It won’t be too long now before I enter Holy Church.
The local priest has sent the forms to the Archdiocese to request permission to receive me into the Catholic Church, and I expect to have a reply from him sometime next week.
Before being received into the Church, I plan to go to my First Confession, a thing which I know I must (and should) do, but which I dread and will really have a hard time with, because I feel I won’t be able to look the priest in the eye ever again with all my shame. I imagine that Confession will take hours to do, with all the sins and explanations of them to do, many of which I would rather not, but must.
Does anyone have advice on this? Can a Confession last that long? Has anyone had a similar situation?
First of all, from every priest I’ve ever tipped a beer with (and that is many more than one), they honestly don’t remember what was said and who said it. Most of them attribute that to a grace from God.
Secondly, I would concur with the others who have suggested that you could consider going to another parish or to the diocesan Cathedral or to a shrine to confess have a good idea. Anonymity is a good thing.
Third, as far as the time to confess is concerned, frankly, there are a total of 10 commandments and 7 precepts of the Church. As a person is has not yet been received into the Church, you are not accountable to those 7 precepts yet (for example, to go to Mass on Sunday, to confess your sins to a priest at least once a year, etc.).
You should spent a considerable amount of time examining your conscience, that is true. You should have a full accounting of your past deeds that you bring to memory and feel true contrition for. However, when you confess those, you can summarize a great deal. For example:
- “As far as I remember, I violated the fourth commandment six times towards my parents and perhaps 12-15 times towards people appointed over me”
- “Though I can’t recount exactly how many times, I violated the sixth commandment multiple times with myself”
- “I have repeatedly violated the 10th commandment in the past”
Particularly for a “first confession”, the priest doesn’t particularly need more detail than the above. If he does, then he can ask you clarifying questions that you can answer for him.
Mind you, of course, if there is some sin(s) that particularly stand(s) out that you want to talk about, there is nothing wrong with going into more detail in regards to that sin (or those sins), but that is not required:
Can. 988 §1. A member of the Christian faithful is obliged to confess in kind and number all grave sins committed after baptism and not yet remitted directly through the keys of the Church nor acknowledged in individual confession, of which the person has knowledge after diligent examination of conscience.
“in Kind” = which commandment/precept did it violate
“in Number” = the number of times you violated it. Particularly for a first confession, an approximation is perfectly acceptable if you can’t recall each specific incident.
Note that it doesn’t say that you have to go into gory detail about each and every sin. Just “kind and number”
The other point is that if you do a good, thorough, honest examination of conscience and then find that you forgot something later on, the absolution that the priest grants you is still perfectly valid (I would suggest, for your own psychological health, to confess it at your next confession). The only issue comes in if you
intentionally omit something.
