I don’t care what appointment that the priest had, the fact that any priest would forsake the Administration of a Sacrament is unacceptable. Would it be acceptable if a priest left in the middle of saying Mass to go to an appointment? No! Would it be acceptable if a priest left in the middle of a wedding to go to an appointment? No! What about a Baptism? During Holy Orders? Anointing of the Sick? A RESOUNDING NO! Then, why pray tell, is it acceptable, in your eyes, for a priest to leave during confession? The Sacraments are first and foremost Gifts from God to us. The priests are the caretakers, administrators, and guardians of those Gifts. No priest should forsake this Sacred Duty for an “appointment”. Letting such a priest continue unchecked is uncharitable and is showing no kindness at all.
Well, first off, it’s not like he is leaving in the middle of someone’s confession. So it is not analogous to leaving in the middle of Mass, as there is not a sacrament that has been started and left incomplete. Secondly, the priest already had stayed past the time he had planned on leaving. Surely there must be a limit to how long we can demand that he stay, no? If it is a matter of hearing one more confession every now and then, it’s one thing - but if there is no end in sight, is the priest not allowed to stop and go to dinner, or go on with the rest of his day? By the logic being presented here, one would think that we should be able to demand that the priest celebrate Sunday Mass all day long every Sunday from dawn til dusk - and yet, there are limits on what he is ALLOWED to do, and limits on what would be considered REASONABLE to do. With this reasoning, the priest can be made a slave to our whims, which is not fair to him. We need to be respectful that priests, like every other person, have limits and boundaries and can not always continue on as the energizer bunny, even to do good things.
That said, I have already mentioned that the situation is very frustrating. It has happened to me several times, and I have left Churches in tears, because of how much planning it took for me to get there that day (a lot when you have young kids). I think the problem is not that an individual priest is not giving due importance to the sacraments. I think is is a problem of a lack of attention and planning, and that there is a systemic solution. Where I live, there are "pastoral care areas " (PCA) which consist of 3 or 4 churches each. The churches within each PCA coordinate their Holy Day Masses, so that the people who live nearby will have a better chance of getting to Mass - one Church will have a Vigil and Morning Mass, and the other one will have a noon and evening Mass. If the diocese, or if clusters of parishes looked at confession in this way, there could be coordination. Perhaps every church could have confessions Saturday, and one other time throughout the week. If one church held the extra confession times during the workday (like on Wednesday mornings), and the others held theirs on weekday evenings, confession would be more accessible. Imagine if every church had a confession some time other than Saturday afternoon, and imagine if the churches coordinated those times. Missing confession on one day wouldn’t be nearly the big deal that it is now, because you’d know that there would be another opportunity soon enough.
