Reconciliation

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Kera

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I am having a problem that I hope some of you could help with. I became a Catholic at Easter Vigil. Since I was being baptised, confirmed, etc then my priest told me that I did not have to confess before my entry into the church. Now, I am ready and feeling drawn to participate in that sacrament. He told me that I can wait until December to do it. I see his point…that most Catholics confess at Christmas and Easter. But, I feel that I want to do it more often than that.
I am torn because I believe my priest has my best interests at heart, but isn’t he supposed to encourage my efforts to be the best Catholic I can be? So, my question is… I was going to go to another Church to reconcile. Is that OK? Or am I overdoing it? Is it really OK to just confess 2 times per year? It’s not that I have done anything terrible, I just feel that I should go. What do you think? Thanks!
 
Reconcillation is a wonderful way of drawing closer to God. I say go as often as you want. Sadly many only go twice a year, you are right - but I think they are missing out. I don’t think you need to go to another parish unless you want to… go to your own. I’ve never heard of a Priest saying, “Hey… you again - why are you here?”
 
Kera said:
I am having a problem that I hope some of you could help with. I became a Catholic at Easter Vigil. Since I was being baptised, confirmed, etc then my priest told me that I did not have to confess before my entry into the church. Now, I am ready and feeling drawn to participate in that sacrament. He told me that I can wait until December to do it. I see his point…that most Catholics confess at Christmas and Easter. But, I feel that I want to do it more often than that.
I am torn because I believe my priest has my best interests at heart, but isn’t he supposed to encourage my efforts to be the best Catholic I can be? So, my question is… I was going to go to another Church to reconcile. Is that OK? Or am I overdoing it? Is it really OK to just confess 2 times per year? It’s not that I have done anything terrible, I just feel that I should go. What do you think? Thanks!
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In my opinion, you need to detatch from this priest and realize that the Church is vast in its different types of people. I suspect one problem converts may experience is that they identify the Church with just those people who brought them in.

Many people only want you to be as Catholic as they are. it makes them uncomfortable and introspective when they see someone around them take the faith more seriously, or fervently.

Read the lives of the saints and you’ll see that they frequented confession. This urge to go is a grace from God. Like the parable of the prodigal son(lk 15), the Father saw him returning at a long distance off and he dropped everything and ran to meet him, hug him and kiss him. The son didn’t hesitate and neither should you.
 
Hi, Kera, and welcome!

It’s only OK to confess twice a year if you don’t want to grow closer to Christ. It’s very sad that so many Catholics are satisfied with such minimal participation in this wonderful Sacrament, and that your priest finds that to be normal!

You can find a priest in another parish who is more serious about helping people advance in the Christian life. It may take a couple of tries to find just the right priest, but when you do, you can go at regular intervals to him, and he will get to know you and be able to help you greatly.

On the other hand, you may wish to stay in your own parish to show the priest that not everyone is as lukewarm as he assumes.

It’s entirely up to you. But you’re NOT overdoing it. It is God Himself calling you to the Sacrament. Please respond!

God bless you.

Betsy
 
go to confession when you feel the need. If you did not receive guidance in how to do this, possibly the priest is suggesting that there will be a formal “how to” class in the future for you, probably in Advent. That is great, but you don’t have to wait. There are plenty of past threads on how to go to confession if you need help. The easiest is just to go in the confessional, tell the priest it is your first confession since your baptism at Easter, and get on with it.
 
Hold on - saying ‘wait until December to make your first confession’ is not at all the same thing as saying ‘only confess every six months’.

Maybe, looking at you, he sees that you haven’t quite got enough instruction in the sacrament to truly benefit from it right now. Have you been through the catechetical preparation that goes on prior to first Confession (which is usually around the same time as First Communion)?

Or possibly the priest thinks that you’re a bit overly scrupulous about sin and would be in the confessional every other day or something, and thinks this is a way of telling you without telling you.

After all, cradle Catholics usually have to wait a good five to seven years between baptism and first confession!
 
It would definitely be good to get some manner of instruction on the sacrament. However, if you feel that you are being called to confession or that you may be in a state of mortal sin, then by all means, go to confession! If it gets to a point where you fear you’re becoming scrupulous, talk to your priest about it, though, if he told you to wait until December while taking communion the whole time, I’d strongly recommend another opinion on the matter.

The sacrament of penance and reconciliation is truly beautiful, and something you are blessed to have a desire to receive. Keep growing in your faith and drawing ever closer to Christ!
 
carol_marie said:
I’ve never heard of a Priest saying, “Hey… you again - why are you here?”
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Sadly, I have had exactly that experience with my own pastor.

Without ruining the family-friendly nature of this forum, allow me to say that I sometimes struggle with a particular type of sin that is very common among single men in our society. 😉

I went on a vocation retreat just before Christmas and had a really wonderful confession experience with a priest who came in to hear our confessions on the retreat. No guilt-wielding, no moralizing, but also no psychologizing. At the end of my little recitation he simply asked “are those all of your sins?” to which I replied, “yes, Father.” And then, with a truly friendly and loving smile he asked, “Okay, are you ready to get rid of them?”

Seeing that I was not very familiar/comfortable with the process, his advice to me could have come directly from the mouth of the Little Flower herself. It was along the lines that I should keep in mind that everybody messes up and that when I do the first place I should think of going is to the confessional – not out of guilt, but so that God could forgive me and reassure me of His love for me. As I was leaving his final words to me were “stay holy” – again with that truly friendly and loving smile.

Fired up by this experience I went to confession at my home parish eight days later – same sin, different day. My pastor, who had the forty minute confession slot for the week in our 3,200 family parish, looked at me in shock when I said it had been eight days since my last confession, and then, in essence, asked me to justify why I was there again so soon.

I felt like screaming at him “I am here because I am a sinner and I need Christ’s forgiveness you pompus jerk!” Instead, in my shock and dismay, I explained myself as best I could under the rather negative-feeling circumstances.

He told me I shouldn’t “beat myself up about it”, gave me some psycho-babble advice, and then more-or-less performed the sacrament.

I am ashamed to have to say this, but I have not been to confession since.

With great sadness I have to say that some priests today do not seem to believe in sin, or the sacrament, or perhaps both. Therefore, my advice is that if you do not get good vibes from your own priest, go somewhere else.
 
I’ve heard of holy men and women going to confession almost daily! Surely the average contemporary Catholic can make time for more than twice a year, no?

And to the OP, I think perhaps your priest was suggesting you wait until December for your first confession. Similar to the way that children baptized at birth into the Church do not go to their first confession (typically, at least) without a certain amount of specific preparation and information about the sacrament.

Augieboo, I’m very sorry to hear about your bad confessional experience; it definitely seems to me that some priests take the sacrament less seriously than they should. It is absolutely no question that some offer less useful advice than others. However, I think that “once a week” is a great goal for a Reconciliation schedule. I haven’t quite gotten to that point, but I’ve been there before, and it is something that filled me with joy.

Right now I’m somewhat hesistant to go to Confession, but I’ve been at the point before where I took extreme joy in the sacrament, jumping at every chance to go. After all, can we really claim that a day goes by where we don’t offend God to some degree? Even venial sins should be confessed!

Back to the topic:
Personally, I think 2 times a year is far too seldom. Sometimes I feel tempted literally on the way out of the confessional and seem to be falling into sin not long after that. If I spend too long away from confession, I’ll reflect and notice that I feel as if I rolled around in the mud. And it gets much much harder, for me at least, to get back to confession after it’s been a while, rather than if I’m in a regular, more frequent rhythm.
 
augieboo said:
With great sadness I have to say that some priests today do not seem to believe in sin, or the sacrament, or perhaps both. Therefore, my advice is that if you do not get good vibes from your own priest, go somewhere else.
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Give the poor guy a break. Can you imagine - over 90% of men, Catholic or no, and about 65% of women too, will at some point commit that very same ‘sin-which-shall-not-be-named’.

Priests, deliberately or not, must get incredibly blase about that particular sin after hearing it repeated endlessly - it’d have to be by far the most commonly confessed mortal sin, no? It must be enough to drive anyone bananas.
 
Even if a priest has heard a certain sin thousands of times, he should still take it seriously when someone confesses it. If I had a confessor who brushed off my sins and made them seem unimportant, I would find a new one. Even if he’s heard them repeatedly, they’re serious to me or I wouldn’t be confessing them.

It may help to ask around for a recommendation of a good priest. When my old confessor was transferred to another parish at quite a distance, I asked him for a recommendation for a new one. He definitely steered me to someone good.
 
LilyM said:
Give the poor guy a break. Can you imagine - over 90% of men, Catholic or no, and about 65% of women too, will at some point commit that very same ‘sin-which-shall-not-be-named’.

Priests, deliberately or not, must get incredibly blase about that particular sin after hearing it repeated endlessly - it’d have to be by far the most commonly confessed mortal sin, no? It must be enough to drive anyone bananas.
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That’s true, but I think I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t expect him to react strongly to the particular nature of the sin in question. The thing is, he reacted strongly before I confessed anything.

The sequence went like this:

augieboo: “Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been eight days since my last confession.”

priest: silent, incredulous, bug-eyed stare…

…

…

…

augieboo: “Uh, um… Father? Is something wrong?”

priest: “I’m just waiting to hear why you would possibly be here so soon after your last confession.”

So you see, what I’ve been trying to say, (but obviously not very well), is that he made me feel as though being there a mere eight days after my previous confession was a worse sin than anything I could possibly have done in the meantime.

Does that make sense?

On the other hand, my own personal baggage undoubtedly contributed to what I now see as my over-reaction.

First, I grew up in an area where the entire concept of sin tends to be explained away through psychological bull-bleep. Confession was one of those things that only “Pre-Vatican II Catholics” were into. I only reverted/discovered actual Catholism a few years ago. Thus, I’m still a bit skittish about the confession experience in general. 😦

Second, having been raised with – and later rejected – all sorts of spurious teachings I am probably apt to over-react in situations where the priest seems to psychologize sin – or when he teaches from the pulpit that there is no way Mary remained a virgin after Christ’s birth because “a woman is going to want to have sex with her husband,” or when he describes praying for someone as “sending them positive energy”, or saying that the disciples on the road to Emmaus were in an altered state of conciousness when they thought they saw Christ, or … Unfortunately, I could go on and on. :doh2:

Note: Before it causes a problem, please allow me to state that when I say “actual Catholicism” I mean plain old middle-of-the-road Catholicism which accepts that the magisterium is the magisterium and we are not, and that, like it or not, Jesus left them in charge, so our response to their teachings should be “Yes I believe. Help my unbelief.”
 
augieboo said:
That’s true, but I think I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t expect him to react strongly to the particular nature of the sin in question. The thing is, he reacted strongly before I confessed anything.

The sequence went like this:

augieboo: “Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been eight days since my last confession.”

priest: silent, incredulous, bug-eyed stare…

…

…

…

augieboo: “Uh, um… Father? Is something wrong?”

priest: “I’m just waiting to hear why you would possibly be here so soon after your last confession.”

So you see, what I’ve been trying to say, (but obviously not very well), is that he made me feel as though being there a mere eight days after my previous confession was a worse sin than anything I could possibly have done in the meantime.

Does that make sense?
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Oh it does, especially given that you’re quite new to the confession business. You’re going to come across all sorts of priests during your life as a Catholic. As confessors, as in every other priestly task, some will be brilliant, some will be average, some should be let nowhere near a confessional they’re that bad. A lot of times it’s just a matter of that priest being a poor fit for you personality-wise rather than that they’re woeful in general.

I’m not saying that in this case - clearly it’s not on to make the sort of prejudgement you’re talking about. I had the same thing happen once. Luckily I was confident enough to simply (in a nice way) point out to the priest that I actually had valid reason to be back in the confessional, and we got along fine after that. Maybe I’ve just got an incredibly thick skin.
 
I didn’t know that 'the sin that must not be named 'is considered a mortal sin.
 
Kera,

As other posters have told you, you will come across many different priests - each with different personalities and faults.

We are all sinners and we need to go to confession regularly - at least once per month. The more we strive for holiness, the more we see the need for confession. It’s like seeing the stains on a shirt when looked at under a bright light - ones you did not see under dimmer light.

If you are looking for a regular confessor who will encourage frequent confession, you cannot do better (if it is possible) than find an Opus Dei center. Opus Dei priests have a deep charism for confession. They will help you, also, to grow in virtue and work on overcoming your dominant faults.
 
figaro845 said:
I didn’t know that 'the sin that must not be named 'is considered a mortal sin.
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para 2352 of the Catechism labels it a ‘gravely disordered action’ - same diff 🤓 - there are sometimes extenuating circumstances of course.
 
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