A couple of months ago, I announced that my good friend, Louis Markos, had launched the A to Z of C. S. Lewis on his website (http://www.civitate.org/markos/). Inspired by his example, I’m launching the A to Z of Blessed John Henry Newman on this site. Over the coming weeks, using The Quotable Newman, newly published by Sophia Institue Press, as my source, I’m going to work my way through the alphabet of wisdom with the indefatigable Father of the Catholic Revival.
 
A is for Absolution:
 
Though your conscience witnesses against you, He can disburden it; whether you have sinned less or whether you have sinned more, He can make you as clean in His sight and as acceptable to Him as if you had never gone from Him. Gradually will He destroy your sinful habits, and at once will He restore you to His favour. Such is the power of the Sacrament of Penance, that, be your load of guilt heavier or be it lighter, it removes it, whatever it is.