confession
I found this article on the web and I thought it could evoke some fruitful commentary.
Frannie Schafer
Apr 4, 2007
Church Trying To Get Catholics Back To Confession
Church Leaders Get Creative In Midst Of 'Sacrament Crisis'
(CBS) LAKE FOREST, Ill. Some Catholic bishops are calling it a sacrament crisis – one that is forcing the church to explore new ways to lure Catholics back to the confessional.
Only 14 percent of American Catholics go to confession once a year according a 2005 Georgetown University poll.
But while the number of Catholics attending mass and taking communion has also declined, time pressures, changing attitudes and interpretations of faith have really taken their toll on confession.
“So intent have we been to overcome a sense of crippling sinfulness that we say, ‘well God forgives everything.’ And he does, but you've got to ask,” Cardinal George said.
But while some view the declining number of confessions as troubling, others see it differently.
“Not that its fading away, but that it’s going through a transition and it’s gone through similar transitions before so this is nothing unexpected in my view,” said Professor Gil Ostdiek of the Chicago Catholic Theological Union.
The challenge, he feels, is making confession more relevant by using the confessional and God's forgiveness to help people deal with moral and ethical crises, rather than simply handing out punishment for broken commandments.
Bye-bye all. I'm off to
Bye-bye all. I'm off to work in another part of the Vineyard.
Thanks for a year of spirit-charged engagement. It's been a blast!
I pray for you all the Blessing of God's peace.
In Christ,
Elaine+
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Dear Dr.McCoy~ Thank you for
Dear Dr.McCoy~ Thank you for being here. You will be missed. Please remember Archbishop Tutu's quote on the occasion of Melson Mandela's 89th birthday, "Goodness will prevail".
And, quoting from the (Toronto) Globe and Mail, Thursday, July 19: "Archbishop Tutu, dancing a little jig, sent everyone into the world with a final observation "We have been through incredible times and God has helped us to see that the evil doesn't have the last word. It's ultimately goodness and laughter and joy....Those are what are going to prevail in the end". Go with Tutu.
Elaine, I echo Annie O's
Elaine, I echo Annie O's remarks. While many of us use the blog to exchange quick ideas, your postings frequently challenge us to think more deeply. We are grateful that you call us to explore our attitudes and assumptions. God bless.
Englishwoman
I guess you mean you're
I guess you mean you're already gone. You will be missed, and hope you return sometime. God be with you, Elaine.
Auricular confession is
Auricular confession is encouraged as an undertaking of adult piety in the Episcopal Church. It's warrant is taken primarily from two sixteenth century theologians, Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker, who understood the "binding and unbinding" of sin to be a function of sacramental priesthood as it relates to the community of faith rather thah as somehow, an external priestly "power". We believe that only God has the power to forgive sin and that the role of the priest in absolution is to share a sacramental reality - the reality is a searching for righteous judgment. That which is "bound and unbound" is the stricture of sin. [Similarly, Episcopal priests are able to excommunicate congregants with a Bishop's permission under extreme conditions involving a person's deliberate breaking of communion.]
Contemporary Episcopalians speak a common auricular confession with priestly absolution as part of the Eucharist OR reconciliation may be taken as a private auricular confession. When conducted privately, the person seeking to "make a confession" is encouraged to undertake a preparatory period of serious reflection and prayer. Confession is not a pro forma practice and typically involves work with a pastoral guide or spiritual director. The weeks or months involved in preparation are intended to enact a genuine transformation and "contrition" is the product of an intentional practice of self-examination.
A very good practical resource for this kind of piety is Martin L. Smith's *RECONCILIATION* (Cowley).
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Rev. Dr. Elaine's
Rev. Dr. Elaine's explanation of the Episcopalean emphasis on adult confession is enlightening. Childhood confession, as imposed on children in the Roman Catholic Tradition, needs to be called into question.
Childhood confession, in my opinion, as it is traditionally practiced in the Roman Catholic tradition is likely to cause psychological damage, and is ill-advised in the way it is imposed on children. Dominion theology and culture, subtly and not so subtly, traumatizes childhood sensitivities and the undeveloped rationality of children. Childhood confession, and its trauma, links psychologically with other abuses, e.g., sexual, as occur in the dominion cult of church and male clerical authoritarianism.
Even with the settlements of sexual abuse lawsuits, as in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the Church is nowhere near putting the cult of abuse behind it. Dominion culture preconditions toward events of overreach in later life. Confessional culture still works as a device of the emotional crippling of unsuspecting children, and especially of females.
It is my sense that Catholic confessional culture now requires children to deal with issues of adult infidelities before they have the maturity and need to deal with them. Growth into maturity and sense of conscience is a gradual family process which provides for reasonable answers to morally ambivalent issues, but with sensitivity for the limited emotional and rational development of children. The clerical cult of Confession lacks such sensitivity.
The premature imposition of Church orthodoxies on the child’s conscience exposes the child to a sin-paranoia that blights thought-processing and trivializes judgment in matters of conscience/confession. Such blighting carries over into adulthood and blinds conscience in matters of “real” sin, such as the cultural sins of violence, of ecological exploitation, corporate profiteering, gambling, and other corporately complicit acts of wrongdoing.
Consider this supposition: the Church’s cult of dominion theology/politics, in the confessional imposition of guilt and fear on the emotions of children, robs them of their childhood and women of their personhood; as a result, adults labor for their lifetimes under handicaps of hurtful trauma, with incalculable consequences.
Before this thread ends, I
Before this thread ends, I want to offer a second on much of what you say, Sylvester. One of the reasons that I worked so hard to understand this sacrament was so that I could guide my children toward something better than what the experience of the sacrament was for me and many people that I knew. I not only was able to do that, but in the process found a positive place for the sacrament in my life. But I wouldn't want others to have to take my same journey, enriching though it was for me, because the cause of its difficulty was routed in the church's approach to reconciliation, particularly, as you say, with children. The church in its documents often remains barely in the 20th century, let alone the 21st, when it comes to an appreciation of developmental needs of people; it's really 19th century to think children are but "little adults." The best the church seems to sometimes do is to recognize the "age of reason" and have two schema: below and above that mark. Yet we still seem to want those children, just as they hit the "age of reason" to confront their years before the "age of reason" hit with the understandings of adults, or even in the old days, as adult saints, would. Childhood reconciliation should be developed more toward the communal experience, with an understanding of everyone's right to seek an individual time with a priest, particularly as they grow into bigger issues and bigger questions and bigger challenges. And the variety of options for the sacrament should be broadened, not narrowed back to one style of Irish monasticism (if I'm remembering correctly). Engagement with the sacrament is the one way for people to determine how to best make the sacrament their own, and while their own experience should be informed by pastoral guidance, homiletics, etc., reconciliation should not become an obligation, but a healing gift the person seeks for him or herself. I think Jesus meant for us to know each other as helpers and mentors on our spiritual walk through this life.
Until now I have not weighed
Until now I have not weighed in on Confession, probably because of my ambiguity toward it. I believe that confession is a valuable and necessary part of every person’s life, but not as it has been institutionally imposed for centuries.
Confession for me personally was a heavy and psychologically hurtful experience. My first associations toward it were feelings of guilt and fear; guilt for being blind to my sins, and fear of going to hell because I was blind to my sins.
I took seriously the warning that everyone sins seven-times-seven daily. But for the life of me, I could not come up with all the sins I (must have) committed. My every confession was an ordeal that I sweated, actually. I do now understand the psychological intent and purpose of confession. My sense is that confession has to be interiorly motivated if it is to be personally meaningful. The institutional imposition of confession is ineffective and injurious precisely because the institutional intent and purpose has been (experienced) to dominate personal conscience.
The institutional (ideological) purposes that confession has been put to by imperial church/state are a whole matter different than personal psychological health. Imperial church/state used confession as a political device to discover heresies, sexual deviancy, and other, and to exact mortal punishment on people for their failure to recant; as in the cases of witch-hunts and the suppression of the Knights Templar. [See: Hugh Trevor-Roper, THE CRISIS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: Religion, the Reformation & Social Change, Chapter 3, “The European Witch-hunt Craze”, pp 83-177; and Malcolm Barber, “The Trial of the Templars”. Both books are published by The Liberty Fund, Inc., 8338 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300, Indianapolis, IN; also see Sylvester L. Steffen, “Religion & Civility” www.authorhouse.com, pp 162, 173-175]
Fear of the outcome of confession was real because confessed guilt could lead to burning at the stake under imperial auspices. The deviancy of sex in the minds of male clerics was probably as real if not more real than in the minds of ordinary folk. The misguided and hyped-focus of clerics on sex has transferred its paranoia on people by way of the confessional.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I gained a “sensible” attitude toward confession. For eleven years in the seminary I went to confession weekly. Since leaving the seminary in 1957 I have gone to confession less than 10 times. I’m not bragging about it, nor am I suggesting others do as I have done; to the contrary, I am sorry for being deprived of acquiring a sensible attitude toward confession in my tender years. I worry that the problem of institutional overreach has not been remedied, i.e., institutional control over personal conscience.
I wish I could remember
I wish I could remember better what I posted the first time as I try to re-construct a couple of thoughts here. I know I was interested in other people's opinions about the churchiness of the sacrament of reconciliation being largely responsible for some other churches' establishment, even as they list other reasons. Such a structured, often-forced participation in the past was a direct assault on the sacrament's obvious intimacy.
I also supported Sylvester's (and I think HopingvsHope also posted similarly) that the goodness of the sacrament has been harmed and limited by its churchiness and clericalism. Having alternative approaches would help engage people in figuring out for themselves how they wanted to participate in it.
Correction: Malcolm Barber's
Correction: Malcolm Barber's book, "The Trial of the Templars", 2003, is published by The Folio Society, London. Copyright Cambridge University Press 1978
"Its an operation of the
"Its an operation of the heart."
"Shortly after this, I went on a retreat to a monastery perched high on a mountain above the Pacific, the steep slant of the hillocky land ending in the great pastel muddle of sky and sea. Some days it was impossible to find the horizon, the air and water had conspired so successfully to confuse themselves. The days began before dawn with lauds in the chapel. Every day was silent except for our mouthing the psalmist's ancient passions, his cries for mercy, his rebukes and terrors, his lyric tendernesses. Such moodiness at the heart of Western religion!
"The monks, who dressed in casual clothes around the monastery
grounds, wore cream-colored robes in the chapel, which strangely
accentuated their individuality rather than obscured it. One day,
toward the end of my week on the mountain, I realized I had settled on a face I wished to make my confession to. The lean and abstract face of an elderly monk. I hadn't even realized I had been looking for a confessor, but there he was. He seemed startled when I asked him if he would hear my confession, but he agreed immediately.
"We met later that day in a room at the side of the chapel. He was
wearing blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. I had expected the
cream- colored robe. But as he sat down in a straight-back chair, he produced a hand-woven stole and draped it around his shoulders. And instantly became a priest, and the setting sacramental. I sat in a similar chair facing him. The room was large and airy. He smiled as I looked around. 'I suppose you're used to doing this in the box,' he said with a gentle irony that referred not to me, it seemed, but to the world we both had once inhabited and which, he intimated with his smile, I was braving again.
"I told him I didn't even know what confession was anymore. I knew
this admission wouldn't faze him. I produced the little Saint Luke's style grocery list I had prepared. We both smiled over it. 'Maybe you should just talk a little,' he said.
"But I didn't tell my tale. I told him what I wished for, the
qualities of heart I lacked and wished were mine. The sacrament, he said, as if to himself, though I was aware I had been listened to with absolute attention, is not really about sin. It is about
hardness of heart. It was a scriptural term, he reminded me-hardness of heart; it referred to the ball of pride and fear and misery that makes freedom so difficult. The sacrament, he said, is about freedom.
"I talked. He listened. There was absolutely no disapproval for
anything I said. He radiated a quiet, absorbed interest in my sins. Like a doctor looking at a symptom, trying to find cause and cure. He had a perfect pitch of warmth and coolness. We were meeting in a free middle, between friendship and being utter strangers. It was sacred ground, impersonal, sacramental. It was almost casual, like sitting in a boat on one of the lost inland Minnesota lakes with my father, waiting for a nibble. Together in the stillness of the natural world, knowing the truth was down there and might bite, might be mine. But there was nothing to do, just put yourself in the presence of it and see what happens.
"He suggested I read the whole Gospel of Luke for my penance. 'Take six months-don't rush.' Then he smiled, 'Seeing you've been away from the sacrament so long, you can afford a long penance.' He wasn't toying with me. He was playing with the form. An artist."
-- Patrica Hampl
Hampl is telling us about her experience at New Camaldoli Hermitage in the Big Sur, California (can be googled)
An excellent resource for
An excellent resource for both personal and congregational experience of genuine reconciliation practice is:
Good news: A congregational resource for reconciliation by Steven Charleston.
It is available:
http://www.eds.edu/sec.asp?cat=1&page=163
I have seen this used in multiple venues. It is transformational and easily available (also CHEAP: $5.00) Here's a brief description and order details:~
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“In a time when people were being called to take sides," said Bishop Charleston, “EDS decided to stand with Christ in the crossfire. Our mission is one of reconciliation and that is what the church needs now more than partisan politics.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Elaine, I looked over the
Elaine, I looked over the information you suggested. What a good idea for reconciling church communities! I puzzled over a comparable use in most catholic communities, and wonder if we have as much capacity as you all do to have that type of community engagement. Am curious what you think, without trying to drag you into the middle of something(!). Seems to me it would be more accepted in a smaller congregation with more to lose by dividing. I'm not sure that catholics are as concerned about staying together; at least on this site, many would be happier just to dispense with those they don't agree with and would see such reconciliation as a giving in to "untruth", as in "error has no rights" philosophy. Seems like one of our parishes would have to be pretty homogeneous to begin with, or would just have to carry on with those willing to engage. Is this similar to your experience? What think you?
Hey, Annie. Sorry for the
Hey, Annie. Sorry for the delay, this has been a week of *abundant life: starting off with a car accident, then: flooded basement, interstate parochial meetings; domestic & global mission work; my Beloved's ambulance rush to the hospital (everything is okay now, thanks be to God); and my daughter's visit from Australia in preparation for a family reunion at the end of this week.
So ... I think Steven's Reconciliation curriculum is designed precisely to address areas of contested 'truths'. I've seen it work in larger (120+ folks at a five-day "not-retreat") and smaller (12 folks) groups. "Untruth" seems not to be so much the problem as feelings among contestants (in the original sense of the term) of not 'being heard' and so the issue seems to come down to the nature of shared respect, once the bulwarks of scriptural literalism and loyalty issues are dealt with (a much easier task than I would have supposed.)
From what I have learned in my experience of Roman Catholic communities there is a very similar movement of the Spirit always at work when people are competently led by a spiritual leader (clergy or lay). The polity differences require a clear grant of "permission", I guess, by whatever parochial or diocesan authority oversees such community efforts but because the Reconciliation Process is processual rather than substantive in the desire to open a faithful discourse, I can't see where there would be any offense.
I don't think homogeneity is required, but, rather, that the presence of a highly vocal/mobilized "guardian" cohort bent on sabotage of any genuine spiritual inquiry be identified and encouraged to agree to cooperate with an open process. Therein may lie the rub.
As I say, my experience, with different types of congregations attempting to use Steven's reconciliation process is fairly broad in terms of size, ethnicity/race, class, and locale (city or rural). The real lynch-pin seems to be the pastor or lay leaders' commitment to genuine and INCLUSIVE dialogue. There can't be an ideological agenda - not even an ecclesial-ideology, at work on the part of the process leaders. One has to be willing to risk letting the Spirit work - always a dicey game. It takes someone with spiritual maturity and bed-rock faith to do a great job, but even the seeking & struggling are able to make a way forward, I think.
I'd love to know what would happen if you intend to use it; this can always be done extra-parochially, of course.
God's peace,
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
I struggle with confession.
I struggle with confession. I think that the best gift of confession is the opportunity for a Catholic to meet with a confessor to name and ask for forgiveness for sins and transgressions. However, confession often fails to supercede the laundry list format that turns it into a mere formality.
I would think that _any_ opportunity to think about sins or transgressions and to actively ask forgiveness should be promoted. I have often played with the idea of finding someone who would work with me on spiritual advisement. I will be frank. I would like that person to be a woman. By and far, most priests are ill-equipped to understand the issues of women. Creating enough of a relationship with a priest to have a meaningful confession experience doesn't seem that likely for me. So I think that I could have a more meaningful reconcilliation with a spiritual advisor of my choosing.
I also have to say that admitting wrong doing and asking forgiveness is not an easy thing for me but it is a skill I have developed. I believe that if you want to *get* mercy, you should also be willing to *give* mercy.
I read an article (NCR?)
I read an article (NCR?) that said that the group that has most dropped its participation in sacramental reconciliation and concerned the church the most are young women. Some interesting food for thought there, for sure, and sure wish I still had the article.
I think you point out a very real issue for women, MollyJ, which is determining (sometimes several times over in the development of one's life) how to put together a reconciliation process that works for us with the church and priesthood as it is. I think your answer to find a woman spiritual director is a great one, and certainly works for many women I know. You are also right about the problems of a priest being a confessor for a woman, particularly if a woman is more in-tune with her own process. In my own experience--and women I know find my experience a bit strange in that I've tried to figure out the male confessor so much by actually using them :-) -- men's difficulty with emotional processing and communication is simply a problem for many of us. If we are going to go that direction, we have to take over the sacrament and direct its use in ways we were probably not taught. Since I do that, I can attest that it can work, if a woman accepts that the best they may get is active listening, and some good basic direction that may improve over time with one priest who cares enough to carry the communication over to the next. They seem to actually understand the sacrament themselves as a moment of ritualized talk (which can work or not, and may feel like lists), and while I'd love to hear how some of them do it for themselves, I've gotten a pretty good idea by listening to their rather quick ways of dealing with issues.
But then again, the church--even if its rules are closely attended to--doesn't really ask much, so it's easy to take over. Believe me, I have, and priests are really okay with it.
I am very pleased that more women do spiritual direction, and think that a wonderful path for us on both sides of it. I think we can patch the two together or just proceed with spiritual direction. Or, in some cases, do without. Some people simply don't seem as connected with the presence of another in their spiritual work, although I think the helping professions and social science speaks for our need for interaction to change. For myself, talking to God can be too much like talking to myself, and the involvement of the other person creates a different experience where change is easier and seems more focused and real. That may be largely because the preparation itself is different because of the presence of someone else.
But I'm wondering if that is more a personality issue than otherwise? In any case, the church has obviously changed its favored tradition on sacramental reconciliation throughout history, and I think it only really is important to us as a sacrament if we figure out how to make it our own.
"But I'm wondering if that
"But I'm wondering if that is more a personality issue than otherwise?"
Oh, I think this is more than possible.
Annie, I think it is a positive that you have shaped the reconcilliation process to be useful, genuinely useful, to you. I think it is positive and adaptive. But is is sufficient for all time? How is it markedly different than a conversation with yourself? I know that it is--because there is another person present but perhaps you remember that bit of research in psychology, where people were allowed to talk to someone in an experimental setting and that person had been told that they could do active listening and say things like, "Hmmm" or "Tell me more" but they did no real therapy. Participants reported feeling "better" after the interaction. So while the research may point out the benefits of active listening, no one would call this a therapeutic interaction even though the participants felt "better".
How is going to confession under these circumstances different than taking a psych course in order to "figure yourself out"? Both strategies belie the importance of real, qualified helping figure.
And don't mistake me, I am not saying priests are not qualified to be spiritual helpers. I am saying that they lack an awareness of connecting spiritual helping to the unique needs of women.
Ultimately your approach gives the advantage that you are actively working on reconciliation and spiritual work and I am still here in the temporizing stage.
Hi MollyJ, decided to take a
Hi MollyJ, decided to take a little more time to think through my response, partly because I keep reading myself agreeing with what you say, but think you see it otherwise. So I'm guessing we might want to keep after this a little more? First, since you assess my own process as adaptive (which it has been), you seem to recognize that I'm not saying it is sufficient for all time. It is good for me now, but if I were to look ahead about five years, I think that I will probably really want to find a woman as a spiritual director again for awhile. I actually like going back-and-forth and sometimes without. My past efforts into female spiritual direction have not been totally successful, largely because there simply are not enough women doing spiritual direction for me to have the choice I need. Just a problem as women recover our own history in spiritual direction. We are on the cusp of that discovery and that's not necessarily an easy place to be.
You raise complicated issues, but first let me again say that I largely agree with you on the problems priests as men have in providing spiritual help for women. They tend not to quite get there, but often assume they do or don't know what is not happening from the vantage point of women. And, since they don't ask...and women have largely been removed from teaching in seminary formation programs...
On the other hand, once when gets to the point of a ritual of reconciliation, it may again not be as important what one's gender is. It may have more to do with the getting there. Which is to say, that a woman, in particular, might find value in the spiritual direction process with another woman, either proceeding a sacramental process or in place of it. Since the "rules" are really very light, even those pretty rule-focused can design what they like. I say that without a copy of whatever catechism in front of me :-), but haven't heard of the church actually trying to do more than to keep people using the sacrament.
Your issues regarding the difference of having another person there may also be pretty personal, but the science of the difference of interaction with another is different than the one bit of research you mention. I think part of the problem is that it is awfully easy to mix apples and oranges as we talk. You say that "no one" would call 'feeling better' as a result of being actively listened to a therapeutic interaction, but I can only be the one that would! The difficult with science in this area is that it is very complicated, and very dependent on the person, context and goals. If I've never in my life been really listened to and I find someone who can and does, you think that is not a significant vehicle of change for me? Ah, but it is. And the most recent research on therapeutic interventions, even going to ones that most people would call "therapeutic" (a challenging word, at best) is that the most important variable in the intervention may just be the relationship with the therapist, more than the specifics of the intervention (although there are obviously issues of consistency, relevancy, etc. involved).
So, if I bring that back to me, does it matter whether I talk to myself or talk to another? A psych course is a bare scratching of an important world of information; it is not even close to the type of interaction that brings change. If I want to be like someone else, I may just change to become like someone else, or seek their reinforcing approval for my changes. We are, in general, social beings, and even our opinions change as we hear other people's opinions. That's the point of having mentors to begin with, and I am strongly on the side of believing they can help us all our life in different ways. I've always loved the idea of the communion of saints for that reason among a few others.
But then again, I think we actually are agreeing on that to a large extent. I think that you really are stronger on the side of the a woman spiritual director, and I fully support that. Your last sentence reminded me of the advice (that I actually took) that a priest gave me when I was sounding like I was in a place at least somewhat like yours--thinking that there might be something there that I wanted, but very unsure/temporizing about whether to do anything about it or not. He said, pretty wisely in my case, that I should think of confession like SEX, and that it was better understood by DOING than by thinking. Pretty funny advice from a priest, I'd say, but I think it is very apt. If you step into any of these waters, you will begin to know for yourself where to step next, or for that matter, whether you want to jump back onto the bank. I'm not one for giving advice, but I do love being able to share that story with you. [If the priest who suggested that to me is reading this, please only say something off-line]! But I do thank him for some strange but wise direction. Do those thoughts make more sense to you than my previous?
Thank you for your
Thank you for your thoughtful reply; this is a great example of a response that takes me beyond where I started out and I am grateful for that.
The difference is grace, the
The difference is grace, the forgiveness of sins.
But Annie is right about women as spiritual directors for women (preferably religious, in my opinion), and confession does not have to be the (only) setting for spiritual growth.
While I understand your more
While I understand your more legalistic point on forgiveness, grace can come from many sources besides the sacramental ones. We agree that confession does not have to be the only setting for spiritual growth, but it is also not the only setting for grace. It's just wrapped in a more secure package in the sacraments, but for everyone not a more engaging one.
So all one needs to do is
So all one needs to do is ask God - why the need for an intermediary when the direct approach is available.
As I see it this is just one more argument raised in support of maintaining a clerical caste.
Christianity was supposed to be different to the 'heathen' cults/religions of old. In reality though it has mimiced many of them by borrowing their practices and rituals.
'What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak'. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)
Ninja
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Can only agree on the need
Can only agree on the need to make confession more relevant, if it isn't already been made so by the individual and the priest. I have to strain to understand that it isn't being used to help people deal with moral and ethical crises, however, already. It isn't? I use it to make myself transparent in some way that needs healing. Talk about related issues may certainly be a part of that either because of me or the priest. It seems to me that there is so much brokenness in our parish life alone that there is always something in need of healing--a hurt done by us or to us, needing forgiveness for the doing, or for the hanging on.
One way for people to change their way toward confession is to write their own prayer of contrition. Say things your own way to make the sacrament an experience of reconciliation and healing. If ever there were a sacrament to be "used" as the person needs, this is surely it. While there may be some priest out there who would try to stop someone from developing their own approach to the sacrament, that is the least likely scenario. Priests generally react positively to being able to engage with a person on a spiritual journey. So much the better if one can find a regular and compatible priest to work with, so the describing of the spiritual journey is not always as needed but common ground between them.
Use of the Sacrament of
Use of the Sacrament of Confession should definitely be encouraged. Its spirit of openness should be extended into all Outreach Activities in Parishes.
Once people avail themselves of the Sacrament, their lives will be enhanced. We need more examination of our lives and empathy towards others. Confession really helps! It's a great support to keeping fit spiritually.