Needing a general guide, if you will. How specific does one need to be? and how specific is TOO specific? Must everything be numbered? do you need to include who? hIf you confess to taking the lords name in vain, do you need to say exactly how you said it? do you need to tell your decepton? Or if a straight man , for example confesses watching porn, must he specify if it had additonal images of imorality, such as adulter or lesbianism?
The confessing person’s own feelings help him answer this question.
As a Catholic lawyer, I would encourage fallen-away clients to return to the Church, beginning with confession. They would ask me what sins to confess, because they had so many!
I told them, “Do you remember when you would go to church on Saturdays for confession when you were young, and you would sit and do your examination of conscience, and when there were sins which made you want to hide under the pew, and you were sorely tempted to bury them in those ridiculous juvenile sin-counting lists – ‘I lied 3 times, I disobeyed my parents 4 times,’ etc. Well, THOSE are the sins where you have to go into some detail, enough to explain to the priest why they fill you with shame. If you don’t, your confession is probably not valid.”
The priest is the representative of God and man for purposes of exposing your guilt. If you don’t expose your guilt – if you walk out of that confession happy that your sin is still hidden to a critical extent – it’s probably not valid, and the priest’s act of absolution was probably ineffective.
Just a quick recommendation o my fellow Catholics, here: Do you still abide by that “Bless-me-Father-for-I-have-sinned” structure they taught you in CCD or grade school?
Throw it away. Make your confession more conversational, more real, less stilted. The priest will appreciate it. If your sorrow is sincere, it will make it easier for him to judge that fact. All that is important is that you include the essential material: The time since your last confession; the juicy stuff" on the sins that make you want to hide under the pew; no minimization as to frequency or consequences – the priest needs to know if you have a larger problem – and the Act of Contrition prayer.
Respecting “consequences,” a story: A Catholic client came to me once and said that she had fooled around wildly while married; and that, on the advice of her lawyer, to gain control of her angry husband in the divorce case, she had twice falsely testified that her husband was guilty of touching their infant daughter’s personal region, sending him to prison twice. She said, “He was perfectly innocent.”
Does “Bless me Father for I have sinned; I lied one time” cover that?
No! Just saying, “I lied,” is really another lie!
