How sorry does one have to be to make a confession valid?

[smichhertz]

I recently read the book “Frequent Confession” by Benedict Baur. In this book, he stated that none of us are really as sorry as we should be for our sins. He goes to say, as long as we have any level of contrition for our sins, regardless of the reason, it is sufficient for a valid confession. In other words, as long as we’re sorry at all, it counts.

However, I have noted that many times when this topic comes up in these forums, many users take (in my humble opinion) a harsher stance by stating that the person must be sorry for the act the committed for the correct reasons. For instance, it’s not enough to be sorry simply because “the Church says so” but one must be sorry because one sees the seriousness of the sin, or understand the harm it does.

Can anyone point to Church documents that shed light on this issue? Or does anyone have any thoughts they’d care to share?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ZDHayden]

I have some thoughts. For sacramental Confession, imperfect contrition is all that is required (which could be as imperfect as, “well, I don’t want to go to Hell…” or “cuz the Church said so”). Perfect contrition is, however, preferred. A priest once told me (I am not certain of the orthodoxy of this, however) that the only ordinary and non-emergency way to be absolved of sins without sacramental Confession, is to have perfect contrition, which means, being truly sorry for your sins out of pure, unselfish love of God, and then Confession as soon as possible. I do not have documents to support this, but you also asked for thoughts. Hope this helps.

 

[smichhertz]

I have some thoughts. For sacramental Confession, imperfect contrition is all that is required (which could be as imperfect as, “well, I don’t want to go to Hell…” or “cuz the Church said so”). Perfect contrition is, however, preferred. A priest once told me (I am not certain of the orthodoxy of this, however) that the only ordinary and non-emergency way to be absolved of sins without sacramental Confession, is to have perfect contrition, which means, being truly sorry for your sins out of pure, unselfish love of God, and then Confession as soon as possible. I do not have documents to support this, but you also asked for thoughts. Hope this helps.

Yes, this was how I understood it as well. I’d be curious to hear from any who differ from this and why.

 

[JerryS]

You need to be repentant. That is, you need to be sorry for your sins and intend to not sin again.

There is no specification on the depth of sorrow. Deeper sorrow is more likely to lead to amendment of life, but even weak sorrow is enough for absolution.

If you’re sorry for more selfish reasons, for example out of fear of going to hell, it’s called attrition. If you’re sorry because you love God and are sorry for having offended Him, then it’s true contrition. Contrition is purer and better than attrition, but either is sufficient for absolution.

 

[smichhertz]

If you’re sorry for more selfish reasons, for example out of fear of going to hell, it’s called attrition. If you’re sorry because you love God and are sorry for having offended Him, then it’s true contrition. Contrition is purer and better than attrition, but either is sufficient for absolution.

Interesting, I wasn’t aware of the difference of terms. Thanks for sharing!

 

[kykid]

Every time I go to Confession, it is because I have offended God and desire his forgiveness. I am sorry that I have offended him and desire to amend my ways so that I will not offend him in the future. I am not sure that this is perfect contrition but it is the attitude with which I enter the confessional.

Afterward, I feel as if a huge burden has been lifted from me, as if I will never be closer to God than I am at that moment. If more people knew how powerful Confession is, they would be lined around the block to participate. Unfortunately, that is not the case, at least at my Parrish.

I get frustrated sometimes because it seems that I confess the same sin over and over, with little improvement in my ability to fight temptation. Father John assures me that this is common and encourages me to persist in making a good confession and in performing my penance. I have found, with persistence and proper attitude in penance, that this feeling is becoming minimized and I can feel the Grace of God working through me now.

God bless you all.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

The answer is contained in the Act of Contrition (the older one):

O my God, I am heartily sorry for all my sins – because

(imperfect contrition) I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell

(perfect contrition) but most of all because they offend thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love . . .

 

[oratorymatt]

The answer is contained in the Act of Contrition (the older one):

O my God, I am heartily sorry for all my sins – because

(imperfect contrition) I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell

(perfect contrition) but most of all because they offend thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love . . .

I love that version!

I must admit the second line is mostly what I bring to the sacrament - my dread of the pains of hell, hopefully I will improve with time!

 

[smichhertz]

The answer is contained in the Act of Contrition (the older one):

O my God, I am heartily sorry for all my sins – because

(imperfect contrition) I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell

(perfect contrition) but most of all because they offend thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love . . .

So what if one does really understand how something is a sin?

For instance, a young man struggles to see why premarital sex is wrong. But fully recognizes that the Church clearly teaches that it is wrong. As such, he finds difficulty in motivating himself to not do it, yet is still sorry for when he does as he recognizes it as a violation of the the teachings of the Church.

Would that young man’s confession be valid?

 

[curlycool89]

I recently read the book “Frequent Confession” by Benedict Baur. In this book, he stated that none of us are really as sorry as we should be for our sins. He goes to say, as long as we have any level of contrition for our sins, regardless of the reason, it is sufficient for a valid confession. In other words, as long as we’re sorry at all, it counts.

However, I have noted that many times when this topic comes up in these forums, many users take (in my humble opinion) a harsher stance by stating that the person must be sorry for the act the committed for the correct reasons. For instance, it’s not enough to be sorry simply because “the Church says so” but one must be sorry because one sees the seriousness of the sin, or understand the harm it does.

Can anyone point to Church documents that shed light on this issue? Or does anyone have any thoughts they’d care to share?

Thanks in advance!

Imperfect contrition is “good enough”. Are you afraid of loosing salvation and ending up in hell? It’s a fairly selfish reason, but that’s good enough.

So what if one does really understand how something is a sin?

For instance, a young man struggles to see why premarital sex is wrong. But fully recognizes that the Church clearly teaches that it is wrong. As such, he finds difficulty in motivating himself to not do it, yet is still sorry for when he does as he recognizes it as a violation of the the teachings of the Church.

Would that young man’s confession be valid?

If he truly means to stop and amend his life and is sorry, it is valid. If he falls a week later, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t mean it before. People can have moments of weakness, but they do need to work to avoid them and confess them when they fall. If they have a particular trouble with a certain sin, they should use the same confessor so that they can work through it.

 

[Will_S]

For instance, a young man struggles to see why premarital sex is wrong. But fully recognizes that the Church clearly teaches that it is wrong. As such, he finds difficulty in motivating himself to not do it, yet is still sorry for when he does as he recognizes it as a violation of the the teachings of the Church.

I suspect what you really mean to say is that he has trouble feeling that premarital sex is wrong, not trouble understanding why. Why is clear. God says it is wrong. Case closed.

But obviously one can know rationally that something is wrong without having an emotional revulsion or feeling that it is wrong. That is why the Catholic faith requires us to be under the control of our rational mind, and not allow ourselves to fall under the control of our passions. Our passions are corrupted by original sin and will lead us into sin if they are not tamed by reason.

The solution to the problem posed above is to not worry about one’s feelings of what is acceptable and what is wrong, but to obey what one knows to be God’s law. A young man should not let himself get into a situation that will even tempt him to commit a sin of impurity. That way, the problem is arrested before the violence of the passions is so great that resistance is almost impossible.

 

[smichhertz]

Imperfect contrition is “good enough”. Are you afraid of loosing salvation and ending up in hell? It’s a fairly selfish reason, but that’s good enough.

Makes sense to me.

If he truly means to stop and amend his life and is sorry, it is valid. If he falls a week later, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t mean it before. People can have moments of weakness, but they do need to work to avoid them and confess them when they fall. If they have a particular trouble with a certain sin, they should use the same confessor so that they can work through it.

Okay that leads to a follow up question - how firm of an amendment is required? Following along that same example - let’s say this young man knows he’ll probably commit the sin again. Would he still have a valid confession?

 

[smichhertz]

The solution to the problem posed above is to not worry about one’s feelings of what is acceptable and what is wrong, but to obey what one knows to be God’s law. A young man should not let himself get into a situation that will even tempt him to commit a sin of impurity. That way, the problem is arrested before the violence of the passions is so great that resistance is almost impossible.

Okay so following along that, let’s expand on our example. Suppose this same young man is more likely to commit sins of impurity when he’s drunk. As he’s entering the confessional to confess his sins, he already has plans to go out drinking with friends afterward, which he has no intention of canceling. So in this case, he is planning on putting himself in the near occasion of sin for both drunkenness and the proximate occasion of sin for impurity. Would THAT confession be invalid then?

 

[Dave2300]

It’s pretty amazing to me that anyone who believes in and loves God, would not be genuinely sorry for having offended Him in any way.

Not that we don’t continue to sin, we do, but this lukewarm confession thing speaks of lukewarm love for God.

We’re either sorry for our sins or we aren’t.
How can we be kinda sorry?

It’s like doing someone wrong to our neighbor and then saying I’m sorta kinda sorry I did that, I half-heartedly apologize—that kind of apology is really no apology at all, and I don’t think God looks too kindly on half-heartedly saying gee, I’m mostly sorry for having offended You.

This is why I don’t post on this site too often, I find some of these questions to almost contain the desired answers within the questions themselves.

Too often we want things our way, even to the point of wondering just how little contrition we can get away with and still be all right with God.

God, what’s the minimum sorrow I can feel for having offended You? I’ll shoot for that.

 

[Dave2300]

Too often, we don’t really understand WHO God really is.

We either don’t have enough true reverence, or we think of Him as our pal in some way.

We make Him in our own image and figure He’ll understand our ways, when we just can’t muster up enough courage to obey Him as He commands.
Then we figure everything is okay with Him, as He is a loving God.
But we forget that He does us a huge favor by not sending all of us to Hell for our sins, which we deserve. We don’t deserve life, we deserve death.
But He graciously saves us from that, and we turn around and basically wonder how much we can get away with.

Is anyone else disturbed by this trend of us trying to step up to the line without crossing it and really and truly displeasing God?
Quite a few questions here deal with just that kind of issue. How much can I do without crossing the line, not, how can I obey the One who created me out of nothing.
We’re concerned about the limits set on us by God and instead of being interested in unquestioning obedience, we try to see how far we can go before we go too far with Him.

 

[smichhertz]

It’s pretty amazing to me that anyone who believes in and loves God, would not be genuinely sorry for having offended Him in any way.

Not that we don’t continue to sin, we do, but this lukewarm confession thing speaks of lukewarm love for God.

We’re either sorry for our sins or we aren’t.
How can we be kinda sorry?

I think it has more to do with the reasons why we are sorry. Ideally, we would all be sorry for our sins because of our love for God. I know I sometimes struggle with this, and I’m more sorry simply because I don’t want to go to Hell, or because I believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church, even though sometimes I struggle with them.

So that’s how one can be “kind of” sorry. I say, they are really sorry but just have less than perfect reasons for being sorry. Others on this forum have said they are simply not sorry.

 

[puzzleannie]

you need the intellectual assent that you know what you did was wrong. The prayer is called an “act” of contrition, not an “emotion” of contrition. The words of the prayer are enough even without an emotional response.

 

[Dave2300]

Well, God created us out of nothing. He certainly owes us nothing, not even our own lives, so I figured that since we are here only because He desires us to be, or we would not even be here typing, that we would be really sorry for anything we did to offend a just and all-powerful God like the one we have.
I don’t see any halfway or conditional kind of sorrow for our sins.
If we love God, then we are sorry we offended Him.

If you really love a person, and you are madly in love with him or her, and you push them down on the sidewalk in a fit of anger during an argument, you would be really and truly and completely sorry that you did that, and you would apologize for days, probably.

But offending God seems to strike us a bit differently.

We are much better at apologizing to fellow human beings than apologizing to the One without whom we would not be typing on the Internet.

We exist at His pleasure and because of His pleasure. He is responsible for allowing all of us to exist another minute and for every breath we take.
And yet we’re not as sorry for offending Him as we would be if we offended our wives or husbands or girlfriends or boyfriends.

I find it amazing, is all. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

 

[Dave2300]

Bottom line is that I’m not sure we see God for who He really really is.
We have this concept of him as a benevolent grandfatherly type who has to be more understanding of us.

My sister in law once asked me about Christianity, and the Old and New Testaments, and when I got to the part about the Flood, and Noah and the Ark, she said to me, “Oh, temper tantrum. I think He could have used anger management”.
At that point I realized I was talking with someone who had no real idea of just who God is, all she knew was the image of God she carried around with her, which really bore no resemblance at all to the all-powerful God of the Bible.

Most problems come about because of our own failure to realize just who God is, and how powerful and how loving He really is.
We make unconscious attempts to limit Him in some way, to make it easier to understand Him and His ways.

When the world began, God created us in His own image.
And we’ve been returning the favor ever since.

We’re certainly not very humbled by comparing us to Him, and what our exact relationship is with Him.

 

[Dave2300]

Follow up post----we’re more concerned about what we would like to do than we are with the unconditional obedience God wants from us.

Think about it a moment. Are we putting God ahead of what we want for ourselves? Are we becoming less so that He can become more, as John the Baptist did and said?

Take a look at thread after thread here and notice how quite a few of them are concerned with what we want as human beings, our desires, rather than asking ourselves what HE wants from us, i.e. obedience.

You’ll see a common theme running through a lot of those threads, and you can tell just by the titles, in a lot of cases.

But give it some thought---------are we consciously trying to do what God wants and fighting this urge to do whatever we want?