Pope Francis hears the confession of a priest at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome in this March 7, 2019, file photo. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
VIEW FROM THE PEW
A funny thing happened on the way to confession.
I considered that lead for this column after a Lent event last week. Long story short, a friend and I went to the parish’s evening reconciliation service just in time to see the lights being turned off. It had actually started an hour earlier than listed in the church bulletin. It made for a longer comic tale, with a smart aleck punch line about curbside confession, which did not amuse the priest who sent us home unshriven.
After telling the story for laughs, I relapsed into the “Oh well, never mind” attitude that has become my toxic takeaway from the past two years. It’s become my mantra for dodging any and all responsible conduct. Did I keep in close touch with friends and family to bolster their morale and my own? Have I made a long overdue dental appointment? Will I finally get a lingering house issue fixed? Couldn’t I just water the lemon tree? Aren’t I ashamed to keep letting my sister do my chores?
Then Lent came along and I skipped Ash Wednesday. Masses early in the morning or after dark didn’t work for me. Besides, per the COVID rules, sketching a cross on someone’s forehead as the badge of piety is a public health no-no; so it’s ashes self-administered or sprinkled over the head. “Oh well, never mind” yet again.
But then, it turns out after a lot of sleepless nights, I’m not really laughing things off. I’m seeing I have a serious need for attitude adjustment. While I’m talking about “me” I believe this is about “we.” Lent is here, ready or not.
For ardent and active Catholics, these days preparing for Easter are time to shift into high gear. Reportedly, the turnout was really good for Ash Wednesday Masses around the country even though the optics aren’t as satisfying as the cross on the forehead.
In need of rescue
I thought I was one of those fully conscious Catholics, but I seem to have wandered off the path and am feeling a little like a hiker in need of rescue. Now I’m starting the journey to Easter late and examining the trail markers. Rule-ridden congregation of believers that we are, we get the reminder of Lenten regulations in advance from our bishop. I was just thinking that the church’s specific discipline about what we eat and when we shouldn’t are markers, guides toward our destination. Even if our Catholic conscience has nearly atrophied from lack of exercise, Lent is a time to start walking again, taking baby steps, cheering each other on.
It’s a longstanding shared belief in our family that you will never crave bacon as much as you do on the very few days in Lent that are meant to be meatless. We’re wimps compared to the fasting done by Orthodox Christians now and Catholics in the past. It’s not against the rules to embrace the concept of fasting and ramp it up; deliberately skip another fast-food fix any old day, skip all chocolate for the next several weeks. Take that short period of hunger to contemplate how empty you would be if you didn’t know that God loves you.
How about getting back into the quiet drama of following the stations of the cross: take a step away from the clamor of TV, electronic game, pub or cafe and into the Easter story … for just a little while. A communal version is happening free and frequently at a church near you. Or you could stop in and follow the steps of the Passion of Jesus pictured along the walls of any Catholic church.
But to get back to confession, aka the sacrament of reconciliation, it is not on the official list of Lenten regulations. But it is in the Catholic catechism as a spiritual obligation required at least once a year.
I chatted about confession with a few people as I was talking myself into taking that step after a couple years of delinquency. When the subject comes up, it triggers childhood memories in people. As a former Catholic school kid, I can echo others’ memories of your whole class being herded into weekly confession. Not. An. Option. Those were the days when you crafted a generic sin category such as “I disobeyed my parents six times” to avoid embarrassing specific details.
A fellow college alumni and I reminisced about Jesuit Father Sports Fan at Marquette University who did campus walkalong confessions — for athletes only — conversations people knew not to interrupt. And then there was the hearing-impaired priest you dreaded because everyone in line outside the confessional could hear him holler “You did what?” And then you had to exit past the line-up. In hindsight, was he deliberate in doing that, whether cruel or mischievous, maybe part of his imposed penance?
Come back to me
My contemplation about this sacrament was set off because this month and year are anniversary time for me, of return to my church after some years of drifting away. It took months of false starts, hanging around outside the confessional without the nerve to step in or the courage to call for an appointment. One day, the Holy Spirit pushed me into the path of the assistant pastor on his way to somewhere. Never have my soul, brain or tear ducts been so wrung out. Whenever the hymn “Come Back to Me” appears in a liturgy. I can’t get past the second line “Don’t let fear keep us apart,” without another flood of tears.
I realized that I can’t take my weak and wavering self on this Lenten hike without strengthening my soul with the sacrament of reconciliation. It was such a relief that the congregational confession service was scheduled because the school kid shivers of embarrassment and fear are still here.
If you’ve never been to one such liturgy, it’s a prayer service with perhaps a bit of homily, and likely that very song will be sung. Then the participating priests retire to various posts inside the church. Penitents line up, hopefully distant enough to be out of earshot. Individual confessions proceed in this somewhat awkward format. If there are churches with multiple confessional cubicles anymore, I haven’t been there.
The unspoken understanding is that you are to keep it short, conscious of the line. Perfect timing for the penitent and the priest.
With a date in mind, it was way too much time to rehearse, the ultimate in over-thinking a situation. Should I start off with admitting that my last confession, embarked in fear as I faced surgery, might not have been valid because probably I considered it getting my passport stamped, so to speak.
No, I don’t have physical violence or cruelty on my conscience but I do imagine scripts for an awful death for the deranged despot in the news. All the prideful, impatient, unkind, self-centered things I do or say, all the ways I choose to withdraw from people or responsibilities … it is certainly tempting to summarize like the childish shorthand about disobeying parents. “I disobeyed your teaching, Oh Lord.”
No priest these days will be aghast at how long you’ve been away from the confessional. That’s not just my personal excuse. Widespread absence from the confessional is the subject of countless articles, analyses by theologians and psychologists, homilies by clergy including Pope Francis and his predecessors.
“The center of confession is not the sins we declare but the divine love we receive, of which we are always in need,” Pope Francis said in a March 2021 prayer intention video released by the Vatican news office. “When I go to confession, it is in order to be healed, to heal my soul. To love with greater spiritual health, to pass from misery to mercy. Remember this: in the heart of God, we come before our mistakes.”
The news agency reported that Pope Francis also encouraged prayers that God would give the church “merciful priests and not torturers.” That subtext recalled reports I’ve had from elsewhere, particularly in a Wisconsin diocese where a bishop has preached throughout the pandemic and despite precautions, that it is a grave sin to miss Mass. Where’s God’s love in that? Lucky we live Hawaii.
Absolution for the masses
This business of a personal confession with a priest was not the norm for Christians for the first 1,000 years of church history. Except for clergy, monks and nuns, confessions were done as a public event. Can you imagine what that would be like — a church or public square with a cacophony of individuals speaking their sins at the same time. Then absolution for the masses. Sometimes a particular sinner was identified, singled out to be publicly shamed. Lucky we live in the 21st Century.
In 1215 A.D., church fathers at the fourth Lateran Council mandated that each Christian must confess to a priest once a year. By the Second Vatican Couincil in the 1960s, the church emphasized that penance is a process of reconciliation, with the priest guiding the penitent to understand that it’s not only about rules, it’s about love and your choices that damaged your relationship with God.
Confession of transgressions that separate faithful from God is one of the beliefs we inherit from the Jews. It is, to this day, part of the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur, to confess and seek forgiveness from people you have wronged in order to be reconciled with God.
Theologians say this sacrament was instituted, as reported in John’s Gospel, when Jesus was sending his disciples out to continue his ministry. He told them “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”
Except in the Anglican and Lutheran religious traditions, Protestants rejected the sacrament, maintaining that people may speak directly with God, no intermediary required. “I ask God for forgiveness” is something you hear from Catholics, too, especially if they’re drifting away from institutional features of faith. It’s not against any rules to talk to God directly. In their wisdom, church fathers established a way to focus the conversations.
Pope Pius XII wrote about his reasons for making a daily confession, and Pope Francis summarized them in a February 2014 general audience at the Vatican:
- Genuine self-knowledge is increased.
- Christian humility grows.
- Bad habits are corrected.
- The conscience is purified.
- The will is strengthened.
- Self-control is attained.
In that address to people in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said that Pius XII warned that to “make light of or lessen esteem for frequent confession … is alien to the spirit of Christ.”
If that’s what I’ve done, it was not a deliberate act. I vow to confess it just the same.
As soon as I can get to the confessional.
