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.
Show early Christian writings that did not use oral confessions?
Here is Scriptural support
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.
Acts 19:18 - many came to orally confess sins and divulge their sinful practices. Oral confession was the practice of the early Church just as it is today.
Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:5 - again, this shows people confessing their sins before others as an historical practice (here to John the Baptist).
1 Tim. 6:12 - this verse also refers to the historical practice of confessing both faith and sins in the presence of many witnesses.
1 John 1:9 - if we confess are sins, God is faithful to us and forgives us and cleanse us. But we must confess our sins to one another.
Num. 5:7 - this shows the historical practice of publicly confessing sins, and making public restitution.
2 Sam. 12:14 - even though the sin is forgiven, there is punishment due for the forgiven sin. David is forgiven but his child was still taken (the consequence of his sin).
Neh. 9:2-3 - the Israelites stood before the assembly and confessed sins publicly and interceded for each other.
Sir. 4:26 - God tells us not to be ashamed to confess our sins, and not to try to stop the current of a river. Anyone who has experienced the sacrament of reconciliation understands the import of this verse.
Baruch 1:14 - again, this shows that the people made confession in the house of the Lord, before the assembly.
1 John 5:16-17; Luke 12:47-48 - there is a distinction between mortal and venial sins. This has been the teaching of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years, but, today, most Protestants no longer agree that there is such a distinction. Mortal sins lead to death and must be absolved in the sacrament of reconciliation. Venial sins do not have to be confessed to a priest, but the pious Catholic practice is to do so in order to advance in our journey to holiness.
Matt. 5:19 - Jesus teaches that breaking the least of commandments is venial sin (the person is still saved but is least in the kingdom), versus mortal sin (the person is not saved).
From scripturecatholic
I believe the booths did come later
Here are some Early Christian witings on this
“Moreover, it is in accordance with reason that we should return to soberness[of conduct], and, while yet we have opportunity, exercise repentance towards God. It is well to reverence both God and the bishop.” Ignatius, Epistle to the Smyraeans, 9 (c. A.D. 110).
“Moreover, that this Marcus compounds philters and love-potions, in order to insult the persons of some of these women, if not of all, those of them who have returned to the Church of God—a thing which frequently occurs—have acknowledged, confessing, too, that they have been defiled by him, and that they were filled with a burning passion towards him. A sad example of this occurred in the case of a certain Asiatic, one of our deacons, who had received him (Marcus) into his house. His wife, a woman of remarkable beauty, fell a victim both in mind and body to this magician, and, for a long time, travelled about with him. At last, when, with no small difficulty, the brethren had converted her, she spent her whole time in the exercise of public confession, weeping over and lamenting the defilement which she had received from this magician.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:13 (A.D. 180).
“Such are the words and deeds by which, in our own district of the Rhone, they have deluded many women, who have their consciences seared as with a hot iron. Some of them, indeed, make a public confession of their sins; but others of them are ashamed to do this, and in a tacit kind of way, despairing of [attaining to] the life of God, have, some of them, apostatized altogether; while others hesitate between the two courses, and incur that which is implied in the proverb, ‘neither without nor within;’ possessing this as the fruit from the seed of the children of knowledge.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:13 (A.D. 180).
“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).
“The Pontifex Maximus—that is, the bishop of bishops—issues an edict: ‘I remit, to such as have discharged (the requirements of) repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication.’” Tertullian, Modesty, 1 (A.D. 220).
“In addition to these there is also a seventh, albeit hard and laborious: the remission of sins through penance...when he does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord.” Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, 2:4 (A.D. 248).
“For although in smaller sins sinners may do penance for a set time, and according to the rules of discipline come to public confession, and by imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of communion: now with their time still unfulfilled, while persecution is still raging, while the peace of the Church itself is not vet restored, they are admitted to communion, and their name is presented; and while the penitence is not yet performed, confession is not yet made, the hands Of the bishop and clergy are not yet laid upon them, the eucharist is given to them; although it is written, ‘Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.’” Cyprian, To the Clergy, 9 (16):2 (A.D. 250).
“Moreover, how much are they both greater in faith and better in their fear, who, although bound by no crime of sacrifice to idols or of certificate, yet, since they have even thought of such things, with grief and simplicity confess this very thing to God’s priests, and make the conscientious avowal, put off from them the load of their minds, and seek out the salutary medicine even for slight and moderate wounds, knowing that it is written, ‘God is not mocked.’ God cannot be mocked, nor deceived, nor deluded by any deceptive cunning. Yea, he sins the more, who, thinking that God is like man, believes that he evades the penalty of his crime if he has not openly admitted his crime I entreat you, beloved brethren, that each one should confess his own sin, while he who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession may be received, while the satisfaction and remission made by the priests are pleasing to the Lord?” Cyprian, To the Lapsed, 28-29 (A.D. 251).
“It is necessary to confess our sins to those whom the dispensation of God’s mysteries is entrusted.” Basil, Rule Briefly Treated, 288 (A.D. 374).
“These are capital sins, brethren, these are mortal.” Pacian of Barcelona, Penance, 4 (A.D. 385).
“For if any one will consider how great a thing it is for one, being a man, and compassed with flesh and blood, to be enabled to draw nigh to that blessed and pure nature, he will then clearly see what great honor the grace of the Spirit has vouchsafed to priests; since by their agency these rites are celebrated, and others nowise inferior to these both in respect of our dignity and our salvation. For they who inhabit the earth and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things which are in Heaven, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels. For it has not been said to them, ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.’ They who rule on earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what priests do here below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence of his servants. For indeed what is it but all manner of heavenly authority which He has given them when He says, ‘Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained?’ What authority could be greater than this? ‘The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son?’ But I see it all put into the hands of these men by the Son.” John Chrysostom, The Priesthood, 3:5 (A.D. 387).
I was setting you up for a joke. You were supposed to insist that she was indeed bipolar, then I was going to reply, “I don’t believe you had a girlfriend.”
With the proper timing it’s very funny in person, but I guess it doesn’t translate into text.
So Cardinal Mahoney was protestant?
Confession Booths go silent?
Not around my parish. Most Saturdays we have a half-hour line for confession...and there’s almost always some people who are in line when it’s time to start the 5 PM Vigil Mass.
And the same thing every Wednesday during Lent during that campaign.
The other parish I frequent (St Mary Mother of God in Chinatown) has the same thing when they have confessions before Mass.
The reconciliation chapel at the National Shrine always have at least a few people in line, even though they offer confession about 5 hours each day. The Franciscan Monastery in NE DC, again, always has a line. And that’s with at least 3 hours a day for confessions.
So I don’t know what this article is talking about. It appears that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is alive and well.
And, btw, Alex, I do appreciate you bringing up these current event-type topics. It truly allows some ignoramuses (and you are not one of them) to come into their glory!
Ah, ok.
hmmm, looks like some here don’t know the Faith....I thought it was Catholic friendly here??
**And we are a very orthodox parish.**
The secret. It’s what people want right now.
Our priest has only been at our parish for three years but he is very orthodox. I see the same thing happening (in Oregon of all places — LOL!)
I swear, 6 months ago I read an article “Confession on the rise.”
Which is it?
Ah. So I see the religion moderator feels that calling out certain posters as being here to bash Catholics is a personal attack on them...while they come to troll these threads just to attack our religion. So I’ll just say that certain people on here, who know who they are, are once again trolling to Catholic Bash.
And if it gets me thrown off FR, so be it.
Reconciliation / confession is a wonderful opportunity to receive grace and be strengthened against even venial sin.
"Far more pervasive"? Hardly.
>> * due to more people confessing sin directly without a human mediator, or is it <<
One doesn’t need to confess sins to God, God knows all already. From what I gather, Catholics who talk like such simply decide that nothing they feel like doing is actually a sin. The answer is plainly B.
One confesses to a priest, because the priest represents the congregation, not because he represents God. The apostles were given the authority to forgive sins, not to mediate between Man and God. Biblically, the man who commits grave sin is to be rejected by the community; The man who confesses and atones from his sin is to be readmitted. The innovation of a priest representing the community was a first-century, admittedly non-biblical (but not counter-biblical, since the apostles were given such authority) innovation created to prevent scandals: How can Mrs. Johnson sincerely seek repentance is Mr. Smith has already confessed publicly to having an affair, when it’s quite obvious that Mrs. Johnson must be she who Mr. Smith had the affair with?
The irony is that those Catholics who regularly go to confession are usually those who do not need to go to confession for salvation and communion. But the priest can forgive lesser (”venial”) sins, as well as grave sins, so it is certainly a spiritual benefit to go to confession regularly.
Which is not to say that one MUST go to a priest for forgiveness of venial sins. The “Kyrie” (”Kyrie elaison...”) portion of the mass, for instance, is an opportunity to ask God directly for remission of venial sins. But it is spiritually beneficial to be responsible to another present mortal to seek forgiveness from.
>> I had a bipolar girlfriend once who stopped taking her meds and weirded out. She went to confession, where the priest told her she was under some kind of ‘spiritual attack.’ He didn’t suggest she resume her meds. Talk about fraud. <<
Did he know she had to resume her medications? A priest is not a medium, you know. I dare say that a bipolar off their meds probably IS under spiritual attack, by the way.
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