Difficulty with confession

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Kindnessmatters

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I have searched online for answers to a sensitive topic and found nothing. So here’s the deal…as a teenager two of my prior boyfriend’s (friends with each other from church youth group) were molested by the same priest. The priest also exposed himself to me, masturbating in front of me on two occasions. There was more to the situation but that’s the cliff notes version.

It took decades for me to return to church. Unrelated I am a survivor of other horrific sexual abuse also.

I decided to return to church and do my part to take the church back from sstan. I have confessed to divorce and to living with my husband prior to marriage. However I cannot confess specifically to any sexual sins as to get through this situation and return to church, I must separate church and sexuality.

I feel the church gravely sinned sexually against me, never taking any responsbility whatsoever. The behaviours of this priest were known yet he was never corrected in any way. He died and his funeral was a sickenibg circus of undeserved tribute. Yes, I was there. Afterwards I did not go to church except weddings and funerals for many years.

I asked one Catholic friend about this dilemma and she snarkily responded as if a woman must be very immature if she cannot, for example, say words like adultery or masturbation in confession. Not helpful.

I have one dear friend who I trust completely who is a priest, but we dated before he was a priest and I feel confessing to him about anything sexual would violate boundaries we have set up as friends. I don’t suspect every priest of wanting to take advantage… of course not…but the idea of this sort of confession makes me physically ill. Suggestions? I tried saying “impure thoughts and actions” and the priest asked a follow up question. I offered a partial answer, but if felt like grooming to me to be asked and I felt panicked so didn’t properly confess.

Confession feels like a new chapter of the abuse and a huge violation of my privacy and dignity, but I also respect church teaching on the matter. It just doesn’t work when a person has been abused by the church so I am unsure what to do.
 
Kindnessmatters said:
I have searched online for answers to a sensitive topic and found nothing. … It just doesn’t work when a person has been abused by the church so I am unsure what to do.
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It was a priest that offended you, so I wonder why you say the Church offended you. The Church does not control a persons state of sanctity which requires exercise of free will to cooperate with grace.

Sin is voluntary. If the matter is grave, then voluntary sin could be mortal sin, and if mortal then those are to be confessed in number and kind if remembered. If a person has contrition for all mortal sins and it is the contrition of love, then the mortal sins are forgiven, if there is intention to confess it individually. Of course that does not mean one can receive Holy Communion yet. In some situations a person has perfect contrition but there is a moral impossibility of making individual confession. If some circumstance of fear, danger or grave inconvenience which renders the observance of the law extremely difficult, then it is said to be morally impossible to fulfill the law. Once the circumstance ceases, then the law should be fulfilled.
 
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If you were a minor and/of were coerced then you are not culpable or your culpability would be very diminished.
 
I’m presuming you want to confess sexual sins that you committed that don’t have to do with this abuse situation. Like sins you committed later in life and that you haven’t already confessed. As someone else said, with respect to the abuse situation, a victim of abuse is being victimized and does not commit sins in the abuse situation.

I would suggest making an appointment with a priest, explaining that you are a clergy sexual abuse survivor and have difficulty stating sexual sins, and have him advise you. If for some reason the priest does not give a good response, the next step would be to call the diocese and see if they can refer you to a priest with background in this area.

I’m sorry your Catholic friend did not understand that it’s traumatic for you to say certain words or talk about sexual matters.

I agree that this is not an area I would want to confess to a priest with whom I was a friend of long standing. I myself have never been through any such trauma, but I don’t even like to confess sexual sins to priests I know as casual friends. For that stuff I will go to some parish I don’t frequent, find a priest who doesn’t know me and who I probably won’t be seeing again any time soon if ever, and dump it there.
 
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The church, as an institution of men, was and is guilty. We all know how the whole situation was protected, and the legal games and semantics still going on. I will never believe otherwise. I saw and lived it. Every level of the church was aware…policies were drafted, lawyers silently were paying millions…we cannot ethically claim for each of thousands of cases “well it was just one guy”.

I believe God knows what I have been through to try to make proper confession. If I merely forgot a sin, it would be covered. I feel it was covered in my vague terminology but not specified with follow up questions. But I would like to regain ability to answer such questions. It seems priests should be trained not to ask such questions.

The answer is always “go ask a priest”. Well, that’s precisely what I can’t do. Most victims just left the church for good and I guess this is why.
 
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It pains me that you´ve had this experience with a priest earlier in your life. It saddens my heart that you´ve been traumatized and harrassed by this priest of which should´ve never been one. It never should´ve happened, and your local bishop should´ve done so much more in order to stop it. Know for sure that you have no fault in this. There are no sin on your behalf in this.

If whatsoever, you´ve committed sexual sins outside of this and desire to confess it - the desire is a first step in a right direction. I understand that it may be hard to confess these sins, in particular because of your past history with clergy. At this point, as it seems very difficult to take this matters into confession with a priest, I´d recommend you to keep going back to Mass for now and just let God love you. Be in His presence, pray and seek Him in Mass. Then, bring these sins up in confession with a priest you know well. Perhaps that will make it easier to be completely honest? If it´s helpful, perhaps explain your situation to him so that he might understand you better.

Be assured of my prayers. God bless you. Always remember that you´re a child of God and that He loves you endlessly regardless of your past and sins. He will never stop loving you, so keep longing and seeking for Him.
 
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Kindnessmatters said:
The church, as an institution of men, was and is guilty. …
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So are you saying that the Catholic Church (for it is one body) condoned the violations and it was therefore an intentional sin for which all members of the Catholic Church are mortally guilty? Or are you limiting the scope to certain clergy, mortally guilty? Are you considering that some were ignorant of violations?
 
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Not all members are guilty, but all leaders. There was not one pope, Cardinal or bishop in place prior to the Boston Globe stories in the 1980s who could possibly not have been aware of policy, legal cases, movement and protection of criminally abusive priests. The church, as a body, owns this sin at an institutional level. There is not an equivalency of power in this situation nor in anything in the running of our church. We know as a matter of fact that whistle blowers were ignored. There of course were victims, parents, lay teachers, priests and nuns who reported abuses and were “managed” as problems themselves, many abused in turn for doing so. At least one nun was murdered for doing so and was subject of a very disturbing documentary.

I know this…I am impacted for life. Many of us are. There was no action at any level I went to but to control, manage and damage control me. Never an apology, no financial reparation, no responsibility taken. I went to therapy…at my own expense…for years.

We have one church in a manner of speaking…in our traditions, doctrine, brliefs. But if we insist on claiming the church as an institution is part and parcel which cannot be separated out, we then have to accept institutional responsibility for inviting and accommodating Satan as a member of our highest levels of leadership. The church as a legal party in countless courts, as a management structure, as a body of men, and as an institution is, as they say, guilty as sin.

What do we believe about sin? It can be forgiven. However, the church, in the context I have detailed, continues to hurt victims, continues to sidestep responsibility, continues to abuse and marginalize and fight against victims, and has failed to make a proper examination of concience or confession.

It is a disgusting abuse of good priests. This is the depth of this corruption. Good priests are held to defend, argue against, obfuscate, parse and minimize these wrongs to defend the church. The church needs to throw open the cathedral doors, fumigate, admit unapologetically that they knew they had a rat infestation, and further admit “we have been breeding and feeding the rats”…no excuses. What we have instead is that the good guy who has been cleaning up the rat food, setting and emptying the traps, faithfully trying to protect his bride the church…while his brother priests did the opposite… is now charged with defending himself for the heinous fact that his brother priests were corrupt, and their shared leadership protected, bankrolled and participated in the corruption with eyes wide open.

One reason for my rage is the deep love and respect I feel for good priests. I just don’t know which ones they are because the institution won’t clean house decisively. That abuses us all. I have reason to be affraid, and my fear unfairly hurts them. Our shared church created, fostered, paid for and protected this horror.

Frankly, the church owes to all of us to laicize EVERY culpable priest.
 
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The sin is very typical of most people and doesn’t involve this priest…our relationship is chaste.

I was away from the church for years and lived my life as typical Americans do today, which is the wrong way to do it in terms of sexual morals.

That said, I’m not inclined to tell a former boyfriend how many times I committed what sexual sin. Yes, he would shoulder his responsibility in persona Christi to hear me. But no, I do not think it is appropriate for me to give him, as a man, any reason whatsoever to think of me for a fleeting second in a sexual context. A million other women could tell him the same and it would be fine, but he was never in love with them. We moved past old romantic feelings long ago and need to leave that lie to preserve a one in a million friendship which is now instead built on our shared faith.

As I said, I confessed the sins in deliberately vague terminology…that was how I was advised to handle it. Only when the priest asked me more specifically what acts I was confessing, I was incomplete in my answer because it triggered a traumatic panic attack and I was basically feeling like (he probably wasn’t) the priest was trying to engage me in a prurient, voyeuristic discussion of my sex life while I felt captive in a suffocating closet .
 
Kindnessmatters said:
As I said, I confessed the sins in deliberately vague terminology…that was how I was advised to handle it.
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It’s fine to not go too much into details during confession (though not all agree how much is necessary), but I’d say as long as you communicate what kinds of sins you are commiting and the general scope of them that is good enough. So something like “I have been away from the Church for x amount of/many years and have in that time done such and such types of actions regularly/occasionally/once, knowing/not knowing it was wrong”.
Kindnessmatters said:
Only when the priest asked me more specifically what acts I was confessing, I was incomplete in my answer
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Maybe it would help if you told the priest beforehand that you are a victim of abuse, and that it’s difficult for you to confess sexual sins as a result. Sometimes a priest will ask for details in order to give better advice, but if you make it clear that this is a sensitive topic for you he may be more understanding and give you some breathing room.
 
Would it be possible to write it down and hand the priest a note?

I’m just brainstorming here. As someone who used to get very bad confession anxiety I do wish there was an easier way.
 
Kindnessmatters said:
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Pope Francis agrees, at least in part, with you, since he did declare that the hierarchy of the Chilean was responsible for defective handling of sexual abuse cases in Chile. He did laicize some bishops in 2018 for this in Chile. The attempt to avoid public scandal was not avoided, but made worse. Now the number of reported cases is large.
 
Kindnessmatters said:
The answer is always “go ask a priest”. Well, that’s precisely what I can’t do. Most victims just left the church for good and I guess this is why.
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My answer is different, go to the police, even though the alleged perp is dead. Go to the Diocese and ask the office what their set up is for free professional help in terms of survivor counseling and whatever else is needed.

Its time to take the steps towards seeing yourself as a survivor if you still see yourself as a victim. Some abuse survivors do, some dont, some take years to say hey I survived that and have taken steps to heal the areas in my life I need to.
The act of posting this says loud and clear " i am a survivor"
Those steps are in getting the help available for your situation. I know people also who have been in this situation. Some have unfortunately succumbed to the fall out from these events , others have stood up and said, I survived this, I am not this man or woman’s victim anymore. Everyone does this in their own time and safe space though.

As far as confession goes, if you feel you are ready to confess sexual sin, go to a different priest and state outright that you are going to confess and wont go into the specifics due to past trauma. If you are not ready, thats ok, God allows us to take our time, especially over areas of trauma. If you think you must confess for what others did to you, you do not ever because you did not commit the sin, you are not guilty.
AS far as your Catholic friend goes, she may not know that you have experienced trauma relating to this area.
She may not be equipped to help you or even say the right things to you, those things helpful to you.
That is why you need professional help in dealing with these issues.

I will also say, dont put the cart before the horse, If it is making you physically ill to bring this up in confession, that is an indication you need to fix this trauma to the best of your own ability and in your own time frame. Forcing something like that with words or notes or anything else has the potential to be very negative to you at this point. Be guided by a health care professional and not advice from strangers on the internet who do not have a connection with you and your situation.

I am so very sorry this has happened to you. I feel a lot of joy for you that you have posted this thread and are working out your best course of action.
 
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Most of the steps you suggest we were done years ago. I first reported the abuse in 1985.
 
Do you have ongoing support? It is my understanding that each Diocese is required to provide services to help and support those in need in this area.
 
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. . . . Thanks for the interest, support and advice. i think I am going to consider the sins confessed and move on. I have been chaste and celibate for many years. I did make an honest confession snd the priest handled it badly. He did know my history…I told him how I came to leave the church, the whole situation during that sane confession visit.
 
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