I'd like there to be made a 24hr hotline to talk to a priest for spiritual guidance

[HomeschoolDad]

Your average parish priest did not sit in the confessional for hours. Nor did he draw big crowds.

I don’t know if it would qualify as “big crowds”, but the impression I have always had, is that in ages when the mass of people generally chose belief over non-belief, piety over impiety, and were genuinely concerned with saving their souls, the confessional lines were very long, and I would imagine, several priests were available simultaneously. My son’s grandmother in Poland goes very frequently, and it is one of those old-style European confessionals where the priest sits in an open chair and has two screens on either side of him, with no enclosed booth.

Also, priests cannot hear confessions by phone. What a priest can do on the phone vs. in person is quite limited.

I realize that, but I have to think that any contact, any answers, are better than none at all.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

You have an overbroad idea of Catholic faith practice.
The reason St. John Vianney was so remarkable is that huge numbers of people in his country had not been confessing, or going to church, or bothering with following God’s laws at all, when he came along.
His pastoral assignment was a very sinful village that was likely typical of a thousand other sinful locations in France (which had just been through a prolonged period of revolution and anti-clericalism and the Church had been underground and many priests had run away or been killed off).

And many of those locations didn’t even have a priest so there was no place for people to confess or go to church and over time they just didn’t bother.

The same type of situation happened in many locations all over Europe and Asia.

Yes, there have also been times and places where Catholics were more devout, but it varies, widely.

Also, remember that until the last couple hundred years, Catholics maybe received Holy Communion once a year. They went to confession within a week or so prior to Easter, and they were often given some little card to show they had gone, and they were allowed to receive Holy Communion. It’s not unlikely that that was their only confession for the year, and they were making it because the Church required them to confess at least once a year. There were also many cases of people who held off confessing until they thought they were going to die, presumably so they did not have to reform their life until the very last minute, or because it was low priority for them.

If you read some histories of confession and communion, all this is explained.

 

[MeganCecilia]

How can I find it?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

You have an overbroad idea of Catholic faith practice.

The reason St. John Vianney was so remarkable is that huge numbers of people in his country had not been confessing, or going to church, or bothering with following God’s laws at all, when he came along.
His pastoral assignment was a very sinful village that was likely typical of a thousand other sinful locations in France (which had just been through a prolonged period of revolution and anti-clericalism and the Church had been underground and many priests had run away or been killed off).

And many of those locations didn’t even have a priest so there was no place for people to confess or go to church and over time they just didn’t bother.

The same type of situation happened in many locations all over Europe and Asia.

Yes, there have also been times and places where Catholics were more devout, but it varies, widely.

I am quite aware that not all Catholic environments and cultures have been exactly alike, and it is not a case of “everybody was afraid of going to hell until fifty years ago, everybody went to confession and went often, and everyone was pious and devout out of fear for their souls, if for no other reason”. I was referring to those cultures throughout the world, where similar mentalities to this existed. There have always been people who were lax in their practice, and sometimes this was socially acceptable, and in other times and places, it was not. As to the latter, near-Jansenist Quebec before the 1960s comes immediately to mind, and not all aspects of that culture are something we should admire and seek to restore.