What do you do if you can't hear your penance?

[flameburns623]

What should I do, presumably at my next confession, if I could not hear the priest give me a penance during my last confession? I am hearing-impaired and my last confession was in a traditional confessional, behind a screen. (I only attend this parish about once per month. I usually confess and attend in a parish closer to home.) The priest spoke very softly and it did not help that he has a strong accent. I went ahead and did an Our Father and three Hail Marys on my own, but don’t know if I can “assign” a penance to myself. What should I do?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Explain what happened the next time you go to confession and ask for a penance. For the future, if you go to confession at the traditional church again, you can say politely to the priest “Father, I am hearing-impaired and cannot hear you. Could you please repeat that?” If there are technical issues with the confessional that make it difficult for hearing-impaired people to use it for confession, you might want to notify the pastor so that he can look into appropriate fixes for the problem.