V2nd - Chapter 11 - the tone

[alice wellintown]

kelber wrote:
> What's Fausto's motivation for these Confessions?  They're adressed to Paola.  "What kind of monster are you?' he asks, jokingly, affectionately.  In trying to explain himself, he's also hoping Paola will be different.  He confesses to save her soul.

Does it work that way? Can one Confess to save another's soul?
Catholic Confession, so I was taught as a young nun, involves  a
self-accusation before a priest and the remission and absolution and
punishment of/for sin. For Catholics like Fausto this is no mere
ceremony but a sacrament where the presence and Grace of Christ is
imparted to a Soul. The penitent is at once the accuser, the person
accused, and the witness, while the priest pronounces judgment and
sentence. Also, the sacrament as a dispensation of Divine mercy
facilitates the pardoning of sin, but by no means renders sin less
hateful or its consequences less dreadful. And, only a Priest, because
he has the Church Keys of Peter, has the power of Sacrament for the
deliverance from sin.

His hope, much like Eliot's in Ash Wednesday, is allusive and
ambiguous, and involves a conversion, not of Paoloa, but of Fausto.