Harder and harder to find confession times...WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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There are confession times here during the week, but the most popular times are on Saturdays. By popular, I mean most well attended. I think that is why most parishes do have them on Saturdays. With people commuting to work and trying to have some family time in the evenings, Saturday afternoons usually are the most convenient. And even during those idyllic pre-Vatican II times, most people went to confession on Saturdays.

If you can’t find a confession time during the week, and are uncomfortable making an appointment, then you’ll need to curtail your Saturday excursions once a month or so to get to confession.
 
Most of the parishes around here seem to have confession at just the Saturday afternoon time, for half an hour or an hour. Even the Cathedral (2900 families) only has Wed evening and Sat afternoon confession times before Masses. At least one parish only has confessions scheduled for once or twice a month.

My parish, the “traditional but not Traditionalist” parish of the area, has confession before all three weekend Masses. As far as I can tell none of the other parishes have weekly confession on Sundays. And Father recently announced that he needs to expand confession times because people are running out of time! (Confession is also scheduled for Wed evening before Mass but Father’s not usually in there because no one goes then. But he’s the type who would be happy to hear confession at any time if anyone asked.)

The FSSP community has confessions before every Mass, 7 days a week.
 
I am fortunate with my parish … we have abundant time for confession available:

Monday through Friday at 6:45am, 8am, and 11:45am, Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 3:30pm

Plus there are extra (evening) hours on the first Thursday and Friday of the month in preparation for the First Friday & First Saturday devotions as well as other special ones (like on the Saturday before First Communion, they have a practice which ends w/ confession being made available to all the kids and parents) as well as extra time slots before major holidays.
 
My goodness, I’m amazed. I’ve only been Catholic for just under three years and have always lived in Ohio here but all the local churches only seem to have confession for about 30 to 45 minutes before Mass on Saturday and that is it! It is a pretty limited time frame. I wish I had the access that some of you do. And yes, I’m sure I could make an appointment but I’d rather just blend in with the masses. 🙂

Amie
 
We’re pretty lucky. Our parish offers Confession for a 1/2 hour before every Mass, everyday. Confessions are also heard on Saturdays for 4 hours.
 
Entrust your salvation and sanctification to God. If He wishes you to bear a cross on the weekends, so be it.
 
I know that “by appointment” has taken a lot of flak in this thread (:)), but we should remember that most parishes add that line in order to convey that the priest is always available whenever someone needs them.

I, too, would feel sheepish calling to make an appointment, though. :o I know I shouldn’t, but I do.
 
Thanks to everyone for the replies, it is really interesting to see how the various parts of the country are similar and different in terms of the logistical aspect of confession.
Tracy24 said:
I’m in Canada but I too feel the frustration. My parish is clustered with 3 other parishes so basically we have one Priest trying to juggle 4 parishes and for the most part he handles it well.
Confession times are 30 minutes before each weekend Mass, this is 30 minutes per parish. I am a new Catholic and I make a point of going to confession at least once a month not only for my own spiritual well being but to also set an example for my 7 year old daughter so she can see mommy is going regularly and that it isn’t as scary as she has it built up to be in her mind(she had her first confession back in May and she is still not too sure about it all).

Anywhoo, I have always had to find Father before Mass and ask if he has time to hear my confession. This takes away my anonymity because he knows it is me on the other side of the screen. He has never come out and said anything but I feel like I am taking him away from his Mass preparations asking him to hear confession and I seem to always confess one particular sin regularly that is one I am struggling with but I feel like he may be getting frustrated with me because I keep falling into this one sin over and over again.

I am looking for another parish that has more flexibility in time schedules to make my confessions at.
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In my opinion it must be a really difficult situation to have a clustered parish with the priest going back and forth between churches. I do commend you on your very wise example to your daughter, unfortunately I didn’t have that example for several reasons, which may have been part of the reason of my being lost from God for so long. Hopefully for us the increased availability of confession will be available to us in the future.
peterson28 said:
If you are near Waterbury try the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. They have confessions just about everyday and in the evening as well.

theimmaculate.com/Default.asp
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Unfortunately I’m about 1 hour away from Waterbury but I really appreciate that resource as the schedule posted on the website is extremely accommodating and I will absolutely keep this in mind
 
I live in Connecticut too…A few hours on Saturday is pretty much the standard for confessions availability around here. During Lent, the Bridgeport diocese did a “come home” type thing where confession was open on Tuesday and Thursday nights. It was great… and to my suprise there was about a 2 hour wait a the church I went to the Tuesday before Easter.
I didn’t know about the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception…very nice to know!
 
In our area most churches have confessions on Saturday afternoons.

Our parish is fortunate in that our newly-assigned priests (Oblates of St. Joseph) hear confessions every weekday for a half hour before the 12:10 Mass; Saturdays at 7:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

We also have Catholic Underground once a month (second Friday), with confessions offered all evening (7-10 p.m.).

There is an elderly priest in town who is in the confessional every day for an hour before daily Mass (early morning Monday-Friday, Monday evening) in addition to the traditional Saturday afternoon. If I outlive him I want to nominate him for sainthood!
 
I went looking for something at our Diocesan website yesterday and found that the Reconciliation schedule is a bit different than what I’m used to at the local level. St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Norwich, CT) offers the Sacrament weekdays at 11:45 AM and Saturday and Holy Day Eve 4:00 - 4:45 PM and 7:00 - 7:30 PM and also by appointments. This is encouraging for me as getting to Saturday Reconciliation after missing making an appointment during the week is difficult at best.

Hope it helps!
 
Joe_5859 said:
I know that “by appointment” has taken a lot of flak in this thread (:)), but we should remember that most parishes add that line in order to convey that the priest is always available whenever someone needs them.

I, too, would feel sheepish calling to make an appointment, though. :o I know I shouldn’t, but I do.
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I don’t have a problem with “and by appointment”. I do have a problem with that being the only option.
 
If I was a pastor I would try to get a priest to be in the box DURING Mass. Yeah, I know that’s not per Hoyle but they do exactly that at one of my parishes before Christmas and Easter and a ton of people (who likely would not go otherwise) do go when another one of the excuses is taken away…
 
When I was growing up, (I was born in 1988) I was lucky enough to live in a small town with a very old, beautiful church. Up until somewhat recently, it was under the pastorate of very old fashioned, traditional minded priests, and they had confessions before every daily Mass for half an hour, an hour before all Sunday Masses, and from 10-12 Saturdays. Now since we’ve been merged with a bigger church up the road, confessions are at 3:45 on Saturdays before the 4:30 Mass.

Ah, the good old days…
 
Silverburg said:
If I was a pastor I would try to get a priest to be in the box DURING Mass. Yeah, I know that’s not per Hoyle but they do exactly that at one of my parishes before Christmas and Easter and a ton of people (who likely would not go otherwise) do go when another one of the excuses is taken away…
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Interestingly, I attended a mass at a very old, ethnic parish a few weeks ago. Of the 30 or so in attendance, most were elderly. One of the priests was in the confessional during the mass and a number of the parishioners went in to the confessional during mass. I had never observed this before.
 
dachsiemom said:
Interestingly, I attended a mass at a very old, ethnic parish a few weeks ago. Of the 30 or so in attendance, most were elderly. One of the priests was in the confessional during the mass and a number of the parishioners went in to the confessional during mass. I had never observed this before.
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I’ve been to parishes where this happens unintentionally because the line for Confession (which is scheduled for immediately before Mass) is so long that the priest will be hearing Confessions for the duration of Mass in order to get to everyone in line.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems a little off to me to have Confession going on right there in the church while Mass is going on. But then, it is good for people to go to Confession. I wonder if any of our resident liturgists could fill us in on any rubrics in this regard. 🙂
 
Joe_5859 said:
I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems a little off to me to have Confession going on right there in the church while Mass is going on. But then, it is good for people to go to Confession. I wonder if any of our resident liturgists could fill us in on any rubrics in this regard. 🙂
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I’m not a resident liturgist, so I’ll leave you with a response on the subject from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: adoremus.org/confessions1001.html

It seems to say that it is permitted, but it is preferable to confess at other times.
 
PhilotheaZ said:
I’m not a resident liturgist, so I’ll leave you with a response on the subject from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: adoremus.org/confessions1001.html

It seems to say that it is permitted, but it is preferable to confess at other times.
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Awesome! You may not be a liturgist, but you’re certainly “Johnny-on-the-spot”! 😉 Who knew the CDWDS already answered that exact question? Well, I guess you knew. 🙂

I guess that’s pretty much how I would have expected them to answer. They advise that it’s best to do it at other times (and that it is certainly not permissable to unite the two sacraments as one liturgical action), but they don’t want to squelch the desire to go to Confession (particularly when it is so rare these days).

Thanks for sharing!
 
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