How often does your parish offer confession?

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Wednesday evenings for an hour before Mass, Friday mornings for an hour after Mass during Adoration and Saturday afternoons for an hour before Mass
 
Maybe volunteer to help at your parish office for a couple of weeks. When you see how many demands are on a priest, how many hospital calls he does, meetings he must attend, it is a wonder some of our priests don’t drop from exhaustion.
 
BigRon said:
It’s like the church thinks everyone works Monday to Friday. If there is a wedding or something there won’t be confession and you have to wait weeks for one.
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Oh, by all means tell your priest if the scheduled confession times don’t work for you. If no one says anything to him, he may not know it’s a problem.

Where I live, even with all the opportunities available at the churches in the care of the ICRSS the canons encourage us to tell them if the confession schedule makes it difficult or impossible to avail ourselves of the sacrament.
 
My parish offers confession before every daily Mass (twice daily, save for Mondays) for an hour and a half on Saturday evening, and twice on Sunday afternoon.

-Fr ACEGC
 
Typically, they offer it twice on Saturday. However, you can usually schedule an appointment with one of our priests (we have three). They are very flexible.
 
No, it is not convenient for everyone, especially the priest.
My Pastor has 3 parishes with over 1000 families.
He has one, part-time parochial vicar who also helps out at another parish.
We have 3 nursing homes and 2 hospitals in within our parish boundaries.
My pastor is already run ragged with meetings, funerals, putting out fires at three aging, inner-city parishes, and dealing with the day-to-day operations of 3 parishes. He makes himself or the PV available on Saturdays for 45 minutes before Mass at 2 sites and on Sundays for 45 minutes at another site.
Outside of those times, he asks that appointments be set, as he always has something he could be doing, and sitting in the confessional for an hour, with no one there is not a good use of his time.

For all those who find this unacceptable- pray for priests and encourage the young men in your families to consider the priesthood. It is only going to get worse if we don’t do something about it soon.
 
My parish offers Confession usually twice a week, Wednesday at 6:30 PM and Friday at 3:00 PM. My pastor says those are the traditional days of penance. However I usually go to a different parish which has the most wheelchair accessible confessional in town 😃 ♿ - they have it on Saturdays.
 
My parish offers two 45 minute times each on Monday and Saturday. It often doesn’t work for me but there are several parishes in my area, so I either just find one that offers a time when I can make it, adjust my other commitments to make it a priority, or, particularly while returning to church (I had a lot of questions) I made an appointment a couple times. Of course, finding a church on your trip could also be an option.

While some only want to confess at their home parish, we can have interesting experiences and growth also from being guided by different priests, particularly if we tend to repeatedly struggle with similar sins, as many people do. I prefer my home parish but have had very good experiences when an unfamiliar priest has had a different manner of expressing a point, or lead me to a reading from a new perspective, etc. It’s all been great, wherever I go.

Best wishes to you.
 
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Your parishioners are very lucky. I’ve ben in a large parish before with four priests at one church and you only have a 15 minute confession before Saturday vigil Mass with people getting turned away each week because Mass begins. I’ve had another parish where you can make confessions by appointment and the priest huffs and puffs and moans, it makes you never want to ask him for confession again. I understand why people don’t go.
 
Advent/Lenten Services
or
By Appointment

I go to another area Parish for confession.
Most Parish’s in our offer confession on Saturday afternoon.
One Parish in the area offers confession everyday except for Sunday.
 
Tuesday evening and Saturday afternoon.

Wednesday evening during Lent.

Penance services during Advent and Lent.

And by appointment. Either by phone call or catching the priest at the parish.
 
Seven days a week, before all Masses, and during Friday Holy Hour. God bless the FSSP priests.
 
1-2 p.m. every Saturday. None scheduled before Mass because generally Adoration and Benediction ends with just enough time for Father to vest. I’ve had occasion to request to confess after Mass because we were heading on a long road trip. Fr. has always accommodated my requests.

Once a week is a marked improvement, though. There was a 9 year period when there were no scheduled confessions. First the Pastor said it wasn’t worth wasting his time sitting in the confessional when nobody came. That’s not hearsay, he said it in my presence. His replacement didn’t reinstate confession. We would end up only having the Lenten and Advent Reconciliation Services.
 
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My parish offers only on Saturday, 30 mins before Saturday mass, or by appt.

Fortunately, the parish by my work offers confession thirty mins prior to every mass, so I go there on lunch break.

In my view, this is one step my parish could take to improve parish life: offer confession times more often. It has helped me far more than the 8:00pm basketball for adults, or wine and cheese after mass.
 
Phemie said:
1-2 p.m. every Saturday. None scheduled before Mass because generally Adoration and Benediction ends with just enough time for Father to vest. I’ve had occasion to request to confess after Mass because we were heading on a long road trip. Fr. has always accommodated my requests.

Once a week is a marked improvement, though. There was a 9 year period when there were no scheduled confessions. First the Pastor said it wasn’t worth wasting his time sitting in the confessional when nobody came. That’s not hearsay, he said it in my presence. His replacement didn’t reinstate confession. We would end up only having the Lenten and Advent Reconciliation Services.
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I’m glad the confession situation has improved. It’s so sad to hear that few were coming to confession, but that is partially a product of catechesis. It’s a shame that some priests in the seventies and eighties, especially, were seduced by the defeatist attitude of secularism. Start preaching regularly about the wonderful graces that flow in the sacrament of confession, and they will come. When people hear these sermons and see the many hours that priests put into the confessional, they begin to realize its importance. The reason that small FSSP parishes hear confessions daily is because their priests constantly preach about confession. It really pas off–now and in the next life.
 
nfinke said:
Priests have an obligation to make themselves available for arguably their biggest responsibility.
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This. I’m fond of reminding people of this when I’m visiting another parish 😁 The problem partly one of perception versus reality - “confessions on Saturday from 5:30-6pm” is taken as meaning that confessions are only heard at this time. Offering a regular time is helpful because it gives people some certainty but obviously no time is ever going to be perfect for everyone - which is why the obligation exists.
nfinke said:
I don’t mean to be too critical, as I don’t really know what priests do every hour of the day, but I find it hard to believe that they can’t find the time to squeeze in 30 minutes to hear some confessions.
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It’s not so much a matter of fitting in 30 minutes but rather fitting in 30 minutes each week at the same time.

Besides my set times each week, I tell people it’s available on request; I hold myself to that and encourage my parishioners to do the same.
 
I work nights M-F. Saturday mornings would never work for me.
 
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