A funny thing happened on the way to confession.
I chickened out. Again.
The timing was right. It was that 30-minute window of opportunity on Saturday that a priest in my parish is on tap. I’d talked myself through this. It’s been months. I’m feeling yucky about something going on in my life. I can remember the relief after absolution and I long for that feeling of soul levitation again.
But hey, whichever priest is sitting in that back room, we’re not exactly on the same wave length. My stomach is feeling squirmy with dread. Besides, this isn’t about the seven deadly sins, it’s more of an attitude adjustment, right? I can work on that myself in the privacy of my home. Okay, so it’s drive past church and head for Longs.
Oh, I wish this could be easier.
If you think I was reading your mind, be assured that scenario is an experience you share with virtually all other Catholics, including the men in purple and red at the top of the hierarchy. And they are trying to have this Lent be a time when the path to the confessional is made easier. It’s part of the Year of Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI launched and which bishops are implementing in practical ways intended to get practicing Catholics to deepen their faith and to reach out to those who’ve strayed away.
And practically speaking, the lure to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation easier to experience will be to ramp up the hours when the light is on in the confessional.
“We hope for a resurgence in the use of the sacrament,” said Father Gary Secor, Honolulu diocesan vicar general. “I see glimmers of hope” as people who have attended retreats or youngsters who’ve had a “good experience with the sacrament” become more frequent partakers of this sacrament.
Secor said most priests in the diocese are enthusiastic about the plan which will, after all, fall on them to implement by adjusting their work schedules. Ideally they will add an extra day and at least an hour each week when people can stop into church for one-to-one confession. That’s in addition to the Lenten tradition of a communal penitential service, which features commentary on making an examination of conscience after which two or more priests are stationed at corners of the church and penitents line up for a turn to unload each soul’s dark debris.
Access to the Sacrament of Reconciliation isn’t limited by parish hours of operation. People can always call and make and appointment. “For people to get up the courage to make an appointment is hard … maybe they will come by the church if the light is on,” said the vicar general who has been a pastor in several island parishes.
People who haven’t flexed this muscle of faith for a while may have forgotten that they’re not likely to be shamed and judged on the spot or driven from the premises, no matter what they say.
This is not psychoanalysis
“The priest is not there to reprimand or scold people,” said Father Secor. “This is not psychoanalysis, there’s no set agenda, no probing questions. The people provide the agenda. Most of it, for the priest, is listening to people and offering God’s forgiveness.”
He said, “Using confession, you have a check on your accountability. It’s a chance to talk to someone in a safe setting. You get grace just by checking in. It’s not only spiritually healing, but psychologically sound to confess.”
Father Secor tells of giving “my confession speech” at weekend retreats sponsored by the Basic Christian Community movement. “I tell people, if you think you’re going to shock me … you’re not that original. I’ve heard it before.”
He tells retreatants about a span of time after his ordination when he avoided confession. “There were issues I was not ready to talk about … or to change” and that’s a state of mind that us avoiders recognize.
Sacred Hearts Father Clyde Guerreiro, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, said, “It is a difficult sacrament. It’s difficult to tell another human being, who is not exactly our best friend, about our faults.
“We underestimate the power of the sacrament,” Guerreiro said. “I don’t exactly like going to confession myself, but I feel a burden has been lifted afterwards.”
The Wahiawa pastor said he sees more young people in the confessional there than he’s seen in any other parish he served. With its proximity to two military bases, there is also a steady stream of service personnel in line at Saturday confessions.
The image of young soldiers heading for the village church instead of a face-to-face with the chaplain who knows you, is a phenomenon that is also shared by many of us: seek the stranger rather than the shame of talking to familiar pastor.
‘I know how difficult it is’
Doanworryaboudit: That’s the advice of a handful of island priests who talked about the sacrament. “We know how difficult it is and no one would want to be the cause of people going away,” said Father David Travers, retired pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Church and a former military chaplain.
“Guess what, I don’t go in the room and yell. I’m not exempt, I go to confession myself and I know how difficult it is. I try to make people as comfortable as possible,” Travers said. “My advice is: when you are ready to go, don’t be afraid to go.”
My opening excuse about settling for a private chat with God is another shared Catholic experience.
“The popular theology is that you can communicate directly with God,” said Father Guerreiro. “The concept that we can talk directly with God, we don’t need a mediator, is a valid one. That’s certainly true, it’s an easier way out, but it doesn’t make use of what I call ‘the Catholic advantage’ of the benefit we get from the sacrament.”
Father Secor agreed. “You can pray to God, ask him in your own heart for forgiveness and know he hears you. It helps to have someone there with you when you express your remorse. It helps when you talk about it with another person.”
The idea of confessing to a priest is criticized by some outside the Catholic Church, often based on the misconception that we don’t know it’s only God who has the power to forgive. I had a mini-experience of that when I mentioned my topic during a morning coffee klatch with friends. It’s Catechism 101, but it’s not easy to do a sound bite version, I found.
“It is not the priest who is forgiving sins, he is the instrument, a channel for God. You don’t say a hammer drives a nail, the carpenter does,” is how Father Fred McGowan, put it at an interview later in the day. I wish he’d been with me for the Charge of the Skeptics at the coffee house earlier.
The one-to-one format wasn’t implemented until several centuries after Jesus told the Apostles “whatever you bind upon earth is bound in heaven,” according to the Gospel of Matthew, and “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,” according to John’s Gospel.
The requirements for confession “were developed because they made sense,” Father Secor said. “Jesus was a real person, not a virtual person, and his relationship with people was real, not virtual. You have to be physically present; you can’t do it remote, by phone, by text.
“Our understanding is that we are relating to Jesus, who was human. It helps when you talk about it with another person.”
You have to be specific
Another requirement is that the confession has to be something specific. “Part of the healing nature of the sacrament is to have the specific understanding of what it is, your remorse for a specific act,” Secor said.
That sparked a memory of those small kid days when we were herded to church on Friday afternoons by Sister Mary Remorse. It was not a matter of choice. As I recall, my all-purpose standby was “I disobeyed my mother … umpteen times.” It covered a lot of territory.
As an adult, the hardest part, more painful than just getting there, is the second key element of the sacrament: a true intention to stop it and not do it again. The most encompassing shared Catholic experience, if we were wont to share, is that we just don’t succeed in stopping. I think that’s the reason many, many people have just walked away from the Sacrament of Reconciliation: I know it’s wrong but it’s my pattern of life, it’s such a pleasure, everyone else lives like this, I’ll wait. That’s not just a theory, I’ve been there.
I think that’s a key to the wisdom of the ancient theologians who developed this format long before psychology was invented. To have the priest in the room while you tell God you will try not to do this again, well, it makes it real and really hard to forget. The next time, and the next time, and the time after that.
“The more you use this sacrament, the sharper your conscience becomes and the stronger your spiritual life,” said Father McGowan.
“Confession is not simply a curative medicine for the soul, but a preventative one. There is a special effect. We get strength from the sacrament … when your contrition is based on the love of God, and the desire to put him above all things. When we seek forgiveness, if we go to confession, we know we have it.
“It’s a powerful sacrament.”
The evening penitential service in Advent or Lent has been the way I’ve approached the sacrament in recent years and it hasn’t been a hallelujah experience. The good news is that there is courage in numbers. You get into a brightly lighted church, surrounded by other penitents with the same goal and that bolsters you from bolting. The bad news is that you’re talking with Father in a corner pew and both of you are aware of the line waiting, not quite in earshot, and long enough to bring pressure to be brief and move along.
Ah, but the relief is real.
“I tell people, you got here. That was the hard part. The rest is downhill,” said Father McGowan, retired pastor of an inner city parish in Haverhill, Mass. On his annual Hawaii vacation, he has pitched in for Navy chaplains at Barber’s Point and at Sts. Peter and Paul Church. A priest for 63 years, he said, “Confession is one part of the priesthood I look forward to. It is a satisfying experience because you meet the best people, the most well-intentioned, sincere, trying … or else they wouldn’t be there.
“I like to remind people how important each is to our Blessed Lord. We are not just a face in the crowd … each of us is special. I want them to know how ready our Lord is to forgive, how he treats us, after we are forgiven, as if the sins had never taken place.”
