[mlizzy]

At your Advent penance service, do the priests hear confessions in just the two confessionals (they are very nice by the way; you must love confession yourself to have photos), or are stations set up in the church/elsewhere for the crowds?

That's nice you asked them for additional Confession other than on Saturdays. I think Confession is so very difficult for many people to attend, that the more it's talked about freely and encouraged like your priests do, the better.

My beef about Confession is that there is rarely a face-to-face opportunity, and because of hearing loss, it is required for me. I feel there are others (seniors, especially) who are enough hearing disabled that they are put off attempting to confess (the whole line hearing all their sins, etc.), so they just don't go. Also, our confessional doors are not that wide; if you're in a wheelchair, I don't think it would work out. So I'd love to have a separate station in the church proper every single week where you can choose to be behind a portable screen or sit right by the priest.

I'm going to e-mail St. John's and ask if there's any way I can go to a priest face-to-face at their parish, however, my husband feels any place that honors the Tridentine Mass wouldn't allow face-to-face. It's hell being disabled, I tell ya, when the Church makes you go out of your way (I can always set up a "standing" appointment at my regular parish) to dump your sins.

[AnAmericanMother]

When we do the big services, our rector calls in an AWFUL lot of favors, because we have priests all over!

At the last Advent penance service they began with all the priests at the altar and had a little talk on the benefits of confession, a communal prayer, then the priests fanned out to the various 'stations', mostly in the transepts, around the sanctuary, and the narthex, marked with a little barricade around for privacy. Most of course were face-to-face, sitting on two chairs, because there are only two confessionals. We had over a dozen priests in attendance.

Fun time last Lenten penance service, the retired archbishop came and brought a friend of his, a Cardinal, who happened to be visiting in town. That was pretty cool, he just took a chair and heard confessions like everyone else (I wasn't in his line - I went to my favorite confessor, who gives excellent advice and a penance that's stiff enough that you feel like he took you seriously). I wondered if you use a different formula with a Cardinal . . . "bless me your Eminence for I have sinned" . . . but I asked afterwards and you don't.

The way our confessionals are set up, you always have the option of going round to the other side for a face-to-face confession. They are only single-sided, not double sided like the old ones where the priest sat in the middle with a screen on each side. Now that I think about it, there should be plenty of room for a wheelchair to go around the back side of the confessional -

I kinda like the screen, but really don't have a problem with face-to-face. I lead a pretty boring life, and the older I get the less embarrassed I am about almost everything.

I would just lay your problem before the priest in your Email, and explain that you can't get the benefit of the Sacrament through the screen because of your hearing loss. I've found that most folks are perfectly willing to accommodate an honest problem or obstacle, if you just explain it to them in a straightforward way, as frankly as you can. And be as accommodating as you can to the priest if he suggests a solution.

The Canons (and the Vatican clarification of 1998) do give a priest the power to decide NOT to hear confessions outside the grille at all, and I don't imagine the FSSP folks are very keen on the idea of face-to-face, but the Canons also say that the priest should temper justice with mercy -- anyway, I'd ask.