubts.” Weak faith is typical of this category of the repentant.

Father A. Yelchaninov, spiritually experienced and thoughtful, wonderfully described them: “This is the sinful psychology, to be more precise, the mental mechanism of a fallen person. Instead of the internal understanding they possess the rational processes; instead of the confluence with the things — five blind feelings, truly “external”; instead of the perception of the whole — the analysis. The people, who are primitive, possess the strong instinct and are incapable of the analysis and logic, are much closer to the Heavenly image” (the Notes, p. 63).
The complacent conscience. Unfortunately, this is the one of the frequently met cases in the confessional practice. These are the people, regardless of the fact, if they are intellectual or poorly educated, possessing little conscience in the spiritual life, and affirmed in some religious complacency. The special spiritual prosperity is their distinguishing feature, nothing disturbs them. The code of their moral requirements is very scant, and they try not to think over the spiritual questions, considering this to be optional. They do not have spiritual hunger, and their moral horizon is much narrowed. It is possible to reproach them in certain spiritual self-love or at least in self-sufficiency.

These people very frequently: 1) mention their merits, external positions in the confession, firmly believe in their “services”; 2) they eagerly confess the sins of the close ones (the husband, wife, children, mother-in-law and so forth.) 3) more frequent they simply accept that they do not have any special sins, that they killed no one, stole nothing, and generally are culpable of nothing. They created themselves a whole series of the known moral frames, calming formulas and apologies. Leon Blua, the sharp and caustic writer, an uncompromising Christian, French catholic, called such people “the spiritual bourgeois.” This is not a social type, but the carrier of the known spiritual appearance, precisely, of calmness and religious complacency. Blua mercilessly chastised these bourgeois in all his novels, diaries, articles and notes. The spiritual bourgeois thinks and speaks with the general phrases, i.e., by the memorized light-weight formulas, with which he calmed his conscience of a very small volume, and lives on the basis of these “general phrases.” Blua wrote in the two volumes of “The Exegesis of the General Phrases”— one of the most caustic and scathing exposures of such complacent and unconscious in the religious sense people. Here are some examples of such “general phrases” from the collection of Blua and from other sources: “The sin is an overall phenomenon, it is not allowed to sin”; “Well? Essentially these are minor sins”; “The Gospel, you know, became obsolete and it is not applicable to our life”; “Of course, father, I am not a monk...”; “I as a cultural man...”; “Well, you know, God does not need all this, God does not require so much.”

All this testifies about the complete spiritual illiteracy, the elementary insensitivity to the spirit of the Gospel. A priest must explain much to such people, to make them understand, to reveal things. It is necessary to get busy with the basic catechization of such Christians, what is impossible during confession. It is necessary to dedicate to this subject repeated sermons, to instruct patiently and gradually for a long time.

Such people need to learn everything in the Christianity anew, that the sin is the disease of a soul, that sinful nature is a consequence of the common for all people first-born sin, that to fight with the sin is necessary at the very beginning of its appearance, that the division of sins into the small and big ones is damping dangerous for the spiritual life, that the sin is not only the evil matter alone, but it roots in the depths of the soul, in inveterate passions. One should explain them, that each Christian must be a devotee, ascetic, go with the narrow way, which leads to salvation, but not with the wide, directing to hell, that the Gospel and the Church cannot become obsolete, that this is the eternal notion and reality and that if they do not correspond to our habits, then neither the Church, nor the Gospel must be adapted to these habits, but the person should be subordinated to the discipline of the Church and the commandments of Christ. And many other things.

It is necessary to try to wake up in such people the aversion to the sin, the mortal memory, spiritual sobriety, submissiveness to the voice of the Church, desire of the spiritual regeneration and transfiguration into the “new creature” at any cost.
The over-anxious conscience. This type of the sinner is the complete opposition to the indifferent and irresponsible Christian, whose example was given above. This is also a very difficult case in the pastoral confessionary practice especially because it comes out of very pure and elevated motives. If the spiritual bourgeois does not understand, in what he can be culpable before God, then the possessor of the scrupulous conscience, precisely the opposite, is crushed by the consciousness of his blame. Such despondency with the sin makes from him the man who is spiritually weak, cowardly, and barren. He imagines himself the carrier of all possible sins, the vessel of evil, the slave of the devil, etc. He frequently begins to consider him doubting in faith, and in himself, in the mercy of God, and the possibility of salvation and so forth. This is the one of the forms of the spiritual disease, which can be cured only by an experienced confessor, but not a rigorist or exposer.

Metr. Anthony (The Confession, p. 28) determines them so: “these are the over-anxious people, who love to check their sensations and full of a constant bustling fear, not to miss or prove to be defective. It can seem to them that they themselves are sick, or that their children are ill, or are about to, etc., frequently they fall into even larger misfortune, into the so-called blasphemous thoughts, when in their head, completely against their will, to the thought of the name of Christ or the Mother of God are added different obscenities, and the more they fight with this, more persistently they throng in their heads. The inexperienced people with horror begin to consider themselves blasphemers, and inexperienced confessors tell in them about the heavy sin of blasphemy, “about the blasphemy on the Holy Spirit as the greatest of all sins.” This is the one of the sharpest sins of an over-anxious person, and his scrupulous conscience still discovers other sins, which suppress the unhappy and lost person.

Here are several examples of such a state: 1) “I am lost, I will sin anyway, I cannot fight with my inveterate habits”; 2) the fear to lead the neighbor into any temptation and to be responsible for the others’ sins, and as a consequence —the withdrawal from the contact with people; 3) the fear of sexual desecration by thoughts, visions, dreams, etc; 4) the fear of the fasting breach and so forth. All this testifies about some slavish fear before God and the unhealthy pettiness of his behavior. One clever and thoughtful Catholic confessor and good psychoanalyst Schulte says in his book that during confession he encountered people, who admit, that they fear to step onto the newspaper with the name of God, the cross or another sacred image in the street. This fear leads them to some stupor, almost to mania. So it happens in reality: such fears and thoughts border on with psychiatry, obsessive ideas, etc. He gives examples of the priests, who during divine service get overwhelmed with fear, not to forget to commemorate one or another name or to pronounce incorrectly the sanctifying formula, or not to forget to pick up from the diskos the crumbs of the body of Christ. Schulte calls these types of the over-anxious people “mementists, consecrationists, phragmentists.” Similar cases also occur in the orthodox priestly way of life. At confession such priests confess precisely the fact that they fear not to say any essential important formula or not to forget to hold one or another sacred action.

This pettiness leads to even larger small-mindedness and over anxiousness, kills every creative beginning, develops suppression by the sin and leads to the bigotry.

Here a confessor is expected to give wise word and correct orientation in staying awake spiritually and at the beginning of asceticism. It is necessary to cheer up the repentant carrier of the over-anxious conscience, to strengthen and sober him in every possible way.

Children. The special difficulties arise before a priest with the confession of small children. This happens for different reasons. First, not everyone has a special gift to talk with the children in the correct tone, truthful, natural. Secondly, there comes the atmosphere of confession. Parents do not always give the proper upbringing to a child, develop in him the church understanding, they do not know how to prepare him for confession at home, especially for the first one. Therefore it depends on a priest to arrange the correct attitude in children, to tell them about repentance, to explain everything connected with it, to wake the corresponding mood. The difficulties during confession arise from distinctiveness of the childish psychology, different from psychology of the adult people. If a priest erroneously speaks in the incorrect tone, for example, trying to imitate the imaginary childish world, then this will create the wrong approach to the soul of a child. Children feel naturalness and sincerity much more strongly than anyone else.

A priest must influence a child directly, without superfluous debates and abstract ideas. It is necessary to affect conscience, to wake it up, to call to sincerity with oneself. “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.” This must be suggested to children from the early childhood. Fear of God is not as a panicky feeling, but the reverent respect to the Heavenly Father, mixed with filial love. The utilitarian relation to the sin and virtues cannot be developed in a child with the help of juridical and mercenary notions: if you behave yourself well, then God will send you everything good, while if you conduct badly, then God will deprive you of this and that. This is unworthy of the Christian understanding of adoption by God and of the Evangelical sermon of love and morals. The Evangelical moral very frequently lacks exactly this equilibrium and concept of justice (the reward to vine-growers not on the human justice, but on the mercy and love of God). A priest must not misuse the threat: God will punish you. It is necessary to bring up the primacy of love in a child’s soul from the earliest years, but not of fear; of filial love, but not servitude and hireling. A confessor must find this equilibrium between the fear of God and filial love. It is necessary to gradually develop the truly Christian feelings of love for the Gospel, devotion to the Church, love for purity, holiness in the soul of a child, to give examples of the saints, who gave everything, including themselves, to God.

It is especially necessary to pay attention to the childish tendency towards lies, using of other people’s things, mockery and sarcasm towards the weak, tendency of children to torturing the animals, to the habit to wriggle and be generally insincere, to the inclination to roughness, etc.
Young people. If in the confession of children large enlightening for a priest is in their sincerity, openness, readiness to repent sincerely in their sins and behavior, and to cry easily from the consciousness of their faults, then with the confession of young people at the age of 16-20 years a priest frequently faces some internal reservation and unwillingness to allow the close approach of a confessor’s look. It may happen that a young man or a girl of this age come for confession on demand of their relatives, or following the former tradition, or even with a sincere desire and religious feeling, but already fuddled by the false shame of this age. However it can be — the largest obstacle for young people is some reticence, shyness, and distrust.

This is the most critical time of the entire life of the man. Here occurs an abrupt change in the soul of the man, formation of his nature, change of the previous sensations by the new ones, which passed through the hearth of the rationality of perception. This is “the time of hopes and tender melancholy”; period of romantics, stormy fascinations and bitter disappointments; the time of the first searches of the inquisitive mind, appearance of the first doubts, waking up of temptations of disbelief and distrust to the previous authorities. In these years mostly develops pride, self-love, settling of the superiority in everything, occur the first encounters with the mysteries of existence, both physiological and metaphysical; for the first time wakes up eros and the sex already gives to know about it. A young man and a girl are especially sensitive to everything false and fake in these years, and, how paradoxical it may seem, they easily yield to the temptation of poses, roles, phrases, far-fetched images: first they play the role of the denying and insurgents, then — of the disappointed or skeptics; they are tempted with everything mysterious, although the mind wants to subvert all, that is beyond its jurisdiction. “Secrets, the language of hints, reticence from the adults” impel a young soul to entrust everything secret to a diary, which in these years is written with a special ardor, but often the phrase and desire to play a role does not leave the young and “disappointed” romantic; he is not absolutely sincere with himself and still continues to pose on the pages of his diary.

This type of the repentant is especially difficult while confessing, since a careful priest fears not to touch the fragile vessel of the soul and some secret springs. A priest must beware of, on the one hand, not to insult young shyness and reticence, but on the other — not to prove himself to be too irresolute and negligent in confessing the thoughts. Nothing can be missed in the confession of such young man (girl), a priest should help the bashful conscience to tell about everything frankly, but at the same time he cannot too roughly invade the secret corners of the other soul and push one to the sin, saying perhaps something that did not even come into the head of the repentant, not to tempt, not to destroy some very secret peace.

If a priest generally knows how to approach sinners, he developed in himself a feeling of commiserating pastoral love, if he wants to be not a terrible exposer and moralist, ready for penance and lecture, but a real spiritual father, then he will succeed, even with the reticence of the collocutor, to make him inclined to himself, to suggest confidence and the need to tell sincerely about his sins and misdeeds. And then, after the usual confession in daily sins, when the one confessing becomes silent and does not dare to speak about the main thing himself (about the sin of lechery, or the habit to take other people’s property or even to steal money from the parents, etc.), here, in the form of a wise and experienced confessor’s advise, one must gently say: “Maybe, there’s a sin, which you feel shame to confess? It can be, you did not tell everything on the previous confessions? Or forgot, and then recalled and no longer dared to say it to the confessor? (Metr. Anthony, “The Confession,” p. 30). When “the repentant, seeing in you not the terrible exposer, but the commiserating to him friend, will finally say about his crime, do not terrify and do not be indignant, since he sufficiently repented that, but only complain, why he did not say about this earlier, on his previous confessions”(the same source).

It occurs, that for confession come young people, who arrived on the coercion of the family or for another reason and indicate, that they have nothing to say, that they do not believe in the need of the sacrament of confession, that in reality they do not properly believe in God, as they believed in the childhood. To this a priest should pay considerable attention and treat it with caution. Certainly, confession is not the convenient time for the theological debates, but it is necessary to do everything possible that this youngster would not leave a priest dissatisfied, wounded or offended. Then he can move aside from confession and the church for a long time, perhaps forever... It is necessary to appoint him the time for the particular conversation, to show him special attention and friendly love and with all methods to try to warm, interest him and show kindness. It is very important to arouse the interest to the questions of existence and sense of existence, to the goal of life, to the limitedness of this terrestrial circle and senselessness of its autonomous existence without dependence on the Highest Element. The doubtful young mind begins to protest against all dogmas and authorities; it requires reasonable and scientific explanation of its bewilderment. It is very reasonable to support the voice of this love to philosophizing. An inexperienced, poorly educated priest greatly fears the awakening of the “cursed questions” in young people, seeing a dangerous fermenting element in them. This is the perfect error. The appearance of demands and questions in young people is the beneficial soil for the answers from the religious point of view. They testify about interest, outstanding abilities. A priest needs to work a little more with such souls, to dedicate them his attention and time, to pray about them, to recall his own young time of “storms and impulses.” It is necessary to command trust to oneself. It is necessary, that they would see in a priest not the “servant of cult,” backward and old-fashioned, but such, that everybody would come to him with the open soul and see in him a sensitive, educated, but more important, sympathizing person, capable of understanding other people’s search. One should not repulse such young people from books and philosophical inquiries, but, on the contrary, open before them even larger horizons so that they would feel the entire limitedness and untruth of materialism and atheism.

“The Sense of Life,” the book of Count E.N.Trubetskoy, the books of contemporary to us apologists of the Christianity, who made their way from Marxism to idealism (Frank, Bulgakov, Berdyaev) will wonderfully help in these conversations.

The ill and dying. Confession on the sick bed always acquires the more acute nature than in the ordinary situation. The disease very frequently softens the man, subdues his pride and self-confidence and makes him more accessible to the pastoral influence and his word of edification. Often only on the hospital bed and in his last days of terrestrial existence the man properly and seriously approaches the questions of faith, the other world life, and remorse. Late repentance about the life spent in vain appears in many. Disappointment in all the past enthusiasm and ideals leads to the painful realization of uselessness of the entire life.

But frequently another thing happens. The disease is accepted simply and with the subdued consciousness, — “it must be that way.” A patient although regrets about everything that occurred, but attempts to purify his conscience confessing in these recent days or hours, he requests to help him in confusion, catches each word of a confessor, as of that sent from above, awaits edification, entreats to prepare him for the terrible hour of death. There is nothing more consoling in the activity of a confessor than to meet with such examples. When death finds the man subdued, meek and opened, then it is possible to speak with such a dying about the future life with especial benevolence, without trying to calm him with hopes as if for the fast recovery. He needs and must be told about the preparation for death, to soothe him with hope and faith for all covering mercy of God, suggest that he moves not into some unknown and distant country, but returns to his heavenly fatherland, to the loving and good Heavenly Father. He should say less gloomy words about eternal tortures, the terrible Judge, about inevitability of ordeals, and give little more comfort in the sorrowful dying minutes, little more words about the adoption by God, about God as the Father. It is useful to tell about the dying minutes of the Christian devotees of piety, about those, who easily died as for example, prot. A. Gorsky, the rector of Moscow Spiritual Academy, with the last words: “I want to go home, home” or Prof. Bolotov, who said: “how good are the dying minutes,” archim. Macarius Glukharev, the chief of Altai mission, who said: “Christ's light enlightens everything” or Christopher Columbus's word: “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit” or finally James Beme, the famous German mystic and the man of the great Christian purification: “now I go to Heaven.” A priest is called to ease the mortal melancholy in every possible way and give hope for the bright future, no matter how difficult the confession of the dying was. Very well, if a priest succeeds in softening the heart of the ill in order to give Communion to him during the disease several times.

But one can meet with the reverse picture. A priest meets sometimes with the complete spiritual deafness of the ill. This happens due to the bad influence of the youth, going into the liberal and materialist studies, maybe occultism or theosophical doctrines, complete absence of the church habits, probably, the dissolute life, excesses and any kind of sins, — all this eliminated from the man the similarity to God. Death disease is only senseless suffering for him, and he looks at death only as at the physiological phenomenon, one in the line of the others. Frequently in such people awakens the irrepressible bitterness against all; the inevitability of death leads them into the powerless fury; envy and hatred for the healthy is spilled; conscience, damped from the old years, feels nothing spiritual. The voice of a priest does not reach the soul, but sometimes excites in such embittered people the desire to say something evil and insulting or, in the better case, to smile sarcastically and to state that the spiritual comfort, Communion, confession are not his concern, and he has quit with God, the Church and priests long before. It is necessary especially intensely pray for such unhappy, appeal to God of their wonderful conversion at least in the last minute. One should never despair and it follows to visit such patients in making the most repeated rounds of the hospital again, but to be careful, “not to stick,” in order not to give them occasion to be embittered and to blaspheme sacred things once more.

Generally with the sick a priest must be especially tactful. However, from the first time, if the sick himself does not request, one should not start speaking about the necessity of Communion; it is possible to ask about the disease and the mood, about different everyday things, if the sick requires material support, to try to help him from the charitable sums of the parish. Then it is possible to ask, if he desires to obtain religious soothing, to pray, maybe to confess and to take Communion.

Pastoral wisdom and tact require all this. The ill frequently are over-anxious, they fear, that Communion is the sign of the close end. Very frequently one can hear: “I am not going to die... I do not feel myself that bad... well, when I feel worse, than I shall ask you, father, to confess me.” It is necessary to count with this, nobody should constrain anyone in the religious life, but it is necessary to insist in the proper time. The great responsibility lies on a priest, if someone from his flock dies without confession and Communion.

Therefore carefully, delicately and without intimidation it is necessary to strive that the sick themselves would ask for the help of a priest. But a pastor must bring the words of joy, hope, mercy, Evangelical light, but not inquisitorial cruelty, or juridical approach to the sin, not accusatory attitude to the human infirmity.