Does anyone have a regular “confessor?”
I tend to lean on the scrupulous side, and confession seemed to make things worse. When I started going to the parish I go to now, I decided to work on overcoming that. After going to both priests in the parish for confession a couple of times, I caught the one whom I felt most comfortable with after mass, and had a talk about my scrupulosity. I told him that I had read that it’s best to have one confessor and to work with them to control the tendency, and asked him if I could enter into that type of relationship with him, and he said yes.
On the rare occasions when I go to another confessor (for example, if I have a sin weighing on my conscience and it’s a few days until my normal Saturday confession), I’ll always confess to my regular confessor that I went to another priest for confession and tell him why. I also tell him if it led to scrupulosity, which it often does. For example, we had a guest priest come in for a few weeks while my regular confessor was away. Instead of going to the other priest in my parish, who is my spiritual director and knows my scrupulous tendencies, I went to the guest priest and got some advice that triggered a case of scruples that lasted until my confessor came back two weeks later.
It’s somewhat odd to me that I feel very comfortable with one priest as a confessor, and another as my spiritual director. Upon reflection, though, when I go to daily mass it is almost always with my spiritual director except for on Saturdays, when I go to the mass by my confessor (which is also when I go to my weekly confession). I never talk to my confessor face-to-face, though, only in the confessional, while I talk to my spiritual director on a fairly regular basis. I guess I have the best of both worlds - I have a fantastic confessor who knows who I am, but who I never actually have to look in the eye.
At my parish, they have the old school dark wooden booths like you see in the movies, no option for face-to-face at all. My priest always knows it’s me, though, mostly because I confess at the same time each week, and start out my confession with, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, it has been 7 days since my last confession. I have been scrupulous about the following things: … I have committed the following sins: …” I have a friend that goes to confession at my parish, and she starts her confession with, “Hello, Father, this is Mary …” It’s very possible to build a confessor/penitent relationship that is spiritually edifying even with “anonymous” confession.
