Penance

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Penance. In Christianity, punishment (Lat., poena) for sin. By the 3rd cent. the system had emerged in which the sinner, after public confession, was placed, once only in his or her life, in an order of ‘penitents’, excluded from communion and committed to a severe course of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving for a specified time. This scarcely workable system gave place to another, originally Celtic, in which confession was made privately. Public penance continued for notorious offences. From all this developed the Catholic practice of confession, absolution, and light penance.

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