“GO TO CONFESSION!” I always say. Another thing I say is that it is CRUEL to leave penitents in doubt.

Today I was out and about in Rome doing errands. I chanced on a posted sign in the penitents’ part of the free standing confessionals that line most Roman churches, often dusty from neglect.   The sign is a little blurry because it was dark and I wasn’t quite patient enough.  However, it is the newer, post-Conciliar form in Italian with some cultural variants.  It was clearly not new, given how yellowed it was.  What is interesting is that it includes a beautiful prayer that priest would say after absolution in the older, traditional rite.   It is an optimistic, hope filled desire for the remission of temporal punishment due for sins that have been absolved:

Passio Dómini nostri Iesu Christi, mérita Beátæ Maríæ Vírginis, et ómnium Sanctórum, quidquid boni féceris, et mali sustinúeris, sint tibi in remissiónem peccatórum, augméntum grátiæ et præmium vitæ ætérnæ. Amen.

May the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the Saints, whatever good you shall have done, and evil you shall have endured, be to you unto remission of sins, increase of grace, and reward of eternal life. Amen.

There is so much richness here, so much incentive for the penitent to do penance and amend.   This is at the end of the rite of Penance in the Vetus Ordo.

In the day, penitents would have known what this prayer really said even if the priest said it in Latin. He could, of course say it in the local tongue. The point being that penitents were instructed from childhood – or adulthood if they were converts – on how to make confession. They were given a structure, a form to follow. That structure makes you freer to make a good confession, because you are not worried about not knowing what to do.

I’ve received the first confessions of little ones who were not prepared. They were confused and terrified. I’ve received first confessions of little ones who were well-prepared, often home-schooled. They might have been a little nervous (that doesn’t go away) but they did well and were happy at the end.

The worst thing you can do to children in the matter of sacramental preparation is NOT PREPARE THEM. It’s downright cruel. Its the same for adults, who as converts desire with all their hearts to do the right thing in the right way.

But there are jackass priests out there who think that they are being with it, or kind, or charmingly avuncular, or unassumingly inviting, etc., by downplaying structure, order, form, clarity. “Just say one thing, whatever comes into your head,” says Father “Just call me Bob!” as he simultaneously shatters any expectation of an examination of conscience. You know, “That mean old thing.”

Today at a Substack (is that how you refer to them?), I read a piece which describes what I am raving about.

I’ve learned over the years that instruction on “the sacrament of reconciliation” in the contemporary Church results the opposite of what one would hope to receive. I’ve realized that in the new rite, there simply is not much of a pattern to follow.

A woman adult convert was frustrated by the formlessness of the new rites, especially of penance. She describes a video by a Franciscan (which figures – I’m not happy with some of them right now) which left her little better informed than before, and indeed scratching her head. All that old structure and formula business was only the stuff of Hollywood that nobody does.

Oh yeah? I’ll be that Franciscan sure doesn’t.

The writer comes to a good point which is concomitant with another thing I say all the time: WE ARE OUR RITES. Get this…

[…]

If we were wondering if our confession is valid — which we weren’t, not yet, because remember? the subject is supposed to be about how to do it — the video would still not really reassure us, because Fr. Cole doesn’t make distinctions on that point and doesn’t dwell on the often tampered-with necessity of the priest saying “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Anyway, the main takeaway from this video, because it’s the main takeaway from the changes brought on by Pope Paul VI’s meddling, is, as I say, an insistence on the absence of form. In Confession, and this is my point, no one really knows how it should go and Fr. Cole does nothing to clear the problem up.

The absence of form results in an absence of meaning.

[…]

That seems to be the point in some of the post-Conciliar reforms. No?

Mind you, the new formula of absolution is VALID. No question, regarding sins. There is a question of absolving censures but, pffffft, who believes in those anymore except when some bishop wants to slam a priest into the ground for wanting the structure and clarity of the Vetus Ordo? THEN censures…. ohhhhh yesssss.

In the older right, the necessary step of removing incurring censures (if there are any) takes place before the absolution of sins. Then, as I mentioned above, there is a prayer about temporal punishment. See how orderly?

Some smarticus pantsicus will say that in the Rite of Reconciliation there are still absolutions of censures. Yeah, which one in 1000 priest knows about and one in 10000 use.

The abuse of the Sacrament of Penance has to stop.  It is abused both in its neglect and in its haphazard administration.

Don’t get me started about priests who don’t accurately use the approved, official formula of absolution in English, thus leaving penitents wondering if they were truly absolved.

What’s a “Eucharistic Rival”… or a revival of anything Catholic… without a revival of the Sacrament of Penance?

The Church for centuries was the greatest expert on humanity ever.  She figured out over generations and generations the effective ways and patterns of prayer and practice for the administration of the sacraments.   Then came the proverbial “Good Idea Fairy” (often emphasis on “fairy”), sprinkling “good idea fairy dust” over things.  Everything went herking and jerking into the fan blades.

Now we need more “good ideas” to fix the problem the “good ideas” caused.

Or maybe not.