I hear confessions

I am a priest. I hear confessions. I have heard thousands of confessions. I also go to confession myself quite regularly, but that is not the angle from which I am writing here. I want to write from the angle of the confessor, not from that of the confessing.

I do so for the sake of the thousands of Catholics who need a good confession, but don't make one because of what they think might go on in the mind of the confessor while they tell their sins. Also for the sake of the thousands who are not Catholics and who have been taught to think that just about the most horrible institution in the world is that in which one human being is supposed to tell another his sins. Well, here are some of the things, 'that go on in the mind of the confessor.'

Of course, I cannot (I say 'cannot' instead of 'may not' deliberately, because the thing I speak of is so near to a physical impossibility) say anything that would reveal or publish the sins of any individual. That is what is called 'the seal of confession. ' You have to lock up in your heart what you hear. You have to be ready to stand up to inquisitors, dictators, persecutors, and dare them to order you to the gallows or the firing squad or solitary confinement rather than tell them anything about anybody's confession. I suppose every priest has, at some time or other, had the dream of glory involving brave and stony silence in the midst of a third degree about confessions he has heard.

Actually, however, it isn't so hard to keep the seal of confession. I said I have heard thousands of confessions. I have never kept track of the totals, though we are asked to count the number heard on specific occasions. I would roughly guess that I have heard many more than one hundred thousand confessions in twenty odd years, which would be less than five thousand a year. Some years, I know, they were many more. Anyway, that comes to an average of about one hundred a week, and I've often wondered if there are any other professional men in the world, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, etc., who in any given week treat the problems of a hundred different clients. I suppose doctors behind the front lines of a battlefield during a war do: But they would call this 'emergency treatment.' For hundreds of priests, one hundred or more confessions a week is normal practice for years. However, the point I want to make is that you don't have much capacity for remembering the sins of any individual when you are hearing one hundred or more confessions a week. All the stories blur together. The people whose confessions you have heard become like a crowd that you see only from a distance. You can see different heads and hats and heights, but you cannot distinguish features. You get so that these many voices you have heard whispering through a grate are like the one great voice of humanity whispering its plea for forgiveness and peace.

Sometimes, it is true, a penitent may arrange it so that you won't forget him or his sins. He comes to you in the parlor of a rectory, or he takes you aside from a gathering of people, and tells you outright what sins he has committed and asks you if there is any chance for him. Sometimes, if the place and time are suitable, you can have him kneel down at once, and put it all into a sacramental confession. He doesn't care what you know about him or what you think of him. To him, you are but an anonymous and shadowy instrument of God's mercy. But after such an open confession, you sometimes find the penitent wanting to keep in touch with you, remembering you with a greeting on feast days, reporting on how well he has been doing since the 'big' confession was made. This makes you very happy. Indeed, it is one of the great sources of happiness for a priest. It keeps before your eyes the kind of miraculous transformation that can be effected in people through a good confession and the strong graces that are imparted through the absolution you are empowered to pronounce.

There are those, too, who come to you regularly in the confessional in quest of guidance and help toward greater holiness. They want you to know them and to remember them just well enough to enable you to give them continuous direction. To you, they become souls without external features; you would not recognize them outside the confessional. Sometimes, on meeting you, a person will say: 'I've been going to confession to you for ten years. ' Yet, you won't have the slightest inkling of which 'case' or 'soul history' the person represents.

But nobody ever has to reveal himself, or herself, to the priest, either face to face, or by personal identification, when in need of a good confession. All they have to do is to join the queue outside the confessional, become one of the nameless, faceless, blurring multitude on a Saturday afternoon or evening, and slip into the shadowy cubicle when their turn comes. The story may be long or short; it may be weighted with big numbers revealing many falls, or it may come tumbling out charged with the emotions of remorse, sadness, fear, humiliation, grief. It may be the simple and placid revelation of those half deliberate slips and failings of which the Gospel says that even the just man can be guilty seven times a day. It doesn't matter to the priest. He has heard it all before. He has acquired the personal disinterest that routine and monotony and anonymity cannot but produce. Yet, that personal disinterest, that total lack of curiosity about who the penitent may be, does not destroy an intense desire to become the instrument of another miracle of forgiveness.

But what, you may say, about the reprimands and castigations that the priest sometimes gives to penitents after they have told their sins? What is in the mind of a priest when he rebukes you in the confessional? This is the thing that some people fear most before confession. Sometimes it keeps them away for far too long a time. 'What will the priest say to me?' is the question that makes them tremble.

But the motivation behind anything the priest says is so simple that it should allay all fear. Ever since Christ made confession to a priest necessary for forgiveness by the words, 'Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain they are retained, ' every ordained priest has been bound to judge, from each penitent's story, whether he may pronounce the words of absolution. In most cases, he knows at once that he may. The penitent is obviously sincere and determined, for the love of God, not to go back to the same sins again. In some cases, the priest knows almost at once that he may not give absolution. For example, if a person confesses a certain serious sin, and in the same breath defends it and states in effect that it cannot and will not be given up, the priest is helpless. If nothing he says can change the intent of the one kneeling before him, he himself would be guilty of a mortal sin if he were to pronounce, or even feign pronouncing, the words of absolution.

Then there are the doubtful cases, cases in which the number of serious falls, and the penitent's manner of confessing them, and the apparent lack of true spiritual awareness, make the confessor wonder whether this person really wants to break with his sins. In such cases, your thought as a confessor is this: If only I can wake this person up! If only I can help him to realize his need for reformation! So you talk to him. The manner of such talking naturally differs from priest to priest; and in the same priest, different circumstances can influence the manner of trying to draw forth a clear expression of love of God and hatred of sin. But the purpose is always the same.

Like all human beings, priests have different temperaments and express themselves in different ways. Some people sound a little bit angry even when they are talking about trivial subjects with friends; some priests sound angry when they are urging someone to take measures to save their souls. That is just their way. All of us who are priests keep trying out different methods of awakening genuine love of God and deep practical sorrow for sin in the hearts of those who appear indifferent. Sometimes a method will be poorly chosen, or ill-adapted to a particular person on whom it is tried. But there is one thing that should never be forgotten, and should be realized by the person confessing a hundred sins or one sin; the purpose of the confessor is always simple and always the same; he wants the sacramental absolution to be a miracle of forgiveness and transformation.

Another thing that every person in need of a good confession should know. You can make it absolutely unnecessary to receive a 'bawling out,' as it is so often called, from the priest who hears your confession, no matter how many or how awful are the sins you have to confess. All you have to do is to add, after telling the sins: 'I've thought it all over, Father. I have made my decision. I'm now ready to suffer anything, rather than commit these sins again. And I'll stay away from the occasions that led to my downfall. And I' ll be at confession and Communion often. ' If you say something like that, even after the saddest tales of sin, the priest's heart will leap with joy; as often as not he will congratulate you, and figuratively pat you on the back, and send you forth with new encouragement and confidence. It is only when you indicate that you have not made a decision about your offenses against God, or when you say, weakly, in response to a question of whether you intend to avoid the old sins, 'I don't know,' or 'I'll try, but I can't give up what led to my sins, ' that the priest has to try to enkindle a spark of real love of God in your heart before he can, in good conscience, give you absolution.

It makes us, who are priests, sad to think that people are afraid to come to confession; or offended by something that we say to them. It makes us sad that we cannot always say exactly the right thing, and that usually it is those who need the most to be aroused to hate their sins, who take from confession only a sense of having been mistreated by the priest. It is saddening, too, to find ourselves sometimes subject to circumstances that try our patience and perhaps, much as we want to avoid it, influence our way of speaking. Three or four consecutive hours of hearing confessions while one is sitting in a cramped position, perhaps with the feet growing cold and numb because the heat of the church does not seep into the confessional, or with the temperature around one hundred degrees in summer, and with constant whispering making the mouth dry and sticky, constitute an experience that can hardly be imagined by anyone to whose lot it does not fall. But every conceivable discomfort is forgotten with every confession heard that makes it easy to give absolution because the dispositions of the penitent are so clearly sincere.

Of course, there is much talk, outside Catholic circles, about how terrible it is for priests to be listening to the sins of girls, married women, etc. Priests smile when they see such things in anti-Catholic pamphlets. The worst shock most priests ever got in their lives was when they read and studied about the possible sins of human nature before they were ever ordained. There is scarcely any sin that can be committed that cannot be confessed in less than ten words, not one of them descriptive or provocative. It is just about as dangerous to teach the catechism or the Ten Commandments to a classroom of children, or a prospective convert, as to hear people say what commandments they have broken when they come to confession. Then there's the monotony of it all. It gets to be like hearing football scores of teams you never heard of, or weather reports. Only the supreme consciousness of being able to work the miracle of forgiveness remains.

But perhaps the best laugh is enjoyed by us who are priests when we hear or read that hearing confessions is a great source of personal enrichment for the priest. I suppose, to those who know nothing of the facts, that it looks like a wonderful opportunity. Into the confessional come people who believe that there, and there alone, can they be saved from hell. They believe that the priest holds the power to forgive or to retain their sins. What a chance, and what a set-up, for making a little charge, asking for a slight stipend! Yet, in the more than one hundred thousand confessions which I, as a priest, have heard, I have never received so much as a penny. ¥nd, sticking only to my own experience, I know that not one of the several hundred other priests, with whom I am acquainted, has ever received a penny for a confession.

Perhapœ, too, you'd like to know whether priests talk much among themselves about things they've heard in the confessional.

Among ordinary friends, trading secrets is one of the bonds that unite them. Among priests there is no bond that knits them more closely together than the bond of silence about what has been heard in confession. On many an occasion, three or four other priests and myself have heard confessions for from six to eight hours on a Saturday afternoon and evening. When it was all over and we would come together to relax, the only remarks made about the experience of the day would be such as these: 'My feet are half frozen, ' or 'My head is splitting' or 'Gee, we must have heard the whole city.' You may be very sure that consciousness of the seal of confession is especially strong in the mind of a priest when he is with his fellow-priests, because he knows that they possess that acute consciousness themselves.

From what I have said about the discomforts and inconveniences of hearing confessions, don't gather that you are burdening a priest when you go to confession, and that you should, for that reason, ever hesitate to go. You may gather this: that if confession were a merely human invention, as the ill-educated outsider to the faith so often says it is, if it were not demonstrably an institution set up by the Son of God Himself, your priests would be the first ones to cast it off. They have to go to confession to a fellow-priest themselves, and they do not find this any easier, generally speaking, than anyone else. If it were not a divine precept to confess one's sins to obtain God's forgiveness, the priest would neither go to confession himself nor burden himself with the hearing of the confessions of others. But this is a strange thing. Of all the thousands and tens of thousands of priests, all of them educated for years, you never heard of one who cast doubt on the necessity of confession according to the will of Christ. There are priests, of course, who give up the exercise of their priesthood, to take up a life of sin. They give up everything, confession included. But among loyal priests, there is nothing in all the teachings of the Catholic faith so taken for granted, as indisputably the will of Christ, as the sacrament of confession.

At the same time, all the inconvenience of hearing confessions is compensated~ for by the joy that comes from bringing joy and peace of soul to others. It is in the confessional that the priest sees miracles taking place, and who does not rejoice to be the witness of, not to say the participant in, a miracle? You read in psychology books about habits of evil so deeply grooved into human hearts that, the psychologist says, no power on earth can remove them. The priest in the confessional sees such habits broken, by the power of God and the graces of the sacrament. You read much today about neuroses and psychoses and phobias, etc., but any experienced priest can tell you how rarely abnormalities afflict a person who makes the right use of regular confession, and how quickly their beginnings can be cured by good confessions. But, above all, there is the joy that every priest hugs to his heart, together with the secrets that have been entrusted to him, over the knowledge that he has led souls back to God through confessions that he has heard, and over the frequent glimpses he is given of ineffable relief and peace in one who was sorely troubled and fearful and weighted down with sin before he made his confession.

So it goes on - this humiliating, but exalting, this maligned by a few but beloved of many, this uncomfortable for the lower nature but peace-bringing to the higher, practice of going to confession and hearing confessions. Every week of the year, and in many places several times during each week, we, your priests, enter confessionals and wait for you. Don't be afraid of us. Don't worry about what we may be thinking or what we may say. Don't let us wait in vain when you need a good confession.

There is nothing we ever do that has less of self in it. In the confessional, we want only to lead you to God and to preserve you in His love.

Arguss, maybe you already know this, so forgive the redundancy if you do.

I just thought it would be a good idea to list what my 1952 Catechism outlines about confessing venial sins.

(411)Is it necessary to confess every sin?

It is necessary to confess every mortal sin which has not yet been confessed and forgiven; it is not necessary to confess our venial sins, but it is better to do so.

(a)It is not necessary to confess venial sins because they do not deprive the soul of sanctifying grace.

(b)It is better to confess our venial sins because when we do so, we have more assurance that they are forgiven and because we receive from the sacrament of Penance special graces to help us avoid them in the future.

So, it would seem to me that any confessor who dismisses a person who is confessing venial sins, as confessing that which does not matter, may hold to the letter of the law, but not the Spirit, and as such is an inferior confessor.

"I've actually had a priest say to me, "Oh why don't you tell me the good things you've done instead."

What I hate is when I get a priest that asks me what I would like to do for my penance. Since this question usually comes from the liberal, touchy-feely types, I've always had to stifle the urge to say that to help my low self-esteem, I should probably treat myself to Dairy Queen as my penance. :-) Instead, as respectfully as I can, I'll let him know that I don't feel comfortable choosing my own confession as it is not my place to do so. Of course, then I usually get some vague penance about being nice to someone. :-/ Gee, aren't we supposed to be nice to everyone? How is doing so a penance? Sigh.

Why did you put this in the Evangelical Christian topic? Please don't tell me it is because the evangelicals post in the RCC topic - that is not a legitimate reason. I am not trying to start anything - I am asking because I simply don't understant the whys and wherefores behind doing this.

I see this happen a lot in the Evangelical topic and others that are not RC alone. (and again, vice versa). If I want to read about RCC, I will click on that topic. If it is general interest Christianity, that is one thing, but I don't get why this often happens.

May I offer a few points?

1)Even if the priest abbreviates or mispronounces the words of absolution, YOU ARE STILL ABSOLVED, provided you made a sincere confession of your sins and are sorry for them.

There is a longstanding principle of sacramental theology known as "supplied jurisdiction." It has been abused by certain groups, but it comes down to this: the Church has declared in advance that anyone who makes a confession in good faith will have his sins remitted EVEN IF THE PRIEST LACKS THE AUTHORITY TO DO SO. Even if you confessed to an impostor who had never been ordained, your sins would be absoved through the Church's Power of the Keys.

That being said, it sounds as if the priests you are confessing to are incompetent. In general, I have found that priests who belittle a penitent's sins (i.e., make light of them) do not believe in the power of the sacrament. As I say, from your perspective it makes no difference -- you are still absolved. But these are men best avoided as spiritual guides.

2) If you genuinely cannot think of any sin to confess, then you have no need to go to confession. Give thanks to God and pray that He keep you in that state. But you are very fortunate indeed if this is the case. Most of us will be able to find sins of omission, at the very least, on our consciences. Since your last confession did you pray for your enemies, as Our Lord commanded? Did you give alms, even in the smallest measure, to those less fortunate than yourself? Did you never wish ill upon those who had vexed or troubled you? Did you pray continually, as St. Paul commands us? None of these sins will damn you to hell, but it is not "scrupulosity" to confess them.

3) The Sacrament of Penance is intimately connected to the Eucharist -- that is why (even in lax days such as ours) most parishes hear confessions on Saturday. There is no better way of preparing yourself for Holy Communion than confession, and the devout soul will look upon the Sacrament of Penance as an exppression of love and respect for the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Many saints went to confession daily -- and most went weekly.

"Let a man examine himself," as St. Paul says, in preparation for the Eucharist. The confessional is the place to do so.

Even if the priest abbreviates or mispronounces the words of absolution, YOU ARE STILL ABSOLVED, provided you made a sincere confession of your sins and are sorry for them.

No, that's absolutely wrong. The Sacrament of Penance, like any other Sacrament, cannot be effected without the form. Here are some relevant decrees of the Church:

The holy synod doth furthermore teach, that the form of the sacrament of penance, wherein its force principally consists, is placed in those words of the minister, I absolve thee, &c: to which words indeed certain prayers are, according to the custom of holy Church, laudably joined, which nevertheless by no means regard the essence of that form, neither are they neces sary for the administration of the sacrament itself. But the acts of the penitent himself, to wit, contrition, confession and satisfaction, are as it were the matter of this sacrament. (Trent, Session XIV, Decree on Penance, cap. iii)
But, as regards the minister of this sacrament, the holy Synod declares all these doctrines to be false, and utterly alien from the truth of the Gospel, which perniciously extend the ministry of the keys to any others soever besides bishops and priests ... For neither would faith without penance bestow any remission of sins; nor would he be otherwise than most careless of his own salvation, who, knowing that a priest but absolved him in jest, should not care fully seek for another who would act in earnest. (Trent, Session XIV, Decree on Penance, cap. iv)
Every Sacrament consists of two things, matter, which is called the element, and form, which is commonly called the word ... In our Sacraments, on the contrary, the form is so definite that any, even a casual deviation from it renders the Sacrament null. (Roman Catechism, On the Sacraments)

There is a longstanding principle of sacramental theology known as "supplied jurisdiction."

"Supplied jurisdiction" refers to exactly that: jurisdiction. It does not supply for a defect in the form:

Can. 144 §1 In common error, whether of fact or of law, and in positive and probable doubt, whether of law or of fact, the Church supplies executive power of governance for both the external and the internal forum.

Even if you confessed to an impostor who had never been ordained, your sins would be absoved through the Church's Power of the Keys.

Only if you have perfect contrition. If you don't, then those sins are not absolved until you either make an act of perfect contrition, confess to a real priest, or receive Holy Communion (which forgives even mortal sins of which the recipient is unaware).

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