Turned Away from Confession

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AngelineAnast

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Hello,
Two nights ago, I went to church where they had three priests hearing confessions. The time for confesssions was scheduled for 4 until 6:30pm. I arrived there at 5pm and got into one of the very long lines. I finally got to point where there was only one person in front of me and 2 behind me at 6:30, when the priest came out and said that he & his associate priest had another meeting and confessions were over. He did not tell us that it was an emergency; he just said goodnight and we walked out. The other priests had already left and this was the last time before Christmas. I couldn’t believe that any meeting could be more important than the souls of his parishioners, especially after we were there waiting for 1 1/2 hours and did not have a choice of how long he stayed with each person before us. I couldn’t believe it, so I went to my car and confessed my sins to God. What if one of the people in line had a mortal sin to confess? Anyway, I wanted to email the priest to let him know how being turned away from confession affected me but he doesn’t have email. I still do not think this is right and am thinking of writing the archdiocese. Any suggestions?
Angeline
 
Maybe the priest was called away on an emergency .Ou rparish is very busy as well Can you make an appointment instead ? maybe the way to go
 
Maybe don’t wait until the last minute for Confession. If you go at least once a month, you don’t have to worry about scenarios like this. Priests have busy lives, I can’t blame them. After all, they were there for an hour and a half.
 
I guess I will let it go. I am not explaining it well. I do go to confession once a month, at least, and this was the scheduled time for confessions at our church. My nephew is a priest and I think I will talk it through with him. He has told me that in his order, there is nothing more important than confession and saving souls.
Thanks.
A.A.
 
I feel differently about this. The priest is there to minister to his parish with keeping the parishioners in the state of grace as a priority. When I read this it reminded me of the old joke, “Suicide Hot Line, can you hold please?”

How long would it have taken 2 priests to hear 3 confessions? Good grief! Not good judgment in my opinion. Whatever meeting was waiting for them it could wait another few minutes, especially at Christmas time. And telling the OP that they shouldn’t have waited until the last minute was a bit weak. Getting there with 1.5 hours left on the schedule is not the last minute…getting there at 18:25 is a different story.

What if it were a fallen away Catholic who just now got the nerve up to come back to the church and then gets turned away? I don’t think I would let it go, if nothing else to give the priests a chance to reflect on the issue and maybe even prevent it from happening to someone else in more dire need.
 
AngelineAnast said:
I guess I will let it go. I am not explaining it well. I do go to confession once a month, at least, and this was the scheduled time for confessions at our church. My nephew is a priest and I think I will talk it through with him. He has told me that in his order, there is nothing more important than confession and saving souls.
Thanks.
A.A.
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The worst I’ve seen is once a week. Most parishes have at least twice a week.
 
Priests don’t always have control over their schedules. Since he didn’t say what the meeting was, we cannot speculate on how important it was.

It has happened to me several times that the priest has needed to leave the confessional before my turn in line. I just go to the next available time.

In the OPs case, I would have immediately checked with other nearby parishes. Most have additional times for confession during Advent. This is also a lesson, not to wait until the almost last minute to go to confession. By that I mean, waiting until the day before Christmas Eve. Knowing that many people also try to go to confession during Advent (and hearing our priests encourage it), we didn’t wait until the last few days!
 
To be fair to the priests, consider how busy and overworked most parish priests are already. Their meeting need not be “an emergency” for them to leave - the scheduled hours for confession were over, and they had a previous commitment. Moreover, it might have been an emergency, but it was of a private nature that they could not share with you. Regardless, they have every right to leave at 6:30 when the scheduled time is over. Now that you have seen how long the lines can be, perhaps in the future you could show up slightly earlier to confession - I know that in my parish, we have confession from 4-5 once a week, and people don’t tend to show up until 4:30-4:45ish.

If you have committed a mortal sin and make your best effort to go to confession and then do not get the opportunity, you can make a perfect act of contrition, which will protect your soul in the event that you were to die before you could make it to confession again. Just go at the next opportunity (or, as you said, confess to your nephew who is a priest).

I agree that it would be wonderful if parishes would offer more opportunities for confession (I firmly believe that if you offer it - and publicize it - the people will come!), but given the constraints they had set out (4-6:30pm), you must be fair to them and respect their time as well.

Merry Christmas and God bless!
 
Since you arrived at 5:00 and waited for an hour and a half, I think the priests had a duty to stay to hear the 4 people who were left unless it was an emergency. That would have been only 2 people per priest!

Did anyone say “Father, we’ve been waiting since 5:00!”? I know I would have.

They treated it like it was a job. Heck, even waitresses wait past the closing time at lunch for those who are not yet finished! Which is more important? Lunch or the salvation of souls?
 
opus101 said:
Since you arrived at 5:00 and waited for an hour and a half, I think the priests had a duty to stay to hear the 4 people who were left unless it was an emergency. That would have been only 2 people per priest!

Did anyone say “Father, we’ve been waiting since 5:00!”? I know I would have.

They treated it like it was a job. Heck, even waitresses wait past the closing time at lunch for those who are not yet finished! Which is more important? Lunch or the salvation of souls?
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As the priest said, they had another meeting to go to.

You feel that it is wrong to leave after these people had been waiting, isn’t it also wrong to make others wait when they have an appointment for a meeting?

We do not know what the other meeting was so there is no way that you can argue that it was not important enough to get there on time for it.
 
Chaplain777 said:
What if it were a fallen away Catholic who just now got the nerve up to come back to the church and then gets turned away? I don’t think I would let it go, if nothing else to give the priests a chance to reflect on the issue and maybe even prevent it from happening to someone else in more dire need.
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Been there. Done that. I know it’s hard to believe, but yes I had that happen to me. I felt horrible, and I couldn’t believe that a priest would do that, especially after reading so many stories about how priests welcomed the confessions of fallen away Catholics. Instead I ended up driving to another diocese and finding a priest from the FSSP. It was the best experience ever.
 
skyisfalling said:
confession from 4-5 once a week, and people don’t tend to show up until 4:30-4:45ish.

If you have committed a mortal sin and make your best effort to go to confession and then do not get the opportunity, you can make a perfect act of contrition, which will protect your soul in the event that you were to die before you could make it to confession again. Just go at the next opportunity (or, as you said, confess to your nephew who is a priest).
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If you’re doing to “protect your soul” it’s not a perfect act of contrition.
 
ByzCath said:
As the priest said, they had another meeting to go to.

You feel that it is wrong to leave after these people had been waiting, isn’t it also wrong to make others wait when they have an appointment for a meeting?

We do not know what the other meeting was so there is no way that you can argue that it was not important enough to get there on time for it.
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I said “Unless it was an emergency”.
 
Call the office as soon as it opens in the morning and then see if you can schedule a confession before whatever Christmas mass you’re going to.
 
AngelineAnast said:
I guess I will let it go. I am not explaining it well. I do go to confession once a month, at least, and this was the scheduled time for confessions at our church. My nephew is a priest and I think I will talk it through with him. He has told me that in his order,** there is nothing more important than confession and saving souls**.
Thanks.
A.A.
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My new priest, a first year priest, added two more Confession times to our schedule. We now have three times as much time to go to Confession than before. There is always a very long line. Praise the LORD!
 
opus101 said:
I said “Unless it was an emergency”.
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I don’t think an emergency was require. The times were posree and it had reached the end of the time. How much longer is the priest expected to stay after a posted time especially when there is a scheduled meeting?

If the confession was an emergency then I am sure the priest would have stayed. After all the 4 that wherw left did not speak up in any way so they gave thwir approval of what happened by their silence.
 
AngelineAnast said:
Hello,
Two nights ago, I went to church where they had three priests hearing confessions. The time for confesssions was scheduled for 4 until 6:30pm. I arrived there at 5pm and got into one of the very long lines. I finally got to point where there was only one person in front of me and 2 behind me at 6:30, when the priest came out and said that he & his associate priest had another meeting and confessions were over. He did not tell us that it was an emergency; he just said goodnight and we walked out. The other priests had already left and this was the last time before Christmas. I couldn’t believe that any meeting could be more important than the souls of his parishioners, especially after we were there waiting for 1 1/2 hours and did not have a choice of how long he stayed with each person before us. I couldn’t believe it, so I went to my car and confessed my sins to God. What if one of the people in line had a mortal sin to confess? Anyway, I wanted to email the priest to let him know how being turned away from confession affected me but he doesn’t have email. I still do not think this is right and am thinking of writing the archdiocese. Any suggestions?
Angeline
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Sounds typical of a lot of parishes. One opens a missal and reads that in order to approach the altar and receive Holy Communion, one must not be conscious of grave sin without prior sacramental confession. In other words, you need to go to confession to confess mortal sins before partaking in the most central acts of what it meanse to be a Catholic–the Eucharist. But then, the priest bolts out the door before everyone is finished. If the Sacrament of Penance is so important, he would have waited for everyone until they were finished–unless there was a true emergency. This is an example of the Church talking out of both sides of its mouth.

I find this in many parishes. Catholics are lectured on how they should be going to confession a lot more—yet, it is not uncommon for this sacrament to be offered once a week for an hour.

If the sacrament is this important, it should be offered DAILY (like the parish across the street from where I work).
 
ByzCath said:
I don’t think an emergency was require. The times were posree and it had reached the end of the time. How much longer is the priest expected to stay after a posted time especially when there is a scheduled meeting?

If the confession was an emergency then I am sure the priest would have stayed. After all the 4 that wherw left did not speak up in any way so they gave thwir approval of what happened by their silence.
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Then why not give a general absolution? This argument is lame. No priest should assume that a soul waiting for confession is not in mortal sin. :shrug:Besides, he didn’t even bother arranging some other time- like telling them to return in an hour/two- why should a priest of all people take chances with people’s souls? Do you think Jesus would pass up a soul in mortal sin seeking forgiveness just to get to an important meeting? :eek:
 
Marybeloved said:
Then why not give a general absolution?
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General absolution is not allowed expect for extreme cases. For example the only time it was used that I am aware met the conditions was when the crisis occurred at 3 mile island with the nuclear plant there.

I am sorry that I will not second guess a priest, I do not think any one here can do or should do so.
 
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