Weird Confession

[Detroit_Sue]

I went to Confession yesterday with the priest who doesn’t let you say your Act of Contrition in the confessional. Yesterday, after I had finished my confession, he didn’t start speaking, so I started to say my Act of Contrition. He seemed startled, interrupted me and gave me absolution. No penance. I think he may have been daydreaming. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, so when I left the confessional, I prayed my AOC, along with the penance he usually dishes out.

Was this disobedient?

 

[StJeanneDArc]

Detroit Sue:

I went to Confession yesterday with the priest who doesn’t let you say your Act of Contrition in the confessional. Yesterday, after I had finished my confession, he didn’t start speaking, so I started to say my Act of Contrition. He seemed startled, interrupted me and gave me absolution. No penance. I think he may have been daydreaming. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, so when I left the confessional, I prayed my AOC, along with the penance he usually dishes out.

Was this disobedient?

It seems to me that doing an AOC and a penance on your own couldn’t possibly be disobedient. After all, he didn’t tell you not to, did he? Maybe he was daydreaming and wasn’t giving you the best pastoral care; but as long as you’re contrite and he absolved you, you’re absolved.

 

[Detroit_Sue]

Thanks StJeanneDAarc, I was thinking along the same lines, but I just wasn’t sure. The sad thing is, I told my 21 year old son about this, and it reinforced his contention that the priests are not in persona Christi in the confessional.

 

[Diana]

My guess is that he dozed off for a few seconds, a very human thing to do (just like Peter, James and John…except that they had a longer doze).

 

[StJeanneDArc]

Detroit Sue:

Thanks StJeanneDAarc, I was thinking along the same lines, but I just wasn’t sure. The sad thing is, I told my 21 year old son about this, and it reinforced his contention that the priests are not in persona Christi in the confessional.

Wow, I’m sorry this reinforced that opinion of your son’s. I think Christ said “whatever you bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven”, and **didn’t **add “only if you’re 100% focused on what the penitent is telling you and offer the most effective penance possible.”

It sounds like your son is victim of thinking that human failings of individual clergy indicates fallacy in the teachings of Christ. I’ll pray for him.

Blessings.

 

[thann]

I usually go to the same confessor (my pastor), but occasionally the associate and rarely a visiting priest. If it is a visitor I sort of “run the show,” proceeding with the form of my normal confession. If that is incorrect, I’ve never had a priest correct me.

After I recite my sins, I actually announce the Act of Contrition by saying, “And now I will say my Act of Contrition.” And then I do. I have never had a priest interrupt me. After the AoC I always wait for discussion and/or absolution and penance. My regular confessor always discusses my sins with me (and usually the associate does, too), but I’ve never had a visitor do that.

'thann

 

[kellyw]

I use to go to bible study with Father at the rectory. We would ask him questions of course on being a priest. When discussing confessions one day, he admitted to only listening to the very 1st sin you confess. Confessions are boring to hear because it is the same thing over and over so they cause him to get to day dreaming. I had noticed that whatever sin you want this priest to discuss/talk about is the one you say first.

Kelly

 

[kmktexas]

When discussing confessions one day, he admitted to only listening to the very 1st sin you confess. Confessions are boring to hear because it is the same thing over and over so they cause him to get to day dreaming. I had noticed that whatever sin you want this priest to discuss/talk about is the one you say first.

That’s too funny. And it may explain why I don’t always get good discussion since I tend to start with the small stuff and build up to the big ones.

 

[Fortiterinre]

I always feel weird when I don’t receive a penance. I usually just pray one of the “classics” then!

 

[Detroit_Sue]

StJeanneDArc:

Wow, I’m sorry this reinforced that opinion of your son’s. I think Christ said “whatever you bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven”, and **didn’t **add “only if you’re 100% focused on what the penitent is telling you and offer the most effective penance possible.”

It sounds like your son is victim of thinking that human failings of individual clergy indicates fallacy in the teachings of Christ. I’ll pray for him.

Blessings.

Thank you for your prayers. He is at the age where he is spreading his wings, and wanting to have new experiences (nuthin new about them though - I did it all myself 25 years ago). He is a scientist. Well, at least he will be in 9 months. He will graduate with a triple major of Astronomy, Physics, and Computer Science. He believes every question can be answered mathamatically (whatever that means), and while he believes the Truths of the Church, you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the human failings of the clergy. You must have experienced something similar yourself because your post really touched my heart! Thank you again!

 

[Trad_Catholic]

kellyw:

I use to go to bible study with Father at the rectory. We would ask him questions of course on being a priest. When discussing confessions one day, he admitted to only listening to the very 1st sin you confess. Confessions are boring to hear because it is the same thing over and over so they cause him to get to day dreaming. I had noticed that whatever sin you want this priest to discuss/talk about is the one you say first.

Kelly

That is sacreligious… how can he tell if the person is contrite if he is not even listening. What if the person confesses mortal sins that need discussing (e.g. a Priest told me he had someone come to Confession, confess her sins, then remember and say: oh, and I had sex with my boyfriend. The Priest asked if she was sorry for doing that, and she said no. He refused absolution, as he must do.) What that Priest does is an abuse of the Sacrament and a neglect of his priestly duties.

 

[RichT]

As a relitively new catholic I have only gone to confession a few times. I have gone face to face each time, however, as I prefer this way. I don’t recall any of the priests falling a sleep or taking a quick doze. Kinda hard to do when your looking at someone right in the eye.

 

[StJeanneDArc]

Detroit Sue:

Thank you for your prayers. He is at the age where he is spreading his wings, and wanting to have new experiences (nuthin new about them though - I did it all myself 25 years ago). He is a scientist. Well, at least he will be in 9 months. He will graduate with a triple major of Astronomy, Physics, and Computer Science. He believes every question can be answered mathamatically (whatever that means), and while he believes the Truths of the Church, you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the human failings of the clergy. You must have experienced something similar yourself because your post really touched my heart! Thank you again!

I’m so glad it helped, Sue. It’s funny about your son’s background, though. I majored in math and comp. science in undergraduate school. I fell into sin and drifted away from the Church after college. I had spent 4 years doing mathematical proofs and writing computer programs. Everything was so cut and dried and provable. All that rigorous thought training was not wasted, though, as I had an intellectual conversion in my late twenties. It’s providential that I read your post just today, as my husband just emailed this quote to me out of the blue:

As G.K. Chesterton said, “Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.”

 

[Faustina]

One of the reasons I chose the face to face confession. For one, the priest is concentrated on me and my sins. 2.) discussion of the sin is easier. 3) I don’t have to worry about the priest wondering if I have been to confession lately.

 

[TTM]

Detroit Sue:

He believes every question can be answered mathamatically (whatever that means)

That sounds like Stephen Hawking’s idea - that the “theory of everything” could mathematically make sense of the universe, which would mean having no need of God anymore. Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for Mr. Hawking), he’s given up that search because of the work of Mr. Godel. I’m not a physicist, so I can’t really comment, but you can read more about it in John Cornwell’s article, “Hawking’s quest: a search without end” in the The Tablet magazine, issue for 27 March 2004 [Pages 4 and 5]. I’ll quote a little bit from it:

It is 16 years now since Hawking, the Cambridge theoretical physicist, promised his readers a final theory of everything in his A Brief History of Time. The book sold 25 million copies on the strength of his claim that an all-embracing explanation for the existence of the universe was in the offing. He was living in hope, he told his readers, that he would discover this final theory, which, once achieved, would enable us to ‘see into the mind of God’

The quip was of course ironic, for Hawking’s theory of everything would mean that there was no need for God. In recent months, however, Hawking has dramatically repudiated his boast in a courageously frank disavowal. Hawking has renounced, in principle and for ever, his quest for the theory of everything.

…The debate involves the tale of a great German mathematician, David Hilbert, and an Austrian logician, Kurt Godel, who escaped Nazi Germany to settle in America at the beginning of the Second World War. The story begins in 1900 at a mathematical congress in Paris, when Hilbert set for the mathematicians of the world a list of problems for completion in the new century. Not least he challenged them to demonstrate that mathematics is self-proving. He asked for a computational method, or algorithm, for resolving any kind of mathematical problem. Most of the leading mathematicians and logicians of the day, including Britain’s Bertrand Russell, though thought that this could be achieved. But in 1931 Godel wrote a proof that finally disposed of Hilbert’s proposal. He demonstrated that there were mathematical statements which no conceivable computer, however large, could settle. Crucially, philosophers of science have shown that what goes for mathematics goes, too, in important respects, for physics.

…In fact, the objections put by Hawking’s contemporaries were anticipated 30 years earlier by the Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan, who cited the implication of Godel in his book Insight.

Here’s more information regarding the article:
thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/contents.cgi/past-00183

God bless!
TTM

P.S. “Godel” should be spelled with a double dot above the “o”, but it isn’t showing up properly (it turns up like this: š) so I’ve changed it to the plain “o”.