First bad experience at confession

  • Thread starter Thread starter Swedish_Fish
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Swedish_Fish

Guest
Hello everyone,

First post here although I’ve browsed through the forum for a long time. I just wanted your opinions on what happened to me today.

I am in college, 21 years old, have been a Catholic since birth. I have always followed my religion and although I had started to doubt my faith in God during my first year of college, my faith has grown stronger ever since.

To make a long story short, I, just like many (and from experience, I should say “most”) young men/boys have had a problem with pornography/masturbation. Even those whom I know are very religious have problems with this. A little over a year ago I finally quit the addiction of masturbation, and quit looking at pornography almost 1.5 years ago. I have gone to confession every few months and each time I received the sacrament I left feeling better and changed my life for the better as well.

Today, however, was different. I went into the confessional and the priest right off the bat asked me to come around the wall and sit in front of him. I’m not afraid and quite confident so I had no problem sitting down in front of him, even though this would be my first face-to-face confession. When I listed my sins, the priest asked me to list the worst one.

He spent about 2 minutes trying to get me to list a specific sin, even though I didn’t think it was the worst one. Again, avoiding details to make this story short, basically what he did was yell (at some points screaming to the point where I was afraid he would get physical) at me for 10 minutes about how I was a pornography addict and was on the verge of becoming psychotic. Whenever I tried to say something, even one word, he would get angrier and yell more and get closer to my face.

Now, please understand, the only reason I listed pornography as a sin is not because I go out of my way to look at it, but sometimes, when you browse the internet, a picture pops up or an animated .gif file that depicts pornography. I close the internet window as soon as I realize what it is, and that is that. But in any case, I decided to be safer than sorry and I listed it as a sin when I went to confession. And the priest yells at me for being a porn addict and even says that I am not to come back to confession for at least a year because there is no way that I can end this addiction in less than a year. Again, I couldn’t even explain this to him because he wouldn’t let me speak.

I have never had sexual relations, haven’t masturbated in over a year, and haven’t tried to look at porn for over 1.5 years. I have worked hard to drop those addictions and constantly work at bettering myself and getting closer to God. Today’s confession has made me quite depressed and I don’t feel like I got much out of it, but I understand that priests are human and God knows what He is doing to help me.

So, even though this doesn’t sound like an abbreviated story and has many missing details, what are your opinions on this situation? Was the priest right to act like this? Is this normal? Or should I take what he said with a grain of salt? I think the biggest thing that worries me is that he said not to go to confession for at least a year. Thanks everyone in advance and God bless!
 
Don’t give up. Everyone has a particular sin that they struggle with. I think everyone is scared of getting yelled at in Confession…I get the whole sweaty palms and butterflies in the stomach.
 
I’d suggest you call and make an appointment to speak with Fr in his office. It is possible that you misunderstood some of what he said as you were embarrassed and agitated.

BTW - I am a heavy internet user, have been both in my line of work and personally. I have never had “accidental porn” pop up. I hear of that happening from posters in other forums as well and it always amazes me.
 
I am so sorry this happened to you! No one should be “yelled at” in confession at any rate–if this is how the priest behaves I doubt he has many penitents confessing to him. What you describe sounds to me as though you have put yourself on the right path already and were only trying to be thorough. Please just try to remember that priests are human too, they make mistakes and sometimes behave in ways they should not for reasons we may not know, just like any other human being. If you no longer feel comfortable confessing to him, is there another priest in your parish you can confess to?
 
Go to Confession as often as you can…Remember priests are human too…he could have been having a bad day.
 
To the OP, this certainly doesn’t sound like a normal reaction on the priest’s part. I’ve gone several times in a row, bringing up recurring sins each time, and was never told to not come back until I had them under control. I’ve had priests offer advice and to pray for me, but not steer me away from Confession. You might want to try a different priest.

Regarding “accidental porn”: I’ve run into this numerous times, while doing Google searches with moderate safe search turned on, clicking on sites whose pop-up ad provider decided to throw some racier ads into the mix, and even sites whose on-site ads changed from relatively clean one week to pornographic the next. The worst happened at work on our private network behind multiple firewalls with parental control software installed. I clicked on a public site that I had visited regularly for several years prior to that, both at home and at work, and never with an issue. That night, I clicked on the bookmark (it was one of the few public sites I had ever bookmarked on a work PC), and as soon as I hit it I was bombarded with dozens of pop-ups, all for the most disgusting, hardcore pornographic sites I’d ever seen. Each one spawned dozens of new pop-ups when I tried to close them, and I ended up having to manually power down the PC to break out of the cycle of pop-ups. I know it sounds fishy, especially when you hear it from someone who has/had a porn problem (“Suuuuuuure you didn’t click on [insert name of porn site],” he said with a knowing wink), but it can happen occasionally.
 
You could, too, in order to avoid the near occasion of sin, set your security settings higher, or use a V-chip type program. Or you could get a Mac! I used to get all sorts of pop-ups with a PC, and don’t get them with the iMac.

As far as that kind of confessional experience goes, find another priest as a confessor. And yes, most importantly, did he give you absolution?
 
John1990 said:
Don’t give up. Everyone has a particular sin that they struggle with. I think everyone is scared of getting yelled at in Confession…I get the whole sweaty palms and butterflies in the stomach.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I am nervous before confession, but I’d be more worried if I were not nervous 😉 I do struggle with sin, however, I don’t struggle as much with what the priest thought I do and he wouldn’t let me explain otherwise anyway, so I felt like it was not a positively reinforcing conversation that we had.
Castello said:
I’d suggest you call and make an appointment to speak with Fr in his office. It is possible that you misunderstood some of what he said as you were embarrassed and agitated.

BTW - I am a heavy internet user, have been both in my line of work and personally. I have never had “accidental porn” pop up. I hear of that happening from posters in other forums as well and it always amazes me.
Click to expand...
I am a student who does not have a car and the nearest parish to me is an hour away by walking. I usually bike, even if that means through a thunderstorm and arriving soaking wet to church so that I can attend mass. I try to make it to the church that best fits my schedule/the weather and therefore there is not one church in particular that I belong to. I do not know the name of the priest I confessed to, so even if I wanted to speak to him I would not be able to describe who he is. I am also very good at keeping a cool head in tense situations (as my career choice requires/has taught me that) so I do not believe that I misunderstood Father. I understood what he said and tried to clear things up with him, but again, he would not let me get a word in and would just get angrier. Even if I did see him again I’m afraid he would just act the same.

It is not necessarily that these things pop-up, but some websites that I visit, (such as reddit.com, a very popular website where news, trends, and just about any topic you can imagine is discussed and voted upon) users are either dishonest (they link to inappropriate pictures/videos that are not permitted) or they have thumbnail images for their user account on a forum, where the picture for their thumbnail is of bad taste. I have decided to not visit these websites any more so that this problem will no longer affect me, however, these websites are very good news sources and clean entertainment most of the time, but I have decided to give them up anyway to avoid the near occasion of sin.
zenith15 said:
I am so sorry this happened to you! No one should be “yelled at” in confession at any rate–if this is how the priest behaves I doubt he has many penitents confessing to him. What you describe sounds to me as though you have put yourself on the right path already and were only trying to be thorough. Please just try to remember that priests are human too, they make mistakes and sometimes behave in ways they should not for reasons we may not know, just like any other human being. If you no longer feel comfortable confessing to him, is there another priest in your parish you can confess to?
Click to expand...
Thank you for your kind words. I wasn’t able to tell who the priest is before walking in so even if I wanted to avoid him this would not be possible (but I guess that won’t be a problem any more since he told me to not come back 😛 ). I realize priests are human so I am not angry or mad or anything of the sort, I’m just trying to get some opinions to see whether my thoughts on this situation agree with others or not. As I also stated in response to Castello, I don’t know any other priests well so I wouldn’t be able to chose another priest for confession, but I will try to make it to another parish from now on since this priest said he doesn’t want to see me for at least a year 😦
adstrinity said:
Did you receive absolution?
Click to expand...
I did, and I thank God for His mercy 🙂 However, eventually I just shut myself up and kept nodding to the priest because I figured there was no way he would listen to me. At one point I even started to debate whether I should just get up and leave or not, it was that bad (at least in my humble opinion). I think once I started to nod to him he thought I looked sorry for my sins enough and decided to give me absolution. Don’t get me wrong, I am very sorry for all of my sins but I usually come close to breaking down in confession because of it so I try to walk in with confidence so that wouldn’t happen. I think this may have caused father to think that I do not take confession seriously and therefore he tried to give me some “tough love”. I can read people really well and this is what I think may have been the case because once I gave up and just started nodding and had my eyes start to water up, he calmed down. My mindset was the same throughout all of the confession however, meaning that I was very sorry for my sins.
 
Well, that sounds like a pretty embarrassing experience. Taking your account of the events as gospel, and without knowing the exact manner of how you described the sin, it does seem like he was jumping to conclusions-- not understanding that your intent was not to peruse pornography, and that you were just trying to be thorough and make a good confession by confessing it. Also his tone and behavior seem over the top. I’ve never had a priest do that to me and have confessed more grave sins than that over my 40 years.

A few thoughts:
  • Congratulations on overcoming your sexual sins and praise to the Holy Spirit for the work he has accomplished in you. That is a huge spiritual progression that will pay so many dividends for your life, so please don’t be discouraged.
  • There is nothing wrong with choosing another priest for Confession in the future. The Father may have had a bad day, but that kind of confrontational approach would personally serve as a hinderance for me, and might impact my ability to make a good confession in the future were I welling up with untold anxiety walking in the confessional.
  • The point is, keep taking advantage of the graces made available to you in this sacrament. Don’t let this incident become a stumbling block for you, lest you have a relapse in a moment of spiritual weakness. Keep going to confession. We need it.
  • Lastly, I somewhat concur with the poster who expressed surprise at the unintended online encounters with pornography. You may not have intended to view it, but it seems to me that you may have veered (with full consent) into questionable online neighborhoods where such encounters are possible? As a recovering, recreational porn user myself, I have had to avoid some forums where that kind of stuff gets posted. When I sift through Google images for my job I do sometimes see thumbnails of naked women, etc., but I try to blow right past it. I’m definitely not perfectly scrupulous either, always avoiding near occasion of sin, and thus it’s a frequent topic in confession for me as well!
I wonder if these priests get frustrated sometimes hearing about all of the porn use that goes on with men, knowing how it secretly rots away at the soul and poisons the God-given gift of sexuality for so many. It’s so utterly corrosive to the human soul. Just trying to give the good priest the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he discerned that you needed a little bit of toughnlove for your own good. Who knows. But me, personally, it would probably have me running for another confessor. Absolution is absolution after all.

God bless you this Lenten season!
 
Gordon_Sims said:
To the OP, this certainly doesn’t sound like a normal reaction on the priest’s part. I’ve gone several times in a row, bringing up recurring sins each time, and was never told to not come back until I had them under control. I’ve had priests offer advice and to pray for me, but not steer me away from Confession. You might want to try a different priest.

Regarding “accidental porn”: I’ve run into this numerous times, while doing Google searches with moderate safe search turned on, clicking on sites whose pop-up ad provider decided to throw some racier ads into the mix, and even sites whose on-site ads changed from relatively clean one week to pornographic the next. The worst happened at work on our private network behind multiple firewalls with parental control software installed. I clicked on a public site that I had visited regularly for several years prior to that, both at home and at work, and never with an issue. That night, I clicked on the bookmark (it was one of the few public sites I had ever bookmarked on a work PC), and as soon as I hit it I was bombarded with dozens of pop-ups, all for the most disgusting, hardcore pornographic sites I’d ever seen. Each one spawned dozens of new pop-ups when I tried to close them, and I ended up having to manually power down the PC to break out of the cycle of pop-ups. I know it sounds fishy, especially when you hear it from someone who has/had a porn problem (“Suuuuuuure you didn’t click on [insert name of porn site],” he said with a knowing wink), but it can happen occasionally.
Click to expand...
Thank you for sharing your experience. It does sound very close to what I have experienced. I can go to sleep now feeling a little better about all of this.

Thank you everyone for your replies and I will respond to other replies later tomorrow 🙂
 
Was this a new sin? If you had already confessed a year or so ago, and have not engaged in porn and masturbation, then sins already confessed are not to be confessed again once they have been absolved.

By the way, stuff pops up on many computers. You did not seek out the porn. You closed it immediately – right? No sin.

I was once at work and I don’t know what I clicked on but naked pics kept popping up. Dozens and dozens – they would not stop and closing them made more and more come up. It took over the computer. I did not intend to find this. It just happened. No sin.

And see a different priest. Avoid the “temptation” to confess sins again. Make an inventory since your last confession but don’t fall into the temptation to being up old sins, even if the priest presses you.

I used to be screamed at as a child by the priest – but that was decades ago, like 8 and 10 years of age. No one screams at me now as an adult and I did far worse things when I got to adulthood than backtalking my mother.
 
My advice is find a priest you are comfortable with.Then tell him this whole story.No priest can demand that you have face to face ,that is your choice alone .He is a human and has failings also so eventually this will come to light .someone will inform the Bishop (you would have a right to ).I once went to Confession and was sick in my stomach for hours afterwords I still see this priest always urging people to come forward to confessand he doesn;t seem very successful.He told me loudly to be QUIET let him talk he was sarcastic and rude any way I avoid him when possible
 
Thought I’d answer one more post before bed since I had to split my previous post and greenwoj replied in between the few seconds I had to make my two posts 😛
greenwoj said:
I’ve never had a priest do that to me and have confessed more grave sins than that over my 40 years.
Click to expand...
The last time I went to confession I had even worse sins to confess and Father (a different one) said I was overanalyzing things and that I should not “beat myself up” so much.
greenwoj said:
  • The point is, keep taking advantage of the graces made available to you in this sacrament. Don’t let this incident become a stumbling block for you, lest you have a relapse in a moment of spiritual weakness. Keep going to confession. We need it.
Click to expand...
I’m not one to give up easily on anything, fortunately 😃 This could have caused me to break down in my first year of college, but my faith is much stronger now.
greenwoj said:
  • Lastly, I somewhat concur with the poster who expressed surprise at the unintended online encounters with pornography.
Click to expand...
I kind of replied to this to the forum member already, but in addition I’d like to say that I too try to skim over the google image results, etc. when I notice something of bad nature, yet I still want to confess seeing such things since sometimes I feel that I linger too long on such images (even if it is milliseconds)
greenwoj said:
I wonder if these priests get frustrated sometimes hearing about all of the porn use that goes on with men, knowing how it secretly rots away at the soul and poisons the God-given gift of sexuality for so many. It’s so utterly corrosive to the human soul. Just trying to give the good priest the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he discerned that you needed a little bit of toughnlove for your own good. Who knows. But me, personally, it would probably have me running for another confessor. Absolution is absolution after all.

God bless you this Lenten season!
Click to expand...
I totally agree with you and I can’t begin to understand what priests must go through since they know how sinful human nature is due to what they hear in the confessional. And God bless you as well during Lent! 🙂
 
I think the priest was totally out of line when he said to you not to confess again for at least a year. That was just wrong, un-Catholic, and a great error on his part. Even if you would show up in his confessional every single day confessing falling back every single day into the same sin (for example, confessing new and new sins against purity every single day), he would still have to absolve you as long as you told him that you sincerely felt sorry and resolved yourself not to sin again.
 
Regarding the issue of “porn pop-ups”. If you are using a PC running WinXP as the operating system, one of the big problems with XP is the default set-up of the built-in Windows Messenger Service, that was intended for businesses to use for inter-office memos. The spammers and porn pushers found a way to exploit this, and one individual (Steve Gibson of Gibson Research), created an application that allows you to shut down the Windows Messenger Service, and effectively puts an end to the annoying pop-ups. Shoot The Messenger is very east to install and activate, and the program is free.

Pop-ups can also appear while browsing, but most browsers today have the ability to allow you to block pop-ups. Many have a pop-up manager so you can allow them on certain trusted websites; plus you can disable the feature, if needed, for either the specific website you are on, or the web in general. I choose to block them by default, and allow for a individual website as needed. Often I need to allow a pop-up because a sign-up form (for a free sample for example), pops up in a separate window.

I stopped pop-ups on my XP PC by installing the Shoot The Messenger program, and using the pop-up blockers in my browsers. I use Google and don’t have it set for safer surfing. I have never ever had a random unwanted pop-up as a result of surfing. 6 months ago, I bought a new PC with Win7 on it. Using the same browsers on the new PC as the old, complete with the pop-up blockers. I not only don’t get random porn pop-ups, I don’t get any pop-ups, unless I allow them.

Finally, if you are still getting pop-ups after doing the above, then you have a security issue that is allowing someone to exploit an accessible port. Gibson Research has a another program that you should run. It is called ShieldsUP!, and if there is a security issue, this will find it. This program will check all of your ports and indicate if you have any problems. You should then adjust your security programs to fix the issue. You can test individual ports, so you might want to write down the ones that fail the test, and after making security adjustments, go back and test the problem ports.

As far as the experience of the OP with confession, it appears you both had a communication problem. As far as how the priest acted, well St Padre Pio was known for scolding penitents he saw as being unprepared and unrepentant. Though St Pio also had the ability to read souls. As far as the priest saying to not return to Confession for a year, don’t return, to him. Go to another priest. While normally penitents should obey their confessors, this falls under being unreasonable and potentially bad for one’s spiritual life. There is no obligation to follow such a request.
 
Swedish_Fish said:
The last time I went to confession I had even worse sins to confess and Father (a different one) said I was overanalyzing things and that I should not “beat myself up” so much.
Click to expand...
The problem is that you have to forgive yourself too for these absolved sins. It’s hard, but if the priest can absolve you as Christ’s representative, then you must learn to forgive yourself. Don’t be overly scrupulous. My confessor told me that you should never confess an absolved sin again. It’s in the past. Of course, I had to confirm that too. But it’s true.
 
Personally, I would seek another priest for confession. The sacrament is necessary, and should be taken advantage of more than 1 time per year. There is no need for the priest to behave as he did towards you. I do not have the luxury of going to the same priest each time I go due to my work schedules but none of them have yelled at me nor made me feel bad for anything I’ve confessed. They may have had me say extra prayers and/or do something extra good for someone but I did walk out feeling better too.
 
I’d recommend you try and find another priest for confession. Based on the description given the priest acted in a very “unprofessional” and inappropriate manner. Unfortunately this kind of behavior is sometimes the byproduct of near guaranteed job security, I normally try to see things through the eyes of the priest in the posts on this forum but in this case I can’t even imagine any circumstances that would justify such behavior.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top