How can Catholic priests claim to forgive sins? Doesn’t the Bible teach that “only God can forgive sins”?

Speaker 1:

You are listening to Shameless Popery with Joe Heschmeyer, a production of Catholic Answers.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Hi, and welcome to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Today I want to explore sacramental confession, the idea of confessing your sins to a priest, and particularly I want to address a really common objection that I’ve heard that is in one sense, a biblical objection that only God can forgive sins.

Now I think this is an important objecti…