Could I bring a list into confession?

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I don’t enter the confession without it. But I always try and remember to rip it up and flush it after confession because I have forgot to do this more than once. But it is great to have a list. Sometimes at holy hour I have more time to reflect so I begin my list there.
Confession has always been like going to the dentist to me and I must prepare myself for that also. I only wish a list would work!
 
Sometimes I borrow someone else’s list or go through the vestibule wastebasket looking for good ones to re-piece and re-use.

My sins couldn’t get me a daypass to purgatory I am that Holy. I mean heck it is hard enough getting my wings in that little wooden box or managing not to levitate as the poor priest says:

"You used ANOTHER expired parking meter this year?

But seriously, a Sony Clie PEG-S360 PDA with 16MB DRAM and a 32 MB expanding memory chip can usually handle what I do in a usual trip to Vegas.

I use the attach on keyboard or transfer the sin list from my desktop to the PDA. And make sure it is fully charged, the battery lasts shorter when the screen is backlit.
 
A young man goes to confession and says “Father, I had pre-marital relations with a young lady of the parish.”

“Oh, mercy heavans no” groans the elderly priest. "Please tell me it was not “Mary Ellen Cameron or Agnes MacKinnon”.

“Well it wasn’t Francis O’Rourke”

.
“No, no, no father it was none of those girls. I promise you.”

As he leaves the penalty box and walks back to a pew to say his penances he sees two male chums who have come in early for mass.

“Did you get a long penance?” they tease him.

“No, but I know three phone numbers we can try tonight.”
 
Hi there!

I thing writing a list is great! I always do it before I go to confession otherwise I honestly won’t remember. I usually just write a word or two to remind myself what I did and then give a fuller explaination in the confessional. Just don’t write a novel and read it to the priest!

Jade
 
you are offended by that joke???

Here is a better one.

A catholic dies and goes to heaven. He gets toured around his first day by St. Peter.

They go by one room full of happy Jews eating bagels and lox, complaining about the heat and playing shuffleboard.

They pass another room and there are bunch of Baptists, sober as judges but still having fun.

Many other rooms have groups of various faiths.

A the end of the tour, the man says to St. Peter "Thank you very much for showing me around heaven but why did we have to be very quiet as we stole past that last room full of serious, dour people.?

Oh, said St. Peter. “That’s the Catholics, they think they are the only one’s up here”.

🙂
 
I don’t know, somtimes I think we are getting too legalistic and forgetting that it is the spirit that is important. I don’t know of one example in Scripture where someone had a list of sins when Jesus forgave them.

Jesus forgave the lame man, the adultress, the woman with the Pharisees, and healed many others and there is no indication that they confessed to Him. Of course He would know anyway. Why do we require confession when Jesus Himself did not seem to require it?

It seems like it could cause us to focus more on the embarrassment and anxiety of our sin than the forgiveness of God. How many people after confession have their joy quickly taken when they rememeber something they forgot to tell. Then we agonize over whether it was mortal. Should we go back? Then the priest will think we’re crazy. Should we go to comunion? Is this what God meant for our experience to be? However, this is sometimes my experience. You have that one chance to get it right.

Isn’t our relationship with God 24 hours and if we rememeber a sin we don’t have to record it, we should be able to be forgiven immediately? Don’t we have full access to Jesus’ forgiveness at all times?

Is our complete relationship of God’s forgiveness limited to formal confession or mass? Is this really God’s intention? It seems like it could cause us to be legalistic and put more focus on the confession and less on our spiritual relationship with God.

I know that often when I think of a sin, I don’t think of how it truly offends God, but rather I think how I have to make sure I remember that for my next confession without really considering my relationship with God (except maybe in an indirect sense). I think more in terms of the legalistic rule that I must confess my sins to a priest instead of focusing on my relationship with the living God. I think the Holy Spirit could prompt us to open our hearts to God in sorrow for our failings as part of our loving relationship with God, but instead we focus on recording the sin for our next formal confession.

Am I missing something?

For mortal sins I can see the importance of formal confession adn I know venials are valuable to confess. However, perhaps we should also confess venials in our daily walk with God and move on instead of carrying them with us as a burden. Can’t we confess venials right to God, or do even those require mass?

Greg
 
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Greg_McPherran:
For mortal sins I can see the importance of formal confession adn I know venials are valuable to confess. However, perhaps we should also confess venials in our daily walk with God and move on instead of carrying them with us as a burden. Can’t we confess venials right to God, or do even those require mass? Greg
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Something to remember . . . the graces of the sacrament of confession are not just ordered to the forgiveness of sins. Those graces also help w/ the destruction of the venial sins we struggle with constantly. So if you take your venial sins to confession regularly, you are receiving graces to rid yourself of those sins. —KCT
 
Yes, we must look at it as our relationship with God. I suppose I look at it this way: when I love someone so much (my husband) and held back, kept a secret, didn’t give him the full truth, I feel kinda bad. Eventually my conscience bothers me enough to confess to him. I try to remain in this kind of thinking even if it’s hard sometimes. We are sensitized to the man we love as time goes on. So, thus, to me I see the same thing with Jesus. What may not be a sin for one soul could very well be a sin for me in the context of my relationship with Jesus (lack of prayer for instance). I have been given much, so much will be asked for.

Blessings,
Shoshana
 
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Shoshana:
…kept a secret, didn’t give him the full truth, I feel kinda bad. Eventually my conscience bothers me enough to confess to him.
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Good point. I am 100% on board with that concept. I really wonder if the scope of God’s forgiveness is limited to formal settings (especially venial). God knows all of our sins so we know nothing is hidden from Him anyway.

Greg
 
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KCT:
So if you take your venial sins to confession regularly, you are receiving graces to rid yourself of those sins. —KCT
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Yes, but do we have to wait for them to be forgiven and thus carry them with us on our souls until the next confession?

Greg
 
When I went to confession after my stint in the Protestant churches, I went in with the intention of confessing absolutely everything. Much to my relief, after telling him briefly my absence from the Church, as I took a deep breath to start on the other sins, the priest stopped me and said your sins are forgiven etc.

I know all were forgiven, because I intended to hide nothing. But the biggest sin was my separation from the Church. That is what I do. Start with the big stuff with every intention of doing it all and see where the Holy Spirit leads me and the Priest.

I don’t do lists. I do make a mental inventory greatest to least, but no list.

God Bless,
Maria
 
you know, I’ve never had a priest in the confessional ask me the old “how often, in what circumstances” line about the sins I confess. I can’t keep track of something like that either, so I don’t confess like that. Never had a problem. As for lists, it doesn’t sound like a problem as long as you’re not becoming overly scrupulous. A long time ago I had a friend who was quite scrupulous. She had a little notebook and at the end of every day she’d write down in it what sins she’d committed. That way she already had a list when it came time for weekly confession. Not a bad idea in itself but it wasn’t healthy in her case. Plus she had to worry about her roommate or someone else finding and reading the notebook.
 
Instead of listing them out, I took a examination of concience, and dotted those things which I had voilated- That was enough to revive my memory in confession without worrying someone would see “the list.”
 
Why not, if it will help you recall what you otherwise may not be able to recall, as long as it is based on an examination of oneself. It is the intent that truly matters.

Gerry 🙂
 
my offenses, truly I know them
my sin is always before me
ps 51
 
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MariaG:
When I went to confession after my stint in the Protestant churches, I went in with the intention of confessing absolutely everything. Much to my relief, after telling him briefly my absence from the Church, as I took a deep breath to start on the other sins, the priest stopped me and said your sins are forgiven etc.
Maria
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I totally understand the theology of this, and I am sure there are people who are greatly relieved when a priest approaches the sacrament this way.

But for me, personally, psychologically, my general confession upon entering the Church was THE turning point of my life. I needed to make that confession, and I needed it to be exhaustive: I had nothing to give my Lord, except my sin. I made sure beforehand that the priest who received that confession would understand.

People differ. And the mercy of God comes in many forms. Newman’s “submission” confession was SEVEN hours! I ask you! WHAT ever could he have been thinking?
 
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PMV:
I’ve commited MANY sins in the past; in fact, probably so many that it’s impossible for me to remember them all. What about sins you forgot about? Can these be forvigen if you just ask the Lord, “Please forgive me for the sins I’ve forgot about.” Also, since I probably can’t memorize all the sins I could recall, is it acceptable for me to bring a list (written or typed) into confession to make sure I’ve said all of them?
Also, how specific should you be when confessing a sin? Do you have to give a specific time, place and purpose, or just very briefly say what you did without any explanation or setting?
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Bring a list by all means unless you suffer from scrupulosity. Oh and ahem don’t lose the list :whistle:
 
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but a good examination of conscience is very valuable to meditate through before confessing. The Fathers of Mercy have an excellent examination of conscience. If I find it I will post a link to it.
 
I have a small examination of concience put out by Human LIfe International i think. I hilight the sins I am most prone to so that I can remember to bring them up. If I look donw and one of the hilighted ones is not 0on the list that month i just skip it. Not that I get to skip many 😦
 
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