Priest today in confession VERY smarmy

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“Justcameback”, I feel for you, but it certainly sounds like you’re taking the feedback in the Forum advisedly and benefiting therefrom - good for you. It is truly fascinating how many ways there are to examine your experience, and the Forum members have shared a delightful spectrum of feedback. Indeed, what you experienced must, at the time, have seemed an obnoxious misuse of the sacramental office by your confessor, especially given this setting in which we willingly make ourselves most vulnerable. The temptation to resent the priest and retreat from reiterations of the sacrament can seem irresistible. Fortunately, we Catholics enjoy the blessing of being able to understand the importance of striving, through prayer and reflection, to see God’s will for us in every condition of our existence, good or bad. Yes, a priest should undertake their role in the sacrament of mercy with particular sensitivity, and take care to segregate any emotional unrest he may suffer from his role as confessor. But as others have pointed out, we may find solace in merely finding a priest in the confessional at all, however infrequently, and thereby realize yet another in the great treasury of blessings with which Our Lord suffuses his children. God bless, and indeed, until you’ve got that vicious demon whipped, keep coming back!
 
TARSUS said:
“Justcameback”, I feel for you, but it certainly sounds like you’re taking the feedback in the Forum advisedly and benefiting therefrom - good for you. It is truly fascinating how many ways there are to examine your experience, and the Forum members have shared a delightful spectrum of feedback. Indeed, what you experienced must, at the time, have seemed an obnoxious misuse of the sacramental office by your confessor, especially given this setting in which we willingly make ourselves most vulnerable. The temptation to resent the priest and retreat from reiterations of the sacrament can seem irresistible. Fortunately, we Catholics enjoy the blessing of being able to understand the importance of striving, through prayer and reflection, to see God’s will for us in every condition of our existence, good or bad. Yes, a priest should undertake their role in the sacrament of mercy with particular sensitivity, and take care to segregate any emotional unrest he may suffer from his role as confessor. But as others have pointed out, we may find solace in merely finding a priest in the confessional at all, however infrequently, and thereby realize yet another in the great treasury of blessings with which Our Lord suffuses his children. God bless, and indeed, until you’ve got that vicious demon whipped, keep coming back!
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Good point! that’s why I pray for charity. :blessyou:
 
I’ve been to confession to a local priest who (either through ignorance or willful intent to mislead the poorly catechized - I don’t know which) actually misquotes St. Thomas Aquinas’ explication of the threefold conditions necessary in order for “serious sin” to exist - upon nearly every occasion I’ve visited him, he has assured me of the following:

“First, it has to be grave matter (OK, check); second, you have to do it will full knowledge AND consent (oops - isn’t that the second and third conditions conflated together, Father?); and THIRD, you have to do it with the conscious desire to offend God and separate yourself from his love (say WHAT, Father? I am STILL looking for that translation of the “Summa”).” I am sure to challenge this man would be a waste of time and a needless source of frustration and hard feelings for at least one of us, so I haven’t bothered to try (yes, total omission there, I frankly admit).

One one remarkable occasion, when a mere two weeks had separated my visits to him, he interrupted my announcement thereof with the exasperated inquiry “what could possibly have happened in two weeks that you have to come back to confession with?” He is clearly a member of the “our Church doesn’t believe all that old stuff anymore” cabal, and it can be more than a little off-putting to interact with him in this setting.

I do try to avoid this troubled man’s confessional, but sometimes the luxury of choice isn’t present, and this is the last stop before Sunday Mass. My job, at the point where this is my only choice, is to go and find Christ in this grumpy heterodox’s presence in the sacrament which, however poor I might find his performance of his role in it, is nevertheless full of Christ’s mercy. And for that, however wrong I believe the man to be in his theology, I am grateful he is there when I need him.
 
Pilosopo said:
I have a sense that when I join the confession line up, there is a certain atmosphere of “hurry-there-are-others-too-you-know” and the experience becomes more like a washing machine
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It’s not like that in my parish I’m glad to say. With our priest you walk into the confessional box and he starts having a general social chat, confession then comes in the middle, then another social chat afterwards. He’d chat on forever if you let him. No rush at all with him. A nice guy really, but he can’t half talk.
 
Not knowing about the Catholic Confessional

may be it his way of just being human and if you not been to that one before, he may be similar in all confessions so mayn’t been just you. Just his attempt at being human and down to earth about it and may be his regulars like him for it?

May be you caught him off guard too in that may be he committed the same sin himself and he knows the very struggle, whatever your sin is, am not trying to guess like other posters. I no need to know, like they seem to want to guess… But whatever it is, he may have the very same sin and knows that IS what you just have to keep going back with it because that is what he does each time. His way of saying, he knows because he just like you. It might have sounded ‘smarty’ to you but others in his parish may as I’ve suggested like this approach to that sin and he may really be saying, ‘yes-we know it a struggle and it okay to keep coming back with it’. Bit of a mistake to be ‘smart’ with strangers perhaps on his part but if he been caught off guard himself with his own struggle. Perhaps he and his parishioners use humour a lot more than you are used to in a formal setting even if the humour is dry. If you had burst into tears, he may have explained a bit more and changed track but a man to man approach thinking that you want it straight because that is actually what some guys have said here, they just want to go into confession, confess their sins, receive absolution and come out in space of minutes if that from what they have written. But we cannot preempt anyone’s reasons, let alone a priest. Hope you feel happier

👍
 
Sometimes when I go to confession, I’m kind of wanting a silver bullet - some advice, words of wisdom which will solve my problem. Sometimes though, the response I’ve received from the priest is along the lines of “God loves you and forgives you.” Not quite what I was wanting to hear!

Having said that, I know that I have to trust that the Holy Spirit is working through the priest and that what he says to me is what I need to hear at that particular moment - even if it’s not what I want to hear.
 
I just found out this week that this Priest is a married convert. Who knows maybe his wife was on his back all day? LOL!

That being said, unless I’m dying, I will never go to the Sacrament with him ever again.
 
I am sorry that your confessor did not act in an acceptable manner. Are you aware of this article in the CCC?

CCC 2352 *"By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”

To form an equitable judgment about the subjects’ moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability."*
 
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