Detail in confession

[klm120861]

Thank you all for your replies. They have been helpful. Pray that I make a good confession. I am a convert, and even after 8 years, confession is still a very difficult practice for me. I really hope to begin making monthly confessions in order to get past this difficulty.

Once a month is a good idea. I’ve found it’s easier to do an examination of conscience for 30 days than for 364 days. It’s also easier to keep my life on the right track. (Knowing if I do something majorly sinful I’ll have to confess it in a couple of weeks is a great deterrant for me!)

I have also been a Catholic for 8 years and I understand your difficulty. Like you, I’m hoping more often will also make it easier. Or at least my mind won’t go blank and I will stop wishing I was anywhere but there.
Kris

 

[dshix]

Once a month is a good idea. I’ve found it’s easier to do an examination of conscience for 30 days than for 364 days. It’s also easier to keep my life on the right track. (Knowing if I do something majorly sinful I’ll have to confess it in a couple of weeks is a great deterrant for me!)

I have also been a Catholic for 8 years and I understand your difficulty. Like you, I’m hoping more often will also make it easier. Or at least my mind won’t go blank and I will stop wishing I was anywhere but there.
Kris

I personally try to go weekly, and if not that then at least biweekly, because each confession is SO much easier to make, and you find yourself really avoiding small sins when you realize you’ll have to confess them in X days.

 

[klm120861]

I personally try to go weekly, and if not that then at least biweekly, because each confession is SO much easier to make, and you find yourself really avoiding small sins when you realize you’ll have to confess them in X days.

I thought about that, but in my case, once a month is probably a good idea. In the Protestant tradition I came from “sins” weren’t just something you did. Character imperfections were “sins” as well. If I went more often, I think I would tend to be overly scrupulous (a word that didn’t exist for me in the past, and would have been considered a good thing anyway ) Of course if there was a mortal sin, I would go as soon as possible. I don’t care if I just confessed the day before. For me, at any rate, going once a month allows the grace of Mass (I go almost daily) to be the grace of Mass.
Kris

 

[CBinNY]

I know for me that Confession isn’t just to list my sins but an opportunity to change myself. I don’t want to keep doing the same things but if I don’t own up to them, completely, then I can’t see what is really going on and maybe through God’s grace change it. Let it all out, think of it as your talking to God, he knows what happened, and the priest has probably heard it before. I try to give the who, what and why if I can guess it. As other have said I do that as modestly as possible while being truthful. It still knots up my stomach going in but I’m on top of the world coming out!

 

[Leon_Bloy]

I should clarify. You should **not **confess vaguely, but rather modestly. You must be detailed enough in the sin so that the priest can know exactly what it is, but no so detailed the it is immodestly graphic.

You MUST be detailed enough, however, the the priest to tell what the sin was and how grave it was.

I think this is good advice. The important thing is that you get across to the priest what it is you are confessing so that he knows what’s going on - the type and number of the sin. I am guessing that what you were confessing is what you might have identified this way: “I sinned against purity (or “chastity”) with myself X times.” That might be easier to you to say that way, and it also communicates the necessary information for the sake of confession.

Keep up the good fight.

 

[buc_fan33]

A good rule of thumb is to treat it like you are going to the doctor. You can’t, or at least shouldn’t, go to the doctor and just say, “I have a stomach ache.” That could be anything from nerves about a test to a ruptured appendix. The doctor doesn’t need to know every single gory detail, but he needs enough info to know what is going on in order to treat the disease.

 

[Mangaartist]

I’ve actually been asked for more specifics in confession before because I was confessing sexual sins too vaguely.
Previous posters gave great advice. But if the priest needs more specifics he’ll also ask.

 

[mellowcalico]

I never know if I say enough or not. I tend to get nervous and (even if I’ve rehearsed what I am going to confess ahead of time) I tend to be all over the place with my confessions. Then, on top of it, I worry about the line behind me (there is always a long line… and I’ve been on the end of that line and missed confession because of it–so I don’t want to “steal” someone else’s confession time by hogging the confessional booth so to speak).

I always figure if the priest needs to know more, he will ask. At least, I hope so.