Confession Catholic vs Orthodox

[dwyermd]

I was surprised to learn that the Orthodox church doesn’t have confession to a priest while the Latin rite of the Catholic Church does. I thought both are apostolic . Do all the Eastern Catholic have Confession to a priest also. This is very confusing.
md

 

[Angel_Gabriel]

Orthodox confess to priests also. Not sure where you heard that they don’t. Eastern Catholics also have confession with priests.

 

[runningdude]

I read something once where the aural confession was made to a spiritual director, and then the preist prayed the prayer of absolution separately afterwards.

 

[dwyermd]

I was told by the son of a greek orthodox priest that he never confessed to a priest in his life and the website of the Greek Orthodox Church in America confirmed this.
md

 

[Mary888]

I was told by the son of a greek orthodox priest that he never confessed to a priest in his life and the website of the Greek Orthodox Church in America confirmed this.
md

Maybe your friend is simply not practicing his faith.

 

[Isaac14]

In the Orthodox Church in America, it is mandatory that all Orthodox Christians confess at least once per year during Lent. More frequent confession is, however, strongly encouraged. Whoever said the Orthodox do not have confession is very misinformed.

On a side note, how confession is made in Eastern churches looks rather different as there is no anonymous confession, nor are their confession booths. Although not “public,” confession is made in the open in the nave in front of either an icon of Christ or the Theotokos, or with the Gospel book. If more than one person is present, there will usually be a Reader present chanting from the Psalms so as to provide privacy to the one confessing.

 

[dochawk]

I read something once where the aural confession was made to a spiritual director, and then the preist prayed the prayer of absolution separately afterwards.

That can happen, yes.

Generally speaking, Orthodox (or EC for that matter) confession is not “to” the priest. It is generally before an icon, and directly to Christ, with the priest “listening in”.

In addition to what I understand to be the fairly common case of spiritual directors, there are also the interesting reports of priests’ wives, both of confessing by phone to the Orthodox priest in the nest town by phone , or of the EC and OC priests’ wives in the same town confessing to the other priest , and in both cases receiving absolution from their own husbands.

hawk