I had my first confession yesterday. I took a list of my sins with me and read them to the priest. I was shaking, tearful and very nervous, but I managed to get through it. The priest was very kind and helpful.
Now, however, I feel like I’m certain I forgot to mention a lot of my sins. I don’t have anything particular on my mind, just a general feeling that my confession was lacking a lot. I don’t feel I have a tendency towards scrupulosity, but I do fear I may have a tendency to rationalize or justify things to myself and not see them as sins. Or I may have decided some things I didn’t confess were venial rather than mortal and been wrong about that.
In addition, I have an absolutely terrible memory. I know for a fact that with nearly a half century of conscience to examine, I missed the majority of what I should have been confessing.
Has anyone else felt like that? Did you get over it? How?
Also, one of the things I confessed to was missing Sunday church on a number of occasions. The priest said that was only a sin for Catholics. I replied that even as a Protestant, I was always well aware I was supposed to go to church every Sunday even if there wasn’t some authoritative church body commanding me to; every church I’ve ever been to teaches that “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy” means obligatory church attendance. I maintain it was a sin. What do you think?
You’re far from alone in your sentiment. As a confessor, let me just reassure you. Confession before being received into full communion is a great challenge. You’ve never experienced the sacrament before and so there’s a fear of the unknown.
One, too, can have strong reactions because the memory and evocation of some actions or inactions can be painful or sorrowful and the remembrance can provoke bitter memories of a different phase of life. But they’re brought up in order to be taken to the Lord, definitively dealt with by Him, and to be healed of them.
There are also topics & incidents that we naturally resist telling any other person and that instinct has to be overcome in making a thorough and lifelong confession…but we priests understand & appreciate that.
Also, as priests, we completely exclude knowledge we gain in the internal forum (confession matters) from how we interact with people in the external forum (outside the confessional). It’s part of our formation. It’s a discipline we acquire that goes beyond, for example, how a physician or surgeon relates to a patient in a social setting. Internal forum knowledge is simply excluded from the mind…I am sure as much through God’s grace as through an act of the will on our part. I remember a priest when I went to seminary telling me to ask the Lord, on the day of ordination as priest, for the grace never to remember what was said in confession. It’s a prayer the Lord is kind to answer.
As you receive the sacrament of penance regularly, it becomes more familiar and easy…although even for me, after hearing confessions for decades, I still write down my little list when I myself go to confession. It saves me if I have a senior moment, which are coming ever more frequently.
There is a moral certainty that there are things you forgot…especially if the Confession is going back to 1967. Of course there are things you don’t remember. But the law does not ask us to do the impossible…it asks us to do our best. We have to work in relatively broad swaths of categories when dealing with Confessions that involve multiple decades. Rejoice that you will never have to do something like this again.
For your concern about rationalization and justifying, from the perspective of moral theology, it’s important to remember that to acquire moral guilt for a serious sin, there are three things to be fulfilled: the matter itself has to be serious, you have to know that it’s serious, and you have to fully and freely consent in the absence of any mitigating factor (force, fear, etc.) So, as you’re doing the examination of conscience, you certainly may arrive at the conclusion that you did not know that X was a sin or that it was a serious sin. Therefore, you would not be guilty of mortal sin, even if the act involved what is objectively serious matter.
In the examination of conscience, the conscience is applying the criteria it has to arrive at a judgement about the rightness or wrongness of an individual act against the measure of the law. It is not infallible but if you look at the thing being considered and arrive at the conclusion that it was a venial sin, based on what was known by you at the time, that is legitimate and you need not keep repeating the analysis. Having made the best judgment, you should now be at peace that the matter is, in any event, absolved.
A person cannot accidentally or unknowingly commit a mortal sin. The very question, if it is sincere, “I wonder if I just committed a mortal sin?” means you didn’t, since you have to know it is a mortal sin.
IF you remember something that is serious, mention it in your next Confession as something you forgot…HOWEVER, do not now try to dredge up or keep re-visiting the past. That actually easily leads to being scrupulous.
A handy thing always to add at the end of your list of sins is: “For these and any sins I have forgotten and all the sins of my past life, I am heartily sorry.” It not only covers things you may have forgotten, it practically tells the confessor that you have finished your list and that the ball is now in his court.
Finally, to your other question, you would have been bound by the commandment to keep holy the Lord’s day and transgressions there are properly confessed but the power to bind in conscience through ecclesiastical law for attendance at services would be beyond the prerogative of the ecclesial communities you were most likely part of.
God bless you. I’ll be praying for you as you come into full communion.
Exactly. God doesn’t expect us to remember everything - he only expects us to try to remember as much as possible and to not deliberately withhold a known mortal sin (to do so would invalidate the confession and would be a mortal sin in and of itself).