From my friend Fr. McTeigue, one of the good ones.
Excerpt:
What 99.9999 percent of Catholics need to do is go to confession regularly. Unless you are living in China, being hunted down in Nigeria, or facing some comparable obstacle, you probably have the opportunity to go to confession more than once a year.
Some people think that once a year is satisfactory, or perhaps once during Lent and once during Advent. No. If you are able to go to confession once a month and choose not to, I would not want to be responsible for your soul. I do not see how a Catholic who has the opportunity to confess monthly, yet deliberately chooses not to do so, can claim to be serious about the Faith.
The absolute bare minimum of spiritual hygiene is sacramental confession once a month, preceded, of course, by an honest examination of conscience. I would like to see everyone step it up and go twice a month. Before going more frequently than that, consult a spiritual director or your pastor.
The barest possible minimum, then, is once a month. A genuinely regular practice would be twice a month.
Confession is hard. I need to go. It’s been a while.
Tip for some people. Our secondary local parish has a 45 min slot for confessions on a Saturday morning (1800 regular Mass goers, 45 mins for confession. Go figure.)
I put that 45 minutes in mine and the wifey’s joint google calendar as a recurring event. It flashes up every week. Makes us think.
Go figure.
Mentally, don’t think I’ll manage every month. I don’t critisise the sentiment.
People are more likely to do things when they’re easy to do. When they walk into church for the twice-weekly 45 minutes of Confession available and there are 30 or more ahead of them, how many turn around and leave? I sympathize with how busy priests are, but this is kind of important.
being of partially Swiss descent, i catalog a great many of my activities in excruciating detail. but i do so in code so as to maintain privacy. no, i’m not kidding. (stereotypes exist because they match widespread observations.)
consulting my journal, i see that since Lent 2011 i average confessing every 27 days.
One issue is the availability of priests.
I help at a parish. There are official confession hours on Saturday. But there is a daily Mass at 5:30 pm. The priest is always there at 5 pm and many thoughtful people stop by for confession at that time. My feeling is that when priests celebrate daily mass in parishes, just be available for a half hour before the mass on a daily basis.
Another example. For large celebrations, why not have priests available at different “confession stations”? Cardinal Wuerl did this in DC during a papal visit. Rather than have the concelebrating priests sitting for hours in front of the altar waiting for the procession of the bishops and pope, have them in the stands with the people available for confession. Being available for confession would be a greater grace-giving act than concelebrating at the Mass.
My feeling is that there is a growing desire and recognition of the value of more frequent confession among Catholics. As an economist I can only say, if there is increasing demand, why not increase supply?
In order to make a good confession, a good examination of conscience is important as Fr. McTeigue notes. And yet I rarely notice any examination of conscience booklets/pamphlets available outside of confessionals any more!
As a Dad I go every two weeks, Mom also. We make sure kids go every month or if needed. Very open communication. Kids are free to ask to go, I simply take them.
One thing that helped me immensely with confession was a beautiful homily by a Dominican friar, where he talked about thinking of confession as a place of love. God’s love for penitents, and contrition as a form of love towards God. In a sense we go to confession to tell God that we love him, and because of that that we repent of our sins, hate them, and want to mend our ways, and that we seek His mercy confident of His love and promises. And then consider that like the father of the parable, He awaits us eagerly and embraces us, and even “takes posession” of us as grace takes the soul, if we were in mortal sin. And that there’s a worthy and pious practice in thanking God for the last confession, and desiring and formulating a purpose for the next one; making a cycle out of it.
I had by that point, thanks be to God, been a regular penitent for years, but there had always been a lot of strain and anxiety in it (which scruples did not help). This consideration really helped with that part immensely.
Priestly availability has gone up in the past couple decades, and I also find priests in general more willing to mention confession in homilies and such, but it seems they don’t have much to say about it to show people its beauty and value and necessity, alas.
Since most of the comments have been about the “If you are able” part of Father M’s statement, let me pile on.
I made my last confession at a retreat. Before that I had been trying to go for months. I live in a rural area and there aren’t many options. I had waited in line twice for a total of an hour and 15 minutes only to have the priest come out while I was still in line and announce that confession time was over. Try again some other time. Another time I arrived only to find out confessions time had been moved but the parish website had not been updated yet.
Add driving time of an hour and a half to these three attempts and that’s nearly three hours of farm work that didn’t get done, for no reason.
I would not want to be responsible for the souls of those who have let the Church get into this state.
@Gregg,
If you were of Irish and Catalan descent, I’d almost think you were Dr. Maturin…