Poll: Behind the screen or face to face confession?

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Screen. I have really bad social anxiety and the few times I’ve opted for face-to-face, I’ve gotten extremely flustered and distracted. For me, the screen offers a chance to calmly examine my conscience and confess my sins to God without the extra nerves that come from having a conversation with somebody.
 
I voted face to face. It’s not that I really “prefer” it in the sense that I prefer butter over margarine, or blue over orange. It’s just more meaningful for me. Especially, now that the big stuff is already out and dealt with from the 48 years I kicked around before converting to Catholocism. My regular confessor is a monsignor who comes often to our parish. He knows me anyway, so the screen isn’t masking my identity really. And each time I go, it becomes more of a spiritual guidance session, and a relationship. Yes, it gives me goosebumps, and butterflies in my stomache, and I still struggle sometimes with form, but it just seems more like speaking with Christ to me when I’m sitting facing him, and bearing my soul, and asking for forgiveness and advice. I don’t know. I’m probably not expressing this very well. I know both are perfectly valid, and equal in meaning, form, content, and theology.

Another thing is that when I remember that I will be looking monsignor (in persona Christi, of course) right in the eye, it is a useful mental image to conjure when at a decision point in the murky area of the ‘near occasion of sin’. I find it helpful. You know…“Do you really want to sit and tell father that you made the decision you’re about to make? You know you have to.”
I get memories akin to my mom telling me, “just wait till your father get’s home” when I was a child. Of course when that occurred, I’d already done something wrong. Now I can use it as a preventative.

Peace,

Steven
 
When I returned to the church after 30 years, you could say that confession was a necessity!! But every time I went to church at confession times, there were so many people, I would leave. Then I asked a priest after weekday Mass, how is one able to go to confession when there are so many people waiting. (I also knew this wasn’t going to be quick.) He heard my confession then and there, so it was face to face, sitting across from each other in the sacristy. Something I’d thought I’d never do, having been brought up with the screen.

But I find it so comforting, and yes, humbling, sometimes embarrasing. And besides that, by now, all the priests know my voice, being a lector, they’ve heard it a hundred times. So there would be no point in using the screen.

One priest told me he would rather not know who was confessing. And another said if you whisper, the priest probably won’t recognize your voice.

There is nothing wrong with bringing a list, many do, and I have also.
 
I prefer behind the screen but when you’re confessing to your boss it’s kind of pointless. When I went to confession to a visiting priest at Easter I opted to not go around the curtain and it felt so much better to just to kneel and confess rather than to sit on the edge of your seat in a platform rocker trying to keep your eyes anywhere but on the face of your confessor.
 
INteresting responses. I certianly understand being more comfortable with the screen. Most Anglicans don’t have one though, the most common thing is to confess to the priest while you are sort of facing his ear, although they are happy to do it face to face too.

I think face to face has some real advantages. Humility is one, but also building an ongoing relationship with a confessor is important. If you are confessing anonymously it is very difficult for the priest to get a real sense of what the sins you confess really mean in the context of your spiritual life. Usually too in the Anglican Church spiritual direction is part of confession which really doesn’t work as well in anonymous confession.
 
I prefer behind the screen, I like things to be methodical and the few times I’ve gone face to face the methodical way I confess didn’t seem right, even absolution didn’t quite seem right.

When I go face to face I’ve had
  • a priest wearing a rainbow stole instead of a purple stole
  • a priest basically tell me I confess to often (no I’m not scrupulous)
  • two priests tell me I’m too hard on myself
When I go behind the screen
  • priests provide better advice
  • priests tend to be more reverent, more of a father rather than my buddy
  • priests call me son instead of sir 🙂
 
behind the screen. Only have done face to face twice and that was in two different situations: one when our sacristy was being renovated and we had Mass and Confession in the basement. The other time was when they had confessions at my Catholic high school and we sat at tables with two chairs (I think they were scattered around so others couldn’t hear you). Plus, when I go to confession, sometimes the priest uses the confessional that’s only got the screen and sometimes he doesn’t. There’s a confessional in the back of my parish and then one on each side.
 
I was indoctrinated as ‘behind the screen’ but after leaving the church for awhile and coming back… I prefer face to face.

I am not sure that I ever really understood that the priest was In Persona Christi when I was a kid. It just sucked to talk to this old guy about all the bad stuff I did last week. Now I am deadly serious about my faith. I want to look at the Priest and see his eyes when I confess. In my case, Father is extremely kind and I can tell that he cares about how wretched I feel about what I have done. He sets a penance that is relevant to my sins. It is not, “Say ten Hail Mary’s”. He knows I am a daily Rosary kind of gal,

So, face to face for me.
 
I developed the habit of face-to-face when it first became available, and always found it satisfying. However, now that my hearing is poor, face-to-face is almost mandatory so that I can explain my problem and do a bit of lip reading.
 
I have always done face to face confession. You can see the priests face and see that he is listening to you, that he understood what you told him. I know that maybe it is a little harder to be face to face with somebody when telling what you did wrong, but this makes me feel more regretful about my sins and i think this is good.
 
I go face to face. My confessor is also my SD so it would be kind of weird to be talking to him about my spiritual life, which includes sins, and then go behind a screen at the end of the session to confess those sins.

I did go behind a screen last summer while at a shrine, but that was the only way it was available. It brought back bad memories of confession when I was a kid.
 
At one time, I thought the way several posters have expressed. Face-to-face requires me to really humble myself, especially with a priest that I know and respect. I figured that anything that makes me humble myself is a good thing, because lack of humility is one of my problems (like many people, I suspect).

But, here’s a different perspective from a priest friend, to whom I go to confession weekly. He does not hear confessions face-to-face. I hope I can capture his reasoning, which I think is quite profound. I’d love to hear what any other priests have to say about this reasoning.

He’s said that most people, in any type of face-to-face conversation, automatically look to the other person’s face to read a response, and look at the other person’s body language, along with listening to words, tone, and inflection. This can be detrimental to confession, because the penitent gets involved in a person-to-person conversation with the priest rather than a person-to-Christ confession.

During face-to-face confession, we especially look at the priest’s face for his response–we can’t help doing so if we are human. We may be (unconciously) looking for affirmation, disgust, compassion, pity, understanding, shock, whatever. But we are looking for some human response. As a penitent, we should not be looking for human response, but for the forgiveness of Christ. Also, my priest friend doesn’t want to have to carefully control his facial expressions to project some expected response. He doesn’t want his facial expression to distract or dismay the penitenet. He wants to be able to focus on the sin, the counsel he needs to give the penitent, and not on affirming the penitent in a moment of extreme human vulnerability.

Another (lay) friend went to confession with this priest in a confessional room with a small screen. The layman asked for face-to-face and sat down across from Father. Father covered his own face with his hands, putting his elbows on his knees, bending over a bit, to avoid the facial expressions and eye contact.

None of my confessions with this priest have been anonymous. I have a distinctive voice and he knows exactly who I am–which he indicates by the counsel and suggestions he gives, and references to other conversations outside the confessional. Behind the screen does not equate to anonymous.
 
Face to face.

I have issues with talking to someone through a wall. Probably from my childhood of my dad insisting that we be in the same room to have a conversation or verbal exchange.

My eyes are usually down (looking at my list) and when I have glanced at the good Father, his eyes are closed when I am confessing. During the exchange that follows, there is usually eye contact, but the other day I was watching him. He was speaking with his eyes closed…it was almost as if I could see the Holy Spirit working through him.

Glad that we have options.
 
Face to face for two reasons. 1st, way back when I received my 1st Communion, that is how we did it, so I just feel comfortable that way. 2nd, is that well, I’m pretty sure after years of going to the same priest, he would no my voice anyway. 😃

To be honest, I have tried behind the screen, and have done it when not at my home parish, but I always feel kind of silly. Kind of like I’m hiding for some odd reason.
 
GwenL said:
He’s said that most people, in any type of face-to-face conversation, automatically look to the other person’s face to read a response, and look at the other person’s body language, along with listening to words, tone, and inflection. This can be detrimental to confession, because the penitent gets involved in a person-to-person conversation with the priest rather than a person-to-Christ confession.

During face-to-face confession, we especially look at the priest’s face for his response–we can’t help doing so if we are human. We may be (unconciously) looking for affirmation, disgust, compassion, pity, understanding, shock, whatever. But we are looking for some human response. As a penitent, we should not be looking for human response, but for the forgiveness of Christ. Also, my priest friend doesn’t want to have to carefully control his facial expressions to project some expected response. He doesn’t want his facial expression to distract or dismay the penitenet. He wants to be able to focus on the sin, the counsel he needs to give the penitent, and not on affirming the penitent in a moment of extreme human vulnerability.

Another (lay) friend went to confession with this priest in a confessional room with a small screen. The layman asked for face-to-face and sat down across from Father. Father covered his own face with his hands, putting his elbows on his knees, bending over a bit, to avoid the facial expressions and eye contact.

None of my confessions with this priest have been anonymous. I have a distinctive voice and he knows exactly who I am–which he indicates by the counsel and suggestions he gives, and references to other conversations outside the confessional. Behind the screen does not equate to anonymous.
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These are VERY good points, thanks for sharing! The priest I mentioned in my first post also has gotten some of his penitents in the habit of identifying themselves. That way, the priest isn’t giving the same advice for the same sin every single confession and can build on it.
 
When I went for my first Confession and Penance (Reconciliation) I wasn’t even told about using a screen or kneeling. I didn’t get the point of it either and didn’t go for several years.

Now, even if face-to-face I prefer to kneel whilst confessing. This is because kneeling is an act of submissivness, which I find often very necessary to humble myself for the sacrament.
 
In my school years, we went to a small country parish where I was one of the two altar boys. The priest heard confessions behind a screen in the sacristy before mass. So to go to confession I would ask the priest and the other altar boy would step outside.

Later when I got to a larger parish I think my accent must have given me away. One day after giving me absolution the pastor added, " and Joe, please light the altar candles on your way out."

I never did expect much anonymity.
 
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