Penance and repentance share a root but split Christianity over deeds
Penance and repentance grew from the same Latin word for a change of heart, yet during the Reformation they came to stand for rival answers to one question: does forgiveness depend on what you do, or does it arrive first, before any act of making amends?
In dictionary terms, penance means the deeds done out of sorrow for wrongdoing, while repentance is the inner regret itself, and only repentance carries a resolve to behave better in future. Both come from Latin paenitentia. Protestant reformers, holding that people are justified by faith alone, argued that repentance is a change of the whole moral outlook and that God's forgiveness comes before it, with no reparation by works required. John Calvin put it bluntly: without forgiveness, nobody pleases God.
Catholic and Orthodox traditions kept an outward side. Believers take on acts of self-discipline as tokens of remorse, especially during Lent and Holy Week and, less so, during Advent. The gentler kinds include time given to prayer or spiritual reading; harder ones include fasting and giving up alcohol or tobacco. Some extreme public displays at Holy Week have been criticised by Filipino bishops as possible spiritual vanity.
The New Testament sets out no ritual for reconciliation, but as early Christians waited longer than expected for the Second Coming, they needed a way to readmit members expelled for serious sins. Bishops declared forgiveness once repentance was clear. In Catholic teaching this became the sacrament also called confession or reconciliation, one of two sacraments of healing. The penitent examines conscience, feels contrition, confesses to a priest and performs an assigned act of satisfaction; serious sins must be confessed within a year at most.
Theologians argued over where penance fits among the virtues. Bonaventure tied it to justice, while most followed Thomas Aquinas in treating it as a virtue of its own. In 1966 Pope Paul VI described it as a personal religious act aimed at love of God, fasting for God's sake rather than one's own.
Source: Penance
