Sometimes I wonder if Bp. Finn of Kansas City, MO and Archbp. Naumann of Kansas City, KS compete with each other to be the best Catholic bishop they can be.
Here is great news from Kansas City, Kansas.
Take this in:
The Sacrament of Reconciliation will be offered at churches throughout the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas on Wednesdays during Lent. Take advantage of this opportunity to receive the cleansing graces of Confession this spring.
Confession available every Wednesday through Holy Week from 6-7 p.m.
(not offered on Ash Wednesday)Many resources are available to prepare for Lent and the Sacrament of Penance. This page contains helpful information.
So… every Catholic in the area will be able to know when a confessor will be available.
Not bad.
Brick by brick, friends.
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This is wonderful. The Archdiocese of Boston did this last year and they are doing it again this year. I think it was a huge success. If it even gets one person to go to the Sacrament who otherwise would not have went, then it’s worth it.
Along the same lines, the Archdiocese of New York is coordinating with the neighboring dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre to have a “Confession Monday”, when all the parishes in all three dioceses will be open for confession at the same time for something like 6 hours (3 to 9PM?). I think it’s the Monday before Holy Week, but I’m not sure right now. The details should be made public shortly, and there will be a publicity campaign to make sure that EVERYONE knows. Sounds great to me!
2011 is the second year that the Diocese of Arlington, VA (my home diocese) and our neighbor, the Archdiocese of Washington, have teamed up for the “The Light is on for You” campaign. Ads on buses, the Metro and radio will tell people in DC that EVERY parish in Arlington and Washington will have a priest confessor (or more) available AT LEAST from 7:00 until 8:30 every Wednesday night.
My diocese did the Wednesday night Confessions last Lent. Our pastor, may God bless him, said at the end of the homily, “The diocese said we had to do this, to ‘leave the light on’. Well, the light won’t be on over here. If you want to go to Confession, go to Saint Joseph in _______ .”
I know that means I should be praying for him. But it’s so disheartening. :-(
Your turn Bishop Finn, now how about forbidding NCR from using the word Catholic in their name?
Why don’t more bishops standardize some things in parishes? Yes, there is a need to individualize for the locality, but some general guidelines like “Confession so many times a week” or “Vespers on Sundays” could be mandated from the top.
It seems like priests are even less accountable than teachers in a classroom (and I say that as someone student teaching now, though trained in a program that very much encourages more professionalism and accountability among teachers).
This is one of those days when I am happy we “stole” him from St. Louis! :)
Great news, but still not enough.
At a local Novus Ordo parish in town, the 77 year-old pastor and his 80+ assistant hear confessions for a half hour before every single weekend Mass, and on Saturday afternoon. This also includes holy days and multiple times during Lent and Advent. There are nearly always too many people for the time allowed.
At my FSSP parish, Father hears confessions before each and every Mass, daily and Sunday, and on Sundays he hears them after both Masses as well.
By the way, the Novus Ordo pastor I mentioned is the only pastor out of seven N.O. parishes in town who also preaches regularly on heaven, hell, purgatory, indulgences, and the need for the Sacrament of Penance. And his is a very large parish.
This stuff about no one showing up is a bunch of piffle. If Father’s there to hear them, and does his job from the pulpit, they will come.
Actually, our Arlington Diocese parish does Wednesday evening Confessions every week of the year, not just during Lent. But we do add, in addition to the usual daily morning Masses, an evening Mass every evening of Lent and Advent.
The diocese of Baton Rouge is offering confession every Wednesday night during Lent as well. It’s the “The Light is On” program.
Fr. Philip Neri, OP
I live in the DC area and it is a great grace to have the evening confessions available for the majority of parishes that generally only offer confessions for an hour on Saturday afternoons. I am blessed that I live close to two parishes that offer confessions every morning, but I have to arrange to go into work late. I pray that more parishes make the decision to continue the “momentum” of Lent and offer confessions at least one more time during the week.
Bravo to Archbishop Naumann and Bishop Finn!
Something like this makes me wish that cloning was moral-we need more shepherds to stand up to the plate [to use the baseball metaphor] and preach this from the pulpit!
I don’t know if any Bishops here in Upstate New York are going to do this….
What sad times we live in when it is exceptionally good news that a Catholic bishop mandates ONE hour of Confessions per week per parish, and just for Lent, too.
I like the idea very much of advertising the Sacrament of Penance. That being said, around here we just sit in the confessional every day and people come. (Today, I have already had two and a half hours already of confession, and tonight I will have at least one hour more. Of course, offering the TLM, the NO in English (x2) and NO in Spanish (x2) in two days brings people out! We also have regular times for exposition before Sunday Holy Mass, which has been a big draw.) It seems to me that the irregularity of time when the Sacrament is offered goes a long way to discouraging the Sacrament. When I came to my current parish, there were thirty minutes offered each Saturday. That changed on day two. Now we have Confession (and penitents) every day, and very often, twice a day. This is catching on in many, many parishes. It is joyful to see how priests who once reduced times because people did not come now find sitting in the confessional for an hour a day to be part of the bedrock of their priestly identity.
Before a priest says that this is too burdensome, I submit that it is wonderfully life giving for me. Before a priest says that there are too many other things to do, I have a parish, a grade school, an English speaking community, a Spanish speaking community, and I drive to the next parish (fifteen miles away) to help there with Spanish. We have a fairly average Midwestern parish. Confession is what gives me the energy to keep going. What a joy to see people waiting to confess when I walk out to the confessional. What a joy to see people who seek out mercy.
Such a great effort — although I wish all of the ads on subways, etc. would simply say “confession” instead of the silly novus ordo term “sacrament of reconciliation.”
No one who has been away from the sacrament of penance has any earthly idea what the heck the “sacrament of reconciliation” is. Just say confession.
“The Light is On” in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Al too.
I really do wish we would get more confession times during Lent (Advent, too for that matter) and preaching and teaching about the sacrament during those times to encourage more frequent use of it. But we don’t get anything more than one extra opportunity for one of those big communal penance services with priests in every nook and cranny from all around to hear confession, which I am grateful for, but which seems an imcomplete answer.
We will, this Lent, Deo Gratia, be having an extra week day Mass each week of Lent and the Stations of the Cross will be prayed in English and in Spanish each Friday of Lent, so that is a positive thing.
Father S- the phrase ‘burn-out’ is another way to say that a priest isn’t practicing his vocation and is getting selfish- it sounds like the people have a gem in you! I pray that you have a good spiritual father yourself where you can recharge your batteries
They compete because both Bishop Finn and Archbishop Naumann are from St. Louis. ;-)
The Holy Father has been stacking the Midwestern Episcopal deck with our local boys from St. Louis.
At my parish they are extending the weekly confessions to a full hour, and it was heavily implied that they’d stay as long as people showed up. I’m not sure what they archdiocese is doing, although the communal penitential services seem more sparse than ever.
This trend seems to have started here in Rockville Centre several years ago. I recall the first Monday of Holy Week that it was done, it was supposed to have been an initiative of the priests themselves, not of the diocese. It has been very popular. I like the idea that I can go to any parish that afternoon or evening for confession. Shortly thereafter, it started spreading. Later, our bishop requested that all parishes offer an extra confession period apart from what they already had. Many pastors complied, but I think many simply disregarded the instruction as I see many parishes that still have the one slot on Saturday afternoon.
I was filling in my calendar for Lent and to my delight discovered that at St. Joseph in Bryan TX AND at ST. Thomas Aquinas in College Station TX have confession not only on Saturday, but now also on Wednesdays and Fridays! It is wonderful to see this practice here.
Now to decide how to re-arrange the schedule so as to make daily mass fit into my life this Lent.