Can a priest bring up sins from a previous confession?

[purplegreenred]

If I go to confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time? e.g. saying something like ‘So, last time you were here you confessed sin abc and sin xyz. How are you doing with them now?’

Would this be breaking the seal of confession?

 

[Vico]

If I go to confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time? e.g. saying something like ‘So, last time you were here you confessed sin abc and sin xyz. How are you doing with them now?’

Would this be breaking the seal of confession?

No break of the seal occurs because there is no revelation to a third party.

 

[purplegreenred]

Thanks. But wouldn’t a priest be risking breaking the seal of confessional by doing this? A priest might think someone else was me and mention my sins to them by accident.

 

[Vico]

Thanks. But wouldn’t a priest be risking breaking the seal of confessional by doing this? A priest might think someone else was me and mention my sins to them by accident.

It would be only if it was somebody else and he mentioned your identity.

 

[Beryllos]

If I go to confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time? e.g. saying something like ‘So, last time you were here you confessed sin abc and sin xyz. How are you doing with them now?’

Did this happen to you? It may be appropriate when the priest is like a counselor or spiritual director to the one confessing.

A priest might think someone else was me and mention my sins to them by accident.

This came up in another thread years ago. There is a risk that the one who hears it may be able to figure out who the priest was talking about. Even without that, it could be confusing. “Excuse me, Father, I have never committed that sin!”

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Unless the priest is your spiritual director and you’re seeing him face-to-face on a very regular basis, like once a week or more often, I would think that a priest would be highly unlikely to bring up some past sin unless you brought it up first.

First of all, priests tend to forget what was said in confession right after they’re done hearing it. It would have to be some pretty memorable sin, like a mass murder, to stick in the priest’s mind.

Second, a priest would be taking a big risk of misremembering who committed what sin and mentioning the wrong sin to the wrong person.

I just can’t see this happening in confession. If you’re somehow meeting with the priest for spiritual direction outside of confession, I can see it maybe occuring there, with the priest referencing something you told him in the last spiritual direction session, NOT in confession.

 

[ChuckB]

Second, a priest would be taking a big risk of misremembering who committed what sin and mentioning the wrong sin to the wrong person.

“Hey ChuckB, how are you doing with that gay bondage porn habit you’ve been dealing with?”

“Uhhh…sorry Father, but ChuckB is still waiting his turn.”

 

[Gorgias]

No break of the seal occurs because there is no revelation to a third party.

If memory serves, a priest cannot even bring it up again, even to the same person.

 

[JimG]

For most of my life, in the parishes I have attended, confession has been behind a screen in a confessional, and the priests hear hundreds of confessions each week. They can’t even remember the sins from one penitent to the next in linen nor who confessed what. It would be nearly impossible, and inadvisable, to try to mention sins from a past confession.

 

[InThePew]

If I go to confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time? e.g. saying something like ‘So, last time you were here you confessed sin abc and sin xyz. How are you doing with them now?’

Would this be breaking the seal of confession?

Short answer, no.

The priest becomes aware of the sins of the penitent “ non ut homo, sed ut Deus (not as man, but as God) to such an extent that he doesn’t know what he was told during confession, because he was listening only as a minister of God. Priest are also forbidden to voluntarily remember a confession and are in fact obliged to suppress any involuntary recollection of it.

That said, when someone is going back to the same priest confessing the same sin week after week, this can admittedly take on an “emperor’s new clothes” air. So, a priest might understandably say something like “as I’ve mentioned to you before” or “clearly this is a struggle for you” or a reference to what you’ve said before may just slip out - priests are only human after all.

 

[Gorgias]

So, a priest might understandably say something like “as I’ve mentioned to you before” or “clearly this is a struggle for you” or a reference to what you’ve said before may just slip out - priests are only human after all.

Ahh, but that doesn’t mean that you can bring it up again, unprompted. Your examples are those in which they’ve already mentioned it again and you’re merely responding, right?

 

[InThePew]

Ahh, but that doesn’t mean that you can bring it up again, unprompted.

True but it would depend what was said - “Father I committed adultery again this weekend” is different to “Father, I wish to confess to having committed adultery”. The prompt (or reference to what’s been said in a previous confession) is what makes the difference. Without that, a priest isn’t supposed to bring up what’s been previously confessed.

 

[HeDa]

That happened to a friend of mine who has got an identical twin, who usually goes to that confessor.

“Sorry Father, but I think you heard my identical twin´s confession. We usually go to different priests for confession as people can’t tell us apart, but this time my ordinary confessor is sick so I have to go to a different priest.”

 

[twf]

I’ll usually give the priest the context of “I’ve been struggling with this for some time…”

 

[PeterT]

purplegreenred:

If I go to confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time? e.g. saying something like ‘So, last time you were here you confessed sin abc and sin xyz. How are you doing with them now?’

Would this be breaking the seal of confession?

Short answer, no.

The priest becomes aware of the sins of the penitent “ non ut homo, sed ut Deus (not as man, but as God) to such an extent that he doesn’t know what he was told during confession, because he was listening only as a minister of God. Priest are also forbidden to voluntarily remember a confession and are in fact obliged to suppress any involuntary recollection of it.

That said, when someone is going back to the same priest confessing the same sin week after week, this can admittedly take on an “emperor’s new clothes” air. So, a priest might understandably say something like “as I’ve mentioned to you before” or “clearly this is a struggle for you” or a reference to what you’ve said before may just slip out - priests are only human after all.

It must be hard to suppress something like. Maybe the solution is not to refer to the past sins but just to ratchet up the penance given to the penitent. Hopefully a tougher penance would help the penitent to avoid that sin in the future.

 

[Lapca]

confession to the same priest I went to last time, could the priest ask how I’m doing with sins I confessed last time

Ask your self is there new sins ? Or why would he unless he is you confessor.
Or is it new sins for you?

 

[InThePew]

Hopefully a tougher penance would help the penitent to avoid that sin in the future.

Sadly (perhaps thankfully) it doesn’t work like that. When a person’s struggling with habitual sin, simply whacking them harder isn’t going to help them. As St Paul very perceptively puts it in his Letter to the Romans:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.