It’s not usual, but it’s not unheard of. Sometimes, the priest is pressed for time and doesn’t ask for one, and there are other reasons, as well. If he doesn’t ask you for one, it’s fine - just say it after you’ve been absolved and have left the confessional before you start your penance.
Sometimes it happens…Just say it when you leave the confessional.
It depends on the country. In the English-speaking world, the Act of Contrition is traditionally required. Not so in the Eastern Europe.
I’m in Canada…I’ve found it varies according to the priest.
In Poland, the faithful pray the Act of Contrition while the priest says the Prayer of Absolution. Both are basically praying two different prayers at the same time.
True. The last time I was asked for one was also the first time I’d ever had to confess in English. I had to ask Fr. if it was OK to recite it in French.
At the abbey, I think they often get people in confession who haven’t been for a v-e-r-y long time. The regular confessor knows that I know the act of contrition, so he always invites me to say it. However he has been away since November in Rome. For the Year of Mercy he has been asked to be confessor at St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls until May. So the old confessor that was prior to him has been pressed back into service, and the last couple of times he said “I don’t recall if you know the act of contrition”, and I say “yes” and recite it.
No problem with the Our Father and the Hail Mary for me. While not officially a Catholic school, the primary school I attended did have Catechism in class. It was also a bilingual school, so when I started school Mère Marie-des-Lys, fdj, taught grade 1 French in French, grade 1 English in English, and grade 2 English in English - in the same classroom. We heard all the prayers in English and in French so I learned them that way.
I’m not sure how reciting a memorized prayer can really help the priest discern contrition any more than just the fact that the person is in confession. If a person is in confession for some reason other than a true desire for the sacrament, then reciting an Act of Contrition would just be one more step in going through the motions.
In your case and with that priest, that’s perhaps that’s true. My confessor invites me to recite an Act of Contrition anyway, even though “I accuse myself, furthermore, of all the sins I may have forgotten, and those of my past”. Maybe my contrition is not so evident.
This happened to me last Saturday, in fact. It was my first confession after surgery; I don’t do well with general anesthesia. :banghead: Father had to prompt me with the first seven words. Still, given that the previous week I couldn’t always remember my name, I’m surprised seven words were enough to get me going…
When the new English translation came into use I had not been to Mass in English for five years. The first time I did (in the UK, 2013), I was completely lost. Because English is my native language, the people I spoke to after Mass thought I was a lapsed Catholic who had been inspired to return to the Church, and they wanted to hear my “story.” God bless them. In reality, I had been attending Mass weekly for years and daily for several months…in French.
How interesting! We have a Peruvian priest at one of our churches who does the same thing. I was like: How rude! Man is drowning me out! (God forgive me…)
At the four different churches where I confess in Chicago, this is normal: Priest says the absolution while I am praying act of contrition.