Sacrament of Reconcilliation (Times)

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catholic03

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Pax Christi:

I am back on the forums after 10 days away! My last thread was on confession…I went to the normal scheduled times, confessed my sins, and it all went very well.

Unfortunately, I need to go back again.

The problem is, I am on holiday. The day after tomorrow, I go home. There are three Catholic Churches in the small city I am in…not one has regular confession before I leave. The Church I went to Sunday Mass at yesterday has Mass tomorrow, and I was thinking about asking the priest for confession. As I am sightseeing for most of tomorrow, I will not be able to stay for Mass. Besides, the priest will surely be busy tomorrow before Mass, and after Mass I will be out with my family.

I have two options: I either try and get the priest to hear my confession before Mass tomorrow and leave right after confession, or wait 2 1/2 days.

I am pretty convinced I have reason to believe I am in mortal sin due to my assessment…better safe than sorry.

I understand I should probably go tomorrow, but I feel that it will be of great inconvenience to my family and the priest may not even have time anyway. But, is it really safe to wait 2 1/2 days?

To summarise:

I need to go to confession.
Because of travel arrangements, I can only go tomorrow morning or he day after I arrive home.
The priest may not be able to hear my confession tomorrow, and it may be of great inconvenience to me and him.

Thanks for your help.
  • Side note: at the Church I attended while on holiday, a Protestant minister gave the homily, while the Catholic priest who celebrated the Mass listened. Apparently another of the parish’s Catholic priests did a homily at the Protestant Church, for a Christian ecumenical organisation exchange. The parish priest did not speak at all during the homily. Is this permissible under the rubrics for a Protestant minister to give the homily? I understand only a priest or deacon may do so…especially not a non-Catholic who is technically a layperson. Note: it could have been simply a ‘talk’, but the priest did not speak except to thank the minister, and I thought a homily was compulsory on a Sunday.
God Bless.
 
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catholic03 said:
I am going to try and follow the rule for the scrupulous which states ‘do not confess any doubtful sins’. However, I am about 70% sure that the sins I have committed are grave.
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This is the definition of “doubtful,” then. If you’re not 100% sure, then it is doubtful. If it is doubtful, it cannot be grave.

Please seek the help of a priest offline. Asking these questions here will not help you and will only make the problem worse.

-Fr ACEGC
 
Make an act of perfect contrition to God, go to confession ASAP when you get home, and quit committing grave sins so you don’t have to hassle around with available confession times.

Yeah, it’s a headache when you commit a grave sin on Monday and there’s no available confession till Wednesday or whatever. Been there done that. So just don’t commit the sin. You could have chosen to skip this entire hassle by not committing the sin.
 
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I would suggest that you not overblow the situation. I am assuming this is a garden variety grave sin and not a multiple murder, which might justify you getting the priest up in the middle of the night for an emergency confession.

Garden variety grave sins are serious, but I don’t get this “all charity is destroyed” business. Kindly talk to your priest about it when you go to confession. God bless.
 
catholic03 said:
Thank you for your concern, but this is not an issue of scrupulosity.
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You said yourself, before editing your post, that you are very scrupulous. To edit several times and then to deny you’re scrupulous is also fairly consonant with what scrupulosity looks like. I dealt with anxiety for many years, and I always denied that it was my anxiety that was leading me to do or say certain things, since I was afraid that if people found out I was anxious they wouldn’t think very well of me.

I’ve dealt with anxiety and I’ve heard a lot of confessions, and on top of that I went to seminary for a long time. I know what I’m doing when I say that there’s an issue of scrupulosity, but even if I didn’t, you said it yourself. And my advice remains. You shouldn’t seek out answers online. It won’t help you. It’ll only drive the cycle of reassurance seeking.

-Fr ACEGC
 
Wait…is your grave sin that you procrastinated? Aren’t you on holiday with your family? On holiday aren’t you supposed to relax and be with your family?
 
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