[kuh
n-fesh-uhn] 
| 1. | acknowledgment; avowal; admission: a confession of incompetence. |
| 2. | acknowledgment or disclosure of sin or sinfulness, esp. to a priest to obtain absolution. |
| 3. | something that is confessed. |
| 4. | a formal, usually written, acknowledgment of guilt by a person accused of a crime. |
| 5. | Also called confession of faith. a formal profession of belief and acceptance of doctrines, as before being admitted to church membership. |
| 6. | the tomb of a martyr or confessor or the altar or shrine connected with it. |
| con·fes·sion (kən-fěsh'ən) n.
|
In some churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church, a sacrament in which repentant sinners individually or as a group privately confess their sins in front of a priest and receive absolution from the guilt of their sins.
In the first few centuries of Christianity, repentant sinners were assigned public penances: sinners had to stay outside the entrance of the church and ask the people going inside to pray for them. The period of public penance could be shortened through an indulgence.
The title of two well-known autobiographies: that of Augustine from the fourth century, describing his early years and his conversion to Christianity, and that of the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
