The outward acts—usually by clerically-approved acts of humiliation, in private or public—by which a person showed his/her inward contrition for sins committed. It is considered a sacrament by the Roman Catholic Church.
While there can be great disciplinary value in the practice, it has been much abused in at least two ways. First, the emphasis began to shift to the outward acts with no true repentance. The practice of indulgences became one of the consequences of this shift. Second, penance came to be used as public show of one-up-manship, especially in the struggles for power between earthly-minded popes and the secular princes.
©ALBERITH