Confession getting a makeover

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I’ve done face to face on several occasions, if I can’t hear Father (I’m hoh). It’s my understanding that it’s up to the confessor how they want to confess. Many places offer both choices.
 
The confessional booths in my church are arranged for both. There is a seat for the priest, a screen between him and a kneeler for the penitent, and another seat in front of and to the side of him for anyone who prefers a face to face confession. I’ve had one face to face confession heard.

We also have a priest who is deaf, and occasionally he hears confessions face to face so he can read the penitent’s lips.
 
It is a good article as it does illustrate the reality that Catholicism has suffered greatly over the last 40 or so years. We have had confession with both options for many years. That really doesn’t make much of a difference, if people don’t go. An empty confessional face to face or behind a screen is empty, no matter how you design it.

It is unfortunate that Catholics have lost their faith in huge numbers and many have become lukewarm, ignoring necessities such as confession, fasting, prayers, a sense of sin, and a deep spiritual life.

What this article fails to mention is the return of a more faithful Catholicism, Catholics all around are rediscovering the riches of the faith, and how it has been denied and sometimes is suppressed. After years of confession being poo-pooed in my parish people are starting to rediscover it. After no rosaries before mass, now we are having more and more people coming to pray. People are rejecting the lukewarm, wishy-washy faith and becoming more faithful, it just takes time.

Look at all the ladies joing the nuns in habits, it is pretty inspiring.

In Christ
Scylla
 
The author of that article should have done a little bit of research before suggesting that Catholics can receive absolution through a website that “calculates” your penance 😦
 
childofmary1143 said:
Has the Vatican approved of Face to Face Confessions?
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Is that not common in Canada? It certainly is elsewhere. In fact there are threads here where people have talked about the difficulty they’ve had in trying to confess anonymously.

My preference is to confess face to face. I can remember when I was a kid, going into a closet-like space where the light would go out when you knelt down. Then you’d wait in the dark and silence for the priest to slide open the door to hear your confession. I always felt like that was a preview of hell.

When face-to-face confession started – I think it was at least 25 years ago – it became a much more human and humane sacrament for me.
 
I love the cosy, private, focused confession of the booth as it let me focus on the gravity of sin, my single responsibility of commiting it and confessing it, and the privacy it provided.

Now we can use words to illustrate how I can like the other type,
I like the comforting face to face personal touch I can receive when I confess in an open lit, reconciliation room. I can humbly, request advice and openly pour out my sins to Christ face to face.

Each has their advantages and should be offered.

Now I can misrepresent both to show prejudices like this…

The old stuffy, dark closet of a confessional forced us to wait in fear for the priest to impersonally open the grill and listen to us as we read out a laundry list of our faults. Everyone nervously lines up outside as the time grows closer before they have to enter the booth.

Or the other side like this…
The relaxed, atmosphere where you casually chat with a priest about sins, as if in a living room makes sin flippant as it is open, unashamed and much like a secular therapist, gone is any kneeling or repentance, as penance is replaced with feel good advice. Sins are ignored, as sitting face to face only superficial confessions are made. Frequently invalid confessions are made as the most grave sins are dismissed or not confessed.

There are always two sides to a point of view and they should be looked at carefully,
God Bless
Scylla
In Christ
Scylla
 
I’ve done face to face on several occasions, if I can’t hear Father (I’m hoh). It’s my understanding that it’s up to the confessor how they want to confess. Many places offer both choices.
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It’s up to the penitant. A priest can ask I suppose (I know I have been asked) but I wish to remain anonymous that must be respected. That’s why a screen should always be available.
 
Anonymous (e.g., behind the screen) confessions must be available. Face-to-face confessions are optional (at the priest’s option — he doesn’t have to hear confessions face-to-face if he doesn’t want to).
 
They are making it sounds like this is a new thing. I’m 32 and my very first confession, done in 2nd grade, was a face to face confession. In fact there are only 2 times that I have every done behind the screen. The first time was when I started taking my faith seriously and left the “cafeteria” behind. Sounds like they should have researched this a little better.

As far as some other things mentioned.
Catholics can try absolution-online.com, which invites you to fill a shopping cart with your sins (choices include calumny, vainglory and disregard for the environment). The site, which is not endorsed by the church, then calculates an appropriate penance, say, 228 Hail Marys and 43 Our Fathers.
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We most certainly can not. They clearly don’t understand penance from what it sounds.

I find it interesting too, how the mega churches are trying to “sell” confession to the masses. In order to get the masses to embrace confession they must first understand what confession is all about. Once they understand they will be more likely to go. Like it’s been said a million times “education is the key”. Education has been sadly lacking the for last several decades.
 
PhilotheaZ said:
Anonymous (e.g., behind the screen) confessions must be available. Face-to-face confessions are optional (at the priest’s option — he doesn’t have to hear confessions face-to-face if he doesn’t want to).
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That is correct. The option for an anonymous confession MUST be available, and that includes either for the priest or the penitent. BOTH must agree if a face to face confession is to be heard.
 
Hey I’m 35, but I grew up in a parish that only offered the “traditional” style confession. The first time I had face-to-face was in college at a retreat.

I have mixed feelings about face-to-face or behind the screen…I find it nerve-racking either way.

–Barbara
 
So what’s new? Maybe it’s confession in the other churches that’s getting a make-over. Or just the whole idea of confessing. Nothing new in this article for Catholics. I, personally, like face-to-face and last remember going behind the screen as a child.

When I returned to the sacraments several years ago, I researched carefully to see if email confession had yet become a reality. (It hasn’t.) When I mentioned that to the church secretary a few months ago, she was aghast at the idea of coming to work one morning and finding confessions in her inbox.
 
RPConover said:
Uhhhhh, what? I’ve been going to confession face to face for 20 years now… 🤷
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I think you may have misunderstood what I was asking. I know that Face to Face Confessions have been going on for decades now. As a kid I remember doing them. However I realize that what goes on in a Parish and what is actually AUTHORIZED by the Vatican can be two different things. An example would be Altar Girls. The Vatican permitted them in 1994 but they were around for many decades before hand.
 
As a convert I am fairly new to going to confession. My first confession was done face to face with a priest in a room at a monastery. Going in I was terrified but after I was through I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from me.

From then on I try to go to confession face to face for several reasons. 1) I find it to be, as another poster said, more human and more humane. I find it more comforting to be able to see the priest. 2) I particularly don’t want to kneel and would prefer to sit – I can be lazy. 3) I can’t always remember a proper act of contrition so I bring a sheet with me and if I’m in the private side there are no lights and so I can’t see, at least in my experience the face to face is lit enough to allow me to read.

ChadS
 
The confessional calculator reminds me of the old handbooks which priests once employed to determine appropriate pennances. Or even numbers of days on indulgences to mimic extended pennacnes of the early Church. That said, I think it would be hilarious to go into a confessional and after the priest gives you a fairly light pennance, respond, “But, Father, I deserve, 326 Hail Marys, 127 Our Fathers, and at LEAST 3 Apostles Creeds!”
 
I have only done face to face Confession, I am in Canada and 44 years old.

I sometimes wish I could do the anonymous booth style Confession, but only when i wish to take an easier route, because I think it would be easier on me to say “I did x, y, and z” to a dark booth than to look a priest in the eye as I spill my sins. However, I have never gone looking for that style of Confession.

I do like the face to face in that I have about 3 regular confessors, and I like it that they know me and my own personal struggles. My confessions usually encompass a certain amount of spiritual direction as a result. This works well for me, although I know it is not going to be everyone’s preference, nor is it necessary to confess in this manner.

Just an opinion…
 
How very typical of the Seattle Times rag to find one of the most obscure Parishes in the city and do a story about Confession. I wish there was a way to email the author. I would tell her that Confession is alive and well in this city! I have actually been turned away several times after waiting in line for over an hour. I see lines at almost all the Churches in and outside the city. Several Parishes offer Confession more than once a week.

But of course the Times would never print an accurate article that truly reflects what is happening with the Church in Seattle.

Keep in mind that this is the paper that wrote such on offensive editorial (and accompanying cartoon) about the Church and the fight to allow pharmacists to refuse dispensing the morning after pill that our Arhcbishop wrote an angry letter to the author. I suppose they at least deserve a nod for publishing it.:rolleyes:
 
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