St. Theresa of Avila said “The person who has himself as a spiritual director has a fool for director!”, which is really what happens when you try to use the Bible or the Spirit alone.
It depends on you or the confessor.
I feel having the same priest as both director and confessor is the best. That way he knows the whole you. I understand that a good number of the saints, however, did have a confessor AND director, whether during their whole spiritual journey or a part of it.
You’ll also note, perhaps you were too busy trying to make your point, that the first recommendation was to use trusted & prayerful friends. Forumites at CAF too often throw out the “Spiritual Director Card” whenever anything comes up – it’s a panacea for every prayer concern and often it’s an efficient way of not answering someone’s question about spiritual matters.
I was having this discussion with someone who told me sometimes it is better to go it alone. Sometimes things don’t work out with a spiritual director.
If your spiritual director is a priest then he can fill both roles. I find it to be an excellent combination for myself. Being able to confess to someone who knows me so well changes things. He’s able to see connections that I don’t see myself. And the penance he gives fits well into my spiritual life.
As a “Forumite” as you call those of us that do give the advice to seek out a spiritual director, I disagree with you. One can not always give the best spiritual advice with the limitations of the internet being what it is and with the limited information someone posts. If someone comes to you with a health complaint, do you give medical advice in areas you may not have much knowledge? Same with spiritual matters, I recommend seeking out a spiritual advisor whenever the situation warrants giving advice that may go beyond the scope of the problem presented on an anonymous message board.
I see the merits in having the same person act as both confessor and spiritual director, but in my case it didn’t work out. I went to my regular confessor for a while for spiritual direction. He is a good confessor, but it was not a good fit for spiritual direction. I didn’t have a spiritual director for several years and then an opportunity came up to ask another priest for spiritual direction. So far, this is working out quite well. I would say that the spiritual director does not have to hear your sins in order to know the “whole you,” and, in fact, he cannot use knowledge obtained under the sacramental seal anyway. (It’s a violation of the seal of confession.) What matters more is a level of comfort and trust that allows the person being directed to be as honest about his or her struggles as possible.
“Trusted and prayerful friends” may give helpful advice, but they should not be relied upon for spiritual direction. At best, they can point you on to someone who can. Not only can baring your soul to friends be a burden on them, but if they don’t know enough to “know what they don’t know” then they can end up causing harm. (For example, by inducing false scruples because they don’t know what the Church requires in a certain area of morality.)
It can be a bit difficult to find a spiritual director, particularly if someone lives in an area with a shortage of Catholic services, but I think you may be overestimating the difficulty. Many Catholics in need of spiritual direction can get recommendations from a confessor, from a local house of a religious order or congregation, from other local priests whose orthodoxy and “spiritual balance” they trust, or even from local lay Catholics involved in “third order” lay associations (who usually know who offers spiritual direction in their area). Fr. Thomas Dubay wrote a great book on the subject titled Seeking Spiritual Direction.
How can one possibly follow your advice?
Well, this is an internet forum full of anonymous people. When people bring up serious spiritual questions, this is a terrible place for finding answers. Serious questions need the attention of someone who has been trained to recognize and respond to them. They need someone to whom them can explain all their background and where they are in life; what that means is that it needs to be non-anonymous.
Don’t stray too far off the beaten path.
Well, since spiritual directors are suppose to help us in our spiritual life, and everyone (hopefully!) has a spirituality and participates in the spiritual life, it follows that it would be good for everyone to have a spiritual director. Spiritual direction can include vocational direction because that vocation is part of that persons spirituality.
Ooh, a paradox.How can one possibly follow your advice?
It seems by reading your post that there are really no cons for A Confessor to be a Spiritual Director. I was thinking if my SD knew my sins and what I was confessing, it would be more helpful for me in spiritual direction.And here I forgot to say the reason I came into the thread in the first place.
My regular-ish confessor is my spiritual director. I’ve always done face to face confession (except if the priest happens to be in the actual confession and not the reconciliation room) because I feel it requires me to own up to my sins more, so that’s no change for me.
The pros I find is that my SD helps me out with trying to take a deeper look in confession at my sins since he knows me a bit better.
I guess some people would list the cons as “your SD knows all your sins”. I’ve never seen that as a problem because priests aren’t allowed to use what they’ve heard in a confessional anyways, and for the most part priests don’t really remember what you’ve confessed because they hear so many confessions.
So it can work either way, I guess it’s really up to the person who’s being spiritually directed and the spiritual director. Thank you.
My Confessor that I was asking about Spiritual Direction, the one I want to change to my Confessor, said that Spiritual Direction can be used by anyone and not just only restricted to people who are discerning a religious vocation.
