Is there any benefit in using confessionals or reconciliation rooms?

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FrancescaMaria

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Our priests hold regular confessions only once a week and emcourage appintments or just simply asking them whenever they are available, which means the confesdions usually take place in his office or wherever he is at the moment. I am very happy with that arrangement, because I prefer face to face and have no problem kneeling on the floor. After reading some of the previous threads on confesdionals/reconciliation rooms, I wonder if I am missing something and if it is OK to never use one. So, my question is: if I like to be face to face and do not need a kneeler to kneel, are there any benefits to using confessionals, or are they basically just for people who require anonimity and/or kneelers?
 
we are a dual natured creature…both a physical side to us and a spiritual side. Physical things like icons, rosaries, crucifixes, kneelers, bells, candles…the motions we use at Mass…all these things help to appeal to our physical nature to help us spiritually connect to the spiritual/unseeable.

So, do you need a confessional ? no. For centuries they didn’t exist. there was a time where you confessed in front of the entire congregation!

Which ever you think will assist u in touching the divine more and which will assist you spiritually …that’s the one you should use more often.

I often go to confession at this one parish that has a beautiful confession. to my right is a huge picture of the prodigal son, right in front of me is a beautiful crucifix I kneel in front of along with a gate that looks like prison bars between me and the priest… the bars give me a sense of where I am in my sin when I come to confession. I love using that confessional personally.

Yet sometimes going face to face with the priest and looking him in the eye is more humiliating and I feel I sometimes get more from it. I also like going face to face because I show Jesus how much I’m willing to change by choosing to be uncomfortable
 
I think priests can hear confessions wherever they’d like. I personally prefer the confessional so I can kneel behind the screen.

When they do mass confessions before Easter and Christmas where they bring in 15 priests for 8 hours to hear confessions, they put them all over the sanctuary in different spots. They do a good job of making sure there is enough room so people can have private confessions, but it would still make me nervous. I just go to a line for a priest in the traditional confession rooms… 🙂
 
I prefer face-to-face as well but the penitent should be offered the option of using a screen at least on a regular basis. Only offering the Sacrament of Confession by appointment, as some parishes do, does not afford that option.
 
It’s only personal preference. Do as you like.
There IS, IMHO, a big difference if you go face to face. Much easier to keep your promise to “avoid the near occasion of sin” when you say it looking into the eyes of a person representing Christ himself.

But people will argue the point for pages. So, I’m unsubscribing. 🙂
 
Back in the 1970s it was common to ridicule “the little box”. Some parishes got rid of confessionals, or replaced them with sterile rooms designed for counseling, conversation, or whatever.

There is something about our need for the familiar. Sleep experts tell us that aside from one other private activity it is better not to use the bedroom for anything other than going to sleep. That way your body and mind are ready, when you go into that room. Here is where you sleep.

Jewish families used to have certain plates and utensils that were used only on certain Holy Days. Other families would have their own traditions and places, seasons and decorations, reflecting heritage and good psychology. The puritans among us would have us throw out the Christmas tree, and then Christmas too, along with the confessional. They are equally opposed to feast days and fast days. They like multipurpose rooms.

There may be times when you go to confession somewhere else, and that is ok. A few people might prefer never to go to confession in anything like a confessional, and that is ok, too. It would be wrong to put too much emphasis on externals, but nowadays we are more likely to have the opposite problem, to throw things overboard before we figure out why we have had them so long.

The externals do have their place.
 
Either way is legitimate. I prefer the confessional. A good pastor will offer both options.
 
A confessional with a screen is less intimidating to someone on the fence about coming back to confession. I think they’re good to have because they can encourage people to receive the sacrament who otherwise would be afraid to.

Face to face confessions do provide more of an “incentive” to not commit the same sins again, since you know the priest will see you again. They also let the priest get to know you better.

I think both are important and that’s why they are both options.
 
When there is a special communal Penance service with 10 priests, there has to be face to face confession but there is also one or two confession booths available for those who want privacy.
 
In the parish I belong to, the confessional rooms have a kneeler with a screen or you can sit face to face. I prefer face to face.

It depends on how you feel about sitting in front of a priest confessing versus confessing behind a screen.
 
What ever gets the most people to confession.
If bringing back confessionals get more people to go then by all means bring them back.
My parish priest will hear my confession at Walmart if I wanted.

I’m a sinner and in need of reconciliation as is everyone else on the planet.
Confession is a great gift instituted by Jesus. Who are we refuse a gift from the Lord.
 
It’s really personal preference and it sounds like your preference is face to face. While either option can take place inside a confessional, I don’t see an advantage to using a confessional if it’s not needed.

My spiritual director is also my confessor and I go to confession when we are already meeting for direction. I haven’t been inside a confessional in many years and I’m not missing out on anything.
 
It honestly depends on whichever works best on for you. When I was younger, I always went face to face, but now I prefer the screen. It seems to make me more sorrowful for my sins, and it makes me more glad and joyful when I am forgiven.
 
I generally use a regular confessor, so I prefer face-to-face. However if I need to confess elsewhere than with my regular confessor, it doesn’t really matter.
 
I’ve always preferred face-to-face. It gives me more of an “encounter” experience, I would say, with the Merciful Jesus (as, when the priest is conferring absolution, he is acting in persona Christi, so it isn’t the priest who forgives us, it’s Jesus Himself).

The primary purpose of the screen actually has more to do with protecting the seal of confession. Today, in the US, our government generally doesn’t even try to force priests to violate the seal (though, it’s been tried at times) and priests are very good about accepting incarceration if threatened with contempt of court over refusing to violate the seal of confession. But in decades and centuries past, priests would be dragged out into the streets and even tortured in order to force them to violate the seal of confession. The remedy? Make it so that the priests could reasonably state that they didn’t know who came to confession by making confessions anonymous. In other words, confession behind the screen gave the priests “plausible deniability” when it came to hearing confessions. And if the current attacks on the Church gets worse, and the courts go back to forcing priests into violating the seal by charging them with crimes (such as being accomplices after-the-fact), I can see bishops and priests again asking their penitents to confess behind the screen.
 
I feel a little sorry for the OP since this conversation has gone so far off track. The question isn’t face-to-face vs. behind a screen. She wants face-to-face. Her question was whether there’s some advantage to having the sacrament inside a confessional rather than outside the confessional.
 
SuscipeMeDomine said:
I feel a little sorry for the OP since this conversation has gone so far off track. The question isn’t face-to-face vs. behind a screen. She wants face-to-face. Her question was whether there’s some advantage to having the sacrament inside a confessional rather than outside the confessional.
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The advantage of inside a confessional is none of the other penitents on line can hear your sins.

It also depends on how bad your sins are. I don’t want to face a priest who knows me outside & hear how terrible I am, although he would probably recognize my voice behind the screen anyway. 🤷
 
Here is what Canon Law has to say on the subject:
Can. 964 §1. The proper place to hear sacramental confessions is a church or oratory.
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§2. The conference of bishops is to establish norms regarding the confessional; it is to take care, however, that there are always confessionals with a fixed grate between the penitent and the confessor in an open place so that the faithful who wish to can use them freely.
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§3. Confessions are not to be heard outside a confessional without a just cause.
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Notice it says a “just” cause, which is much easier to justify than a “grave” cause.

On the other hand, it does appear to favor use of some kind of fixed location within the church or oratory and it does specify a grate should be available.
 
SuscipeMeDomine said:
I feel a little sorry for the OP since this conversation has gone so far off track. The question isn’t face-to-face vs. behind a screen. She wants face-to-face. Her question was whether there’s some advantage to having the sacrament inside a confessional rather than outside the confessional.
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Fair enough. I’d say that a confessional lends itself better to proper decorum. That is, a special Sacrament in a special time and place conducive to it.

While being in an office doesn’t affect validity, it helps to know that we are still only just emerging from a toxic fog from previous decades that had the effect of obscuring the Sacraments. In the case of Reconciliation, it went from receiving juridical absolution and took on the qualities of secular talk-therapy.
 
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