The Confessor's Authority Over The Apostolates Summary

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The Confessor’s Authority Over the Apostolates Tertullian on the Confessor's Attitudes in the Third Century
Tertullian of Carthage had lived and died before the onset of the Decius persecution;however; his analysis of the confessor’s attitude towards their supernatural spiritual authority remains accurate and relevant in the several decades that followed his death. According to him, the presence of confessors had been an ongoing problem within the community. Tertullian primarily contributes the laxity of the attitudes of the apolsolates at that time towards performing a penance so that they could be reconciled to the Catholic Church to the willingness of the confessors to grant absolution indiscriminately. He claims that the reason the confessor's had openly granted absolution was because of the “attendant adulation”. However, Tertullian stands firm in his argument that the confessors are not authorized to provide absolution. “They chose or elected themselves simply by virtue of their activity, recognition as an authentic confessor was by no means automatic.”

The Confessors Asserted Their Authority to Reconcile the Apostles to the Church …show more content…

These particular apostolates sought out confessors, so that they would intercede and endorse their re-communion with the Catholic Church. On this matter, Cyprian writes that the apostolates are, “Thus self-contented without justice, their minds stricken with foolish madness, they despise the commands of God, they leave their wounds unattended, they refuse to do penance. When they should have stood firm, they fell, when they should have thrown themselves prostrate before God, they think themselves to

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