J
JDZwiers19
Guest
My faith has grown tremendously in the last year and yesterday I went to confession for the first time in 12 years. It was probably the first real confession I have ever had since the first one was done at a very innocent age and the second I held back on topics I was embarrassed about. So in reality I feel as if it was my first.
Let me start by saying that I feel that my sins have been absolved, but I do have questions in regards to the apparent informality of the confession.
I made an appointment as I felt I needed time to properly express the gravity of my sins that have been accumulated in my life. I went into it with a strong desire to be honest and thorough.
When I met the priest, who I had known for some time, we spent some time chit chatting about life in general and the changes that had taken place to the church. It had not been my parish for many years. We continued in this manner as we entered the confessional and then father said a prayer and immediately inquired into the length of time it had been since my last confession. So we kind of skipped the whole “Bless me father” part. He asked me to begin confessing and I began to confess my sins. I had put a lot of thought into it and tried to be as detailed as I needed to be. I was probably overly detailed but I felt I needed to be open. He gave me a lot of counselling on each issue and the whole confession was more like a long conversation. We ended up talking about my life in great detail and how each sin affected me and my family. I was not opposed to this and in reality I openly shared these facts. We spent over a hour and half and in the end I forgot some sins that I had intended to confess. These were mostly the ones that I was not really afraid to confess, like skipping church and that sort of thing, and I fully intend to confess them next time. Also I tried my best to portray the frequency of my sins but never gave exact numbers. I spent more time on the nature of the sin than the frequency they occurred. He even said that he felt that it was not necessary to remember the number times and even to confess all your sins. He said that a contrite heart was the most important part. Despite this I did my best to describe every sin. In the end I never even said the act of contrition and he absolved my sins and we left the confessional still in conversation. Is the manner in which I confessed my irreverent? Can something like that make my confession invalid?
Also some of the advice he gave was against church teaching as far as I know. He seemed pretty liberal in areas of conception, and never stated that I wasn’t allowed to use it, though he did discourage it. To me it seemed that he suggested since I have children and am open to life and because my wife is not Catholic that contraception may be a possibility to space pregnancies. He wasn’t trying to encourage it but he didn’t take a hard stance against them either. Also my pennance was just to pray more frequently.
So in the end I left feeling forgiven but unsure about some of the details. I am just curious if this a normal experience or if I should try to do it differently next time.
Let me start by saying that I feel that my sins have been absolved, but I do have questions in regards to the apparent informality of the confession.
I made an appointment as I felt I needed time to properly express the gravity of my sins that have been accumulated in my life. I went into it with a strong desire to be honest and thorough.
When I met the priest, who I had known for some time, we spent some time chit chatting about life in general and the changes that had taken place to the church. It had not been my parish for many years. We continued in this manner as we entered the confessional and then father said a prayer and immediately inquired into the length of time it had been since my last confession. So we kind of skipped the whole “Bless me father” part. He asked me to begin confessing and I began to confess my sins. I had put a lot of thought into it and tried to be as detailed as I needed to be. I was probably overly detailed but I felt I needed to be open. He gave me a lot of counselling on each issue and the whole confession was more like a long conversation. We ended up talking about my life in great detail and how each sin affected me and my family. I was not opposed to this and in reality I openly shared these facts. We spent over a hour and half and in the end I forgot some sins that I had intended to confess. These were mostly the ones that I was not really afraid to confess, like skipping church and that sort of thing, and I fully intend to confess them next time. Also I tried my best to portray the frequency of my sins but never gave exact numbers. I spent more time on the nature of the sin than the frequency they occurred. He even said that he felt that it was not necessary to remember the number times and even to confess all your sins. He said that a contrite heart was the most important part. Despite this I did my best to describe every sin. In the end I never even said the act of contrition and he absolved my sins and we left the confessional still in conversation. Is the manner in which I confessed my irreverent? Can something like that make my confession invalid?
Also some of the advice he gave was against church teaching as far as I know. He seemed pretty liberal in areas of conception, and never stated that I wasn’t allowed to use it, though he did discourage it. To me it seemed that he suggested since I have children and am open to life and because my wife is not Catholic that contraception may be a possibility to space pregnancies. He wasn’t trying to encourage it but he didn’t take a hard stance against them either. Also my pennance was just to pray more frequently.
So in the end I left feeling forgiven but unsure about some of the details. I am just curious if this a normal experience or if I should try to do it differently next time.
Its going to take a little while to get used to it.
Just to be safe I will bring it up next time. I can see how some people suffer from scruples.