My response centered around "the priesthood of all believers". This is, after all, a fairly significant theological tenet for protestants. But it's also something that has, over the years, seen less press in protestant circles. The idea itself is built upon 1 Peter 2.9 and Rev 5.10.
Understood in one way, the idea is that new covenant believers (unlike old covenant Israel) were all priests so we needed no priests (implied: what the flip are those Catholics playing at!).
But, of course, 1 Peter 2.9 is actually a quotation from Exodus 19.5-6, in which God calls Israel a kingdom of priests. So the notion of the community as a priesthood is hardly a way of contrasting the old and the new covenants. Old covenant Israel was just as much as "royal priesthood" as new covenant Israel and the nations in Christ.
The idea in crass presentations of the priesthood of all believers (and I am not referring here to the sophisticated presentations) is that in the old covenant the people needed their relationship with God to be mediated by a priest but we no longer do. Mediation is now cast aside.
But it isn't.
New covenant believers have no unmediated access to God. We have a new and better mediator -- Christ Jesus -- but unmediated access we most certainly don't have. One need only read the Book of Hebrews.
The priesthood of all believers also doesn't mean, in good Protestant individualist fashion, that "John is a priest, Jane is a priest, Colin is a priest, Catherine is a priest, ..." and so on. We are all, in this mindset, as individuals, priests. But in both the OT and NT texts it is the community that has a priestly function. The Church is a royal priesthood.
And there's the thing for that pardon in that liturgy: The idea of the royal priesthood is often interpreted to mean that we now need no mediation in our relationship with God but that is not the point of the biblical image. The thing about being a priest is not that you have unmediated access to God but that you mediate in some sense between God and others. So if the Church is spoken of as a priesthood, then the point is that the Church in some sense mediates between God and ... others.
Don't mishear me. I'm not saying that we don't have access to God "within the veil" -- we have unrivaled access mediated through Christ. My point is simply that the notion of the priesthood of all believers has been misused within some sections of Protestantism.
The Church is called to mediate grace to one another in Christ. Such mediation is a corporate mediation, though, and not simply the purview of an ordained clergy person.
In fact, I'd argue that ordination is only representative. The ordained clergy is representative of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Invested with the Church's ministry, a clergy re-presents Christ. But it is the Body of Christ, the Church, that mediates God's grace to one another. So when the community issues pardon, it's a genuine pardon -- whether an ordained clergy person does the pardoning or not.