Development and Validation of Attitude towards Sacrament of Reconciliation scale among Catholic youths: roles of Self esteem and Gender

Abstract

Sacrament of Rreconciliation has drawn much attention in the last decade to catholic ethics studies on account of its focus on reconciliation of humans to grandeur of God’s mercy with their own initiative. Extant literature calls for a better understanding of the underlying mechanism for Sacrament of   Reconciliation to positively influence God’s mercy. We propose personality and individual difference variables to contribute to people’s sustainable endorsement of Sacrament of Reconciliation, by empirically studying the dispositional mechanism of personality trait and individual difference variables, namely self esteem and gender and  Sacrament of Reconciliation .Our data comprise of sample of 160 catholic youth organization  members The result from exploratory factor analysis showed that attitude to Sacrament of Reconciliation has multi- dimensions, namely sacramental abhorrence, sacramental adherence, priestly impression and undue absenteeism. It was found that those youth with low self-esteem show more positive attitude to the Sacrament of reconciliation. These are laity already dipped in their assessment of self and struggle under the burden of guilt of sin or uneasyiness of conscience. The Sacrament of Reconciliation becomes a rediscovering path back to the Lord, a source of true interior peace and meaning for the penitent. The Sacrament of Reconciliation must, therefore, be placed at the center of social and religious life once more so as to enable people touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands.