Posted on 06/24/2007 12:58:20 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
Albany -- Saturday afternoon Mass at St. Catherine of Siena draws 400 people. The confession period beforehand draws two.
The second makes it just before closing time. It's been about three months since Mariam O'Brien's last confession, and a few days since she skipped Mass.
The 84-year-old shuts the door and enters a soothing room with a red carpet, a box of tissues and a priest, the Rev. Kenneth Doyle, who confesses that hearing confessions is one of his favorite duties. She steps out minutes later.
"I feel like the Lord is listening to me through the priest," O'Brien says outside the confessional, talking candidly with a reporter about things her priest is forbidden from saying to anyone. "I get consolation from it, and blessings."
This scene in Albany speaks volumes about the state of confession in America. The sacrament, once a pillar of Catholic practice, is crumbling. And the way people confess, both what they say and where they say it, is shifting from the old laundry lists of minor misdeeds recited in austere anonymous boxes.
Only 26 percent of Catholics go to confession at least once a year, according to a 2005 poll by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. A University of Notre Dame study in the early 1980s put the number at 74 percent.
It's an alarming trend for Catholic leaders, who see confession as essential to spiritual health. What's at stake is a route, laid out in the Bible, to examine your conscience, overcome sin and achieve grace.
Signs of concern keep popping up. Pope Benedict XVI talked up the sacrament in at least three recent public appearances, even casting it in modern psychological terms as a remedy for "guilt complexes."
And earlier this year, the Washington Archdiocese tried to lure folks back to confession with a marketing campaign -- catch phrase: "The Light Is On For You" -- that slapped ads on buses and subway cars, and passed out how-to guides and wallet-size contrition cards.
Confession has become so foreign to so many Catholics that priests like Doyle keep sample acts of contrition on hand so sinners can read aloud words they once would have known by heart.
"In the old days the priest wouldn't help you," said the Rev. Gerald Mudd, 67, of St. Francis Chapel in Colonie. "You'd get hell if you didn't know it."
Doyle, also 67, remembers how it used to be when he and his buddies biked to Sacred Heart Church on Saturdays as kids in Troy.
The dark box. The screened-off priest. The second-grader's fear of that first confession.
Now confessionals are sometimes called reconciliation rooms. And sitting for an interview in the one at St. Catherine of Siena recently, Doyle estimated that 80 to 90 percent of penitents choose to come clean in a chair facing him rather than behind an optional partition. ("I have trouble kneeling anyway," one 78-year-old said.)
The Vatican approved this style in the 1970s. The idea was that worshippers, abandoning confession in droves, would find such sessions more meaningful.
"That option certainly didn't bring the large numbers back," said James O'Toole, a history professor at Boston College who studies confession.
An emerging confession style that is attracting interest -- and the scorn of Catholic leaders -- replaces the whisper of priests with the click-clack of computer keys. Protestant churches and secular groups have created Web sites that let users anonymously cyber-dish their confessions to the world.
And what confessions!
Nothing like the G-rated fare that Doyle, who doubles as chancellor for public information of the Albany Diocese, typically hears in his confessional. Those Catholics who still confess regularly "tend to be the ones who are most faithful to their obligations," he said.
So parishioners fess up to not praying enough or not being thankful enough for their blessings. Husbands regret failing to be understanding enough of wives. Parents lament not being patient enough with their kids.
"It's not very often that I meet some people that come in and say, 'I killed the guy next door,' " Doyle said.
You probably won't find any murderers coming clean on confession Web sites like the evangelical service www.mysecret.tv.
But you will find a husband who leads a double life of secret gay hookups. A man disgusted by his addiction to masturbation. A recovering drug addict who molested his little brother.
These Web sites are a new phenomenon. So why, to borrow O'Toole's phrase, has Catholic confession "fallen through the floor"?
"There's a cluster of things," O'Toole said. "People didn't like to do it. And once they stopped thinking that they'd go to hell if they didn't, they could kind of get out of the habit."
Ask Doyle the same question, and he points to one primary explanation: a diminishing sense of sin.
He feels our society chalks up misbehavior to psychological factors. Or socioeconomic influences. Or family upbringing.
"Anything," said Doyle, "but personal responsibility."
O'Toole also pointed to a new emphasis since the 1960s on the social dimensions of sin, the notion that sin isn't so much "I punched my sister" as it is things like racism, sexism and damaging the environment. Stuff that's generally harder to talk about in the confessional.
The professor added that rates of Communion skyrocketed after Vatican II in the 1960s, while rates of confession plummeted. Catholics, he said, got the idea that the Eucharist itself provided forgiveness. For minor sins, Doyle said, that's true.
All of that is much more complicated than the simple reason one parishioner offered for why she prays every night but hasn't confessed in at least 15 years.
"I feel like I don't need somebody between me and God," said Ginny Hartkern, 59, of St. Brigid's Church in Watervliet. "I think you can speak directly to God. You don't need an intermediary."
For those who do, the old ways live on at St. Mary's Church, incorporated in 1796 and the state's second-oldest Catholic parish. It doesn't get more traditional than these confessionals: the lacquered wood, the mustard-yellow curtains, the complete anonymity behind them.
And for parishioners like Ruth, who gave her age as "over 80," this is how confession should be. You remove the anonymity, she said, and "too much personality" gets involved. And doesn't looking at a priest change what you're willing to tell him? "They teach the kids now to go face to face," said Ruth, of Colonie, who did not want her last name published. "I prefer the way I have always gone, behind the screen."
For a newer twist, visit the commercial hub of Colonie's Wolf Road, where if you didn't read the sign you might mistake St. Francis Chapel for the nearby tanning salon.
Here in this strip mall, the Franciscan friars have figured out a two-step formula for keeping confession viable:
1. Make it available where the people are.
2. Be there for them all day.
Instead of just Saturday afternoons or by appointment, the friars are there for you weekdays, too.
They split the day into shifts that end at 7:30 p.m. This lets them hear an astounding volume of confessions by today's standards -- up to 50 a day.
They don't even have to wait in the box for penitents. Every time one enters the confessional, it triggers a sensor that rings a bell in the church office. This happened repeatedly during an interview with Mudd one recent afternoon. Each time, the brown-robed friar excused himself and slipped into the confessional through a back door.
A few minutes from St. Francis, but worlds away theologically, is Lifechurch.tv.
You won't find a confessional there. Most Sundays, you won't even hear a live sermon.
The tennis-bubble-like dome off Sand Creek Road is the "Albany campus" of an Oklahoma-based network of evangelical churches. Lifechurch beams the sermons of its senior pastor to screens at its far-flung member campuses.
Lifechurch launched the confession Web site www.mysecret.tv. Its users include Albany worship pastor Joe Dingwall, who was online in the church's dartboard-equipped office one day when others' confessions motivated him to post his own.
That we're-all-going-through-the-same-thing camaraderie is why Dingwall, 26, prefers sharing his sins online to airing them in a Catholic confessional, something he has tried despite not being Catholic.
Catholic authorities have condemned online confessionals. The Vatican advised bishops and priests not to use them three years ago, the reason being that "ill-intentioned people such as hackers" might read the confessions and use them for nefarious purposes like blackmail.
So is there any bright spot in the Catholic confession landscape?
Yes. Several Catholic priests agreed that the few people who still use the sacrament are using it really well.
Today's penitents are far more likely to talk about "sins of omission," as Doyle put it. People might lament their failures to put in enough effort at work, say, or to be generous with their money or time.
The Rev. Paul Smith, sacramental minister at churches in Altamont and Berne, said parishioners now delve into things like bigotry -- into the attitudes that underlie their misbehavior.
"They're willing to go deeper," he said.
We do have frequent Adoration and Benediction but not 24/7.
Our Rosary group prays together after Sunday Mass every week.
In addition, we also had the Vocation Cross program, where families/individuals signs up to take the Vocation Cross home for one week at a time, and specifically pray for vocations.
The TLM priest constantly drafts people of young and old to serve the Mass, some vocation will come out of it no doubt. Our pastor is always very supportive and preaches on vocations often, keep reminding us jokingly about the typical vocation prayer to stay away from ... “Oh Lord, my dear Lord, thank you for granting us good priests. May our neighbors see the light and send more of their children to the seminary. Amen”
We are doing more than most parishes, but still not nearly enough, we could do more.
Nonsense!
The only ones paralyzed were the sinners who did not want to face their sins in front of their Brothers. The ones that did not want to confess their sins learned to fool themselves thinking they could psychologically convince themselves that they could discipline themselves on their own.
Look around! History shows that Sin is out of control
If you were around in the early church you would have had to make open confessions in front of the whole congregation.
Little wonder there was a whole lot less sinning going on amongst Christians during that time period
What year did one on one confession in a box begin?
It began later. So What!
Are you open to confess your sins to the whole congregation like the early Church did?
I would do it.
Do I pray for forgiveness of sins every day? Sure.
Confession helps me to focus not to sin.
Why would you have a problem with that?
THAT is the point.
It is not a biblical practice.
1Cr 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Hbr 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Tts 2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself
Rom 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
...Barrett and Johnson call themselves Charismatic, part of the Holy Spirit movement in old-line denominations, and their estimate that the related Pentecostal and Charismatic movements encompass 524 million believers will be one of their work's more controversial statistics.
Many thanks for the reference. If you're right, the origin for the "33,000 Protestant denominations" claim would be the The World Christian Encyclopedia, a two-volume work edited and directed by Mr. Barrett. And as you can see at the link, it's not exactly a valued commodity. The original work cost $350.00, but you can get a used copy for less than ten cents on the dollar.
It bears repeating that, according the article you reproduced, this "33,000" number makes no mention of "Protestants" but rather is inclusive of all "Christian" denominations, including Catholic organizations. In other words, if Catholics are going to continue claiming this as the number of "Protestant denominations", then they're quietly admitting that Catholics are Protestant as well. Or they can agree with the lead review of Barrett's work, which anyone can read on Amazon.com for themselves:
...the major dilemma of this encyclopedia: the reader cannot tell what is being reported as an empirically derived fact or accepted by theological faith. The editors of this multivolume work (Barrett, missiometrics, Regents Univ.; George Thomas Kurian, coeditor of Encyclopedia of the Future; and Todd M. Johnson, director, World Evangelization Research Ctr.) state in the introduction that their approach is empirical and scientific (rather than normative, philosophical, or poetic) and covers the totality of global Christianity, yet the underlying theme is the evangelization of the world. Volume 1 offers a global overview of Christianity, with relevant data. The introduction begins with the statement "The phenomenon of Christianity is here described and analyzed from some 40 standpoints, into 40 parts." What follows is an infuriating use of categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories, which divide and subdivide parts to give the statistics the appearance of being scientifically derived. To make matters more confusing, the authors invent, and freely use, a maddening and confusing array of neologisms such as geostatus, globalistics, and futurescan. All this leads to lists and lists of statistics and facts. Among these: in the year 14.5 billion B.C.E., God created dark matter and black holes, and beyond the "eschatofuture" of 10 to the 100 power year (the year google), God creates infinite parallel universes. On a more human level, readers are told that the "structures of sin" for the Decade of Evangelism (A.D. 1990-2000) had a total cost of $9.250 trillion U.S. dollars. There is no workable index for finding the facts or the statistics listed. Volume 2 is an alphabetized listing of the world's countries, and each entry is a readable narrative about its history, "liberty," and religions populations. This is the most useful of the volumes, but it suffers from the shadow of doubt cast by the first volume concerning the reliability of the encyclopedia's facts. Volume 3 can be best described as an explosion of numbers, categories, cross-listings of what the editors define as "miniprofiles" of at least 10,000 distinct religions, 12,600 peoples, 13,500 languages, 7000 cities, and 3030 major civil divisions in 238 countries. What results is hundred of pages of utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect, culturally biased, and anthropologically useless (such as categorizing people by using moribund race-defining terms as Australoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid and further subdividing those into "stylized colors" such as black, grey, brown, red, tan, white, and yellow). There is a need for a comparative survey of world Christian churches and other religions. This is not it. Not recommended.
-Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
[emphasis mine]
Thank you, Annie, for posting that information!
As previously stated, there is only ONE Catholic Church + some organizations (which don't count as denominations), hence that leaves 33,000+ "Christian" Church denominations. End of argument!
I'm afraid not. That's not how the originator of the "33,000" number sees it. He wasn't counting "Protestant" denominations.
The confessional "box" is not biblical; the practice is. Jesus granted the Apostles His authority to forgive sins.
In John 20:23 - Jesus says, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." In order for the apostles to exercise this gift of forgiving sins, the penitents must orally confess their sins to them because the apostles are not mind readers. The text makes this very clear.
In James 5:16 - James clearly teaches us that we must “confess our sins to one another,” not just privately to God. James 5:16 must be read in the context of James 5:14-15, which is referring to the healing power (both physical and spiritual) of the priests of the Church. Hence, when James says “therefore” in verse 16, he must be referring to the men he was writing about in verses 14 and 15 – these men are the ordained priests of the Church, to whom we must confess our sins.
So did the first Christians practice the Sacrament of Confession? We know from The Early Church Fathers that they did.
“In church confess your sins, and do not come to your prayer with a guilt conscience. Such is the Way of Life...On the Lord's own day, assemble in common to break bread and offer thanks; but first confess your sins, so that your sacrifice may be pure." Didache, 4:14,14:1 (c. A.D. 90).
"Father who knowest the hearts of all grant upon this Thy servant whom Thou hast chosen for the episcopate to feed Thy holy flock and serve as Thine high priest, that he may minister blamelessly by night and day, that he may unceasingly behold and appropriate Thy countenance and offer to Thee the gifts of Thy holy Church. And that by the high priestly Spirit he may have authority to forgive sins..." Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, 3 (A.D. 215)
Very true ,Dear Sister Nyer.
Are you dodging the T-storms coming through our area?
A few more examples of the Church Fathers
CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (c. 250 AD)
Of how much greater faith and salutary fear are they who...CONFESS THEIR SINS TO THE PRIESTS OF GOD in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience....Indeed, he but sins the more if, thinking that God is like man, he believes that he can escape the punishment of his crime by not openly admitting his crime....I beseech you, brethren, LET EVERYONE WHO HAS SINNED CONFESS HIS SIN while he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, WHILE THE SATISFACTION AND REMISSION MADE THROUGH THE PRIEST ARE STILL PLEASING BEFORE THE LORD. (The Lapsed 28)
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (c. 387 AD)
Priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels. It was said to them: “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose, shall be loosed” [Matt 18:18]. Temporal rulers have indeed the power of binding; but they can only bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with a bond which pertains to the soul itself and transcends the very heavens. Did [God] not give them all the powers of heaven? “Whose sins you shall forgive,” he says, “they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” [John 20:23]. What greater power is there than this? The Father has given all judgment to the Son. And now I see the Son placing all this power in the hands of men [cf. Matt 9:8; 10:40; John 20:21]. (The Priesthood 3:5)
AUGUSTINE (c. 395 AD)
When you shall have been baptized, keep to a good life in the commandments of God so that you may preserve your baptism to the very end. I do not tell you that you will live here without sin, but they are venial sins which this life is never without. Baptism was instituted for all sins. For light sins, without which we cannot live, prayer was instituted....But do not commit those sins on account of which you would have to be separated from the body of Christ. Perish the thought! For those whom you see doing penance have committed crimes, either adultery or some other enormities. That is why they are doing penance. If their sins were light, daily prayer would suffice to blot them out....In the Church, therefore, there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in baptisms, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance. (Sermon to Catechumens
There are over 35,000 registered Protestant Churches in the USA.
That is just not true. In fact, it is an extremely laughable and ridiculous number. Here is why I say that:
First, a denomination is defined in the American Heritage dictionary as: A large group of religious congregations united under a common faith and name and organized under a single administrative and legal hierarchy.
If there are 35,000 denominations, then by definition, one would find all of them in each of the 50 states. But we will be much kinder than that. Giving the benefit of the doubt, and using just 10%, that would be 3,500 in each state. That seems reasonable, right? That still would not be what I would consider a LARGE group of congregations, but, just to give even MORE benefit of the doubt to this figure, let's use a figure of 2% of these denominations in each state, so we just divide 35,000 by 50.
So, we will say there are 700 of these "denominations" in each state. That of course would mean that NONE of the denominations cross state borders or that only 2% of these "denominations" cross state borders. Of course that is a unrealistically low number according to the definition, but we will use that number anyone. So, here is some math:
. Since Indianapolis is supposed to be a fairly decent cross section because most companies do their market research in the midwest, particularly Indianapolis, I chose that city to work with (plus I live there and looked up some stuff in the phone book!). The population of Indiana is roughly 6,3000,000 and has about 650 cities and towns where Indianapolis is the largest and has a population of 785,000, or 12%. According to an article in crosswalk, about 50% are protestant. There are about 720 protestant churches in Indianapolis listed under 35 denominations. Assuming then that everyone who calls thems protestant goes to church regularly, there are 545 people who attend each of these churches each week. You could also then say that there are an average of 20 congregations or churches per denomination.
If there are only 35 denominations in Indianapolis, which is about 12% of the state population, then according to the number of denominations and the low estimate we are going to use, then that means there are 665 other denominations in the rest of the state that are NOT represented in Indianapolis, which, of course, is just as a ridiculous assumption as the low numbers we have been using. So then, for the rest of Indiana, or 649 cities and towns, we have 665 denominations, or roughly 1 different denomination per city or town. If those towns DO have the 35 that are in Indianapolis, then each OTHER city or town must have 36 different denominations, BUT, each other town MUST have a different one besides the 35 found in Indianapolis.
Now lets take a small city, Anderson, which has a population of about 72,000 and is about the 6th or 7th largest. That would give it a protestant population of 36,000. It would have to have about 36 different denominations which would mean about 1000 people per denomination. And of course, in order to have a LARGE group, we could, again, using a low number, call that 10 congregations. That would leave 100 people in each congregation each week.
The average population per city in Indiana, rounded UP is 10,000. Again, using the figure of 36 denominations (each having the 35 of Indianapolis, plus one unique one of their own), for the 5,000 protestants, would be 138 people per denomination per town. Divide that by just 5, even a more ridiculus small number for a large group, give you 28 people in each congregation!
Don't like those numbers? Lets do some more. Just taking the US population to be about 302 million (151 million protestants) in those 35,000 denominations. Assuming a denomination, a LARGE group of congregations averages 20 congregations, then you have 8600 (rounded UP) people per denomination. If there are only 20 congregations per denomination, then at the most, each state could only have 40% of the denominations. Then, each state would have an average of 215 per denomination in the entire state! If Indiana is a thumbnail average of 650 cites, then each denomination has 0.33 persons per town or city. Remember that is if only 20% of the denominations are in each state. If they all were, it would be .02 persons! Yikes!
The number of 35,000 Protestant denominations is so easily found to be ridiculous. Anyone who doe any math can easily see that number is thoroughly debunked. And anyone who quotes that number, obviously does not corroborate or research their article. It is a patently false arguement. Even if the often used number of 20,000 denominations in the US increases the number to only 376 per person per denomination per state). If they use it for the entire world, multiply by a factor of 20, or just 7500 per state and that is just as silly at best. At worst, it is a deliberate out and out lie by twisting of facts and definitions aimed at evoking an emotional response and a fear factor. And anyone who quotes that number deserves to be rebuked.
I agree.
What would be a reasonable number?
I would have no idea on what would be a qualified number for I am nowhere near qualifed to give even an intellect guess. But what I do know is that number is ridicuosly high and those who believe it ought to have their heads examined, or at least the batteries on their calulators checked. :)
And you always stop short of the verse that demonstrates how completely unBiblical your false teachings are:
Jn 20:21-23 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
Nothing in Scripture says that ministry was temporary, and the Church Christ founded through those same Apostles has never understood it to have been.
You have FReepmail.
While it’s true that a person can always approach Jesus with sorrow and contrition for sins, and ask for forgiveness, it is not the same thing as going to confession. Humans need some formats, some structure to their lives to accomplish most things. This is true with schooling, cooking, typing, etc..
Confession is a wonderful sacrament which includes a prayer to the Holy Spirit asking for help in the examination of conscience. It then allows the penitent as much time as is necessary to examine his/her conscience. This includes prayers, review of the commandments, etc.. A true love of Jesus as Savior will be enhanced further as one contemplates the human weaknesses we all have.
Speaking with a spiritual adviser in the confessional is helpful for one’s soul. The interaction is cathartic, and spiritual advice in overcoming one’s flaws is always helpful. The final blessing and absolution of sins is straight from the bible - “whose sins you have forgiven are forgiven them; whose sins you have retained are retained.”
Confession (the Sacrament of Reconciliation) is a grace-filled experience, and one leaves the confessional feeling strengthened against the snares of Satan.
Wonderful answer Gumdrop. I am not Catholic, but what you said sounds fine to me. (As long as one confesses to Jesus as well.)
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