There
are three ways to confess, two of them approved by the Church.
•
The traditional way is to kneel down at a grate, where the priest cannot
see you, and only be heard. This
has the advantage of anonymity and is probably more hygienic than other
methods.
•
Since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council however, the practice of
face-to-face confession has been encouraged. While this procedure may have its advantages (if you can
think of any, let me know) it has the disadvantage of allowing you to see the
priest’s reactions. If you’re
anything like me, soon enough he will wince and squirm, or his lip curl up in
disgust, and this is so very amusing that you will be tempted to go making
stuff up just to see what kind of reaction you can get out of him, making what
should be a sacred encounter with the Divine into yet another occasion of
mischief.
•
A third method is simply to write your sins on a 3x5” card and mail this
to:
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193
Roma, Italy.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193
Roma, Italy.
(As
of 2014 correct postage would be $1.10.)
While not actually approved by the Church, what priest, upon receiving
this missive, would fail to give Absolution? I think the question answers itself and the $1.10 you spend
in postage is penance enough already.
Choosing a Confessor
The
best confessor of course is one who is deaf and will thus just nod his head and
give you absolution without a lot of prying questions or disparaging comments
about how “… no girl in her right mind would agree to a thing like that!”
A half-deaf confessor is not merely
half-as-good as this but is in fact a whole lot worse, as he will often repeat
what you have said, loudly, just to make sure he’s understood. (Who hasn’t heard Fr. Tramari ask
loudly, “What do you mean, ‘for-the-nation’?”)
This leaves two kinds of confessors
left, soft and hard.
The soft type come in two varieties,
the Liberal Relativist, who will assure you that what you’ve done isn’t really
a sin at all, and the Big Softie, who will thank you for coming to Confession
as if you are doing Jesus some kind of a favor just by being there. Avoid these types, as you will come
away feeling like you have washed your hands in mayonnaise.
By all means pick the hard
confessor, of the type to be found in more Traditional parishes. Even though he will tell you that your
sins are not only quite heinous, and that he finds them personally repugnant, but
he will give you an onerous penance (weeks of fasting, painful mortifications,
and lengthy pilgrimages to distant shrines are not uncommon), the advantage is
that you really do feel forgiven, and that’s what this is really about.
Examination of Conscience
Now,
if you just walk up to the confessional, your whole mind will just be a jumble
of transgressions, half-remembered nights of drunken excess, and questions
about that slip of paper in your pocket with nothing but a phone number and the
notation “Let’s do that again, big boy!”
No, you need to organize your thoughts so as to put your confession on a
systematic basis.
What
constitutes a sin is actually a complex business. Lately, a lot of “New Age” types have been pushing this
notion of “Doing unto others as you would have done to you,” but this is both
simplistic and misleading. After
all, I know that I wouldn’t want to be tied to a table and belt whipped, but
I’ll bet I couldn’t visit two or three taverns on Halsted Street before I found
someone who would pay me to do just that to him. So the Church, in Her infinite wisdom, has come up with a
few useful lists that cover most of the bases on sin, and you would do well to
review these before confessing.
§
Four Worst Things
There
are particular mortal sins that are so evil that they are said to be sins that
cry to heaven for vengeance: willful murder (Gn 4:10), oppression of the poor
(Ex 2:23), defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas 5:4), and the Sin of
Sodom (Gn 17:20-21). Let’s look at
these case by case.
• Willful
murder isn’t just killing; it refers to killing in an unjustified way. Naturally, life being a messy business
and circumstances being what they are, not all killings are unjustified. While it is self-evident that one might
kill in self-defense, or to protect ones family, it is also no sin for the
soldier to kill in the line of duty, nor for the workingman to exterminate his
class enemy.
• Oppression
of the Poor is quite possibly the most heinous of sins. In our corrupt age many loathsome
practices have become not only accepted but widespread, including (but not
limited to): letting out money at interest, speculating in commodities, land,
or currency, “white slavery,” market manipulation, expropriation of surplus
value by “investors,” and all the rest the Bible condemns!
• Defrauding
workers of their just wages doesn’t refer merely to some kind of out-and-out
trickery, but actually to the whole system of low minimum wages,
under-employment, union busting, and “off-shoring,” that drive down wages.
• What
is meant by “the Sin of Sodom” is rather opaque and has been debated for
centuries by theologians and scholars.
Opinions have varied from it being a rather amusing and wholesome form
of contragenic coition to it being a lack of hospitality. But really, are either of these are so
abhorrent as to cry to Heaven for vengeance? Perhaps the answer is to be found in the fate of Lot’s wife,
who was turned into a pillar of salt.
As Sodom was described as prosperous, and as the poor woman was turned
into salt, which has often been used as a form of money, we can apprehend that
this crime is probably that of speculating in currency.
§ Decalogue
A
favorite list of probable sins is the Ten Commandments. We are all familiar
with this enumeration and need not dwell on it here, except to point out that
frequent mass goers are usually given a 10% discount on this list. Ask your confessor for details.
§
Other Enumerations of Sin
Many people find it useful to
consult other lists of good or bad conduct. Pope Gregory’s list of Seven Deadly Sins, the Boy Scout Law,
the Art of Worldly Wisdom
by Baltasar Gracian, the Ten Point Program that Marx and Engels outlined in
their Manifesto, Ovid’s Ars Amorata,
and Satchel Paige’s six pieces of advice on How To Keep Young have all proved
to be useful reviews of conduct.
Give Your Confessor A Break
Remember,
he’s stuck in the box with no way out and he feels it’s his duty to give you
advice, so make it easy for him.
If you confess to just one thing, then he has to talk to you about that,
and he’s just as embarrassed talking to you about it as you were telling him
about it. So by all means, include
a few sins that are easy for him to talk about. Supposing, for instance, you’ve been regularly committing a
sin that involves a fellow you met on Halsted Street, every knot you learned as
a Boy Scout, and a whole lot of Jergen’s Lotion. WOW — Father Thelander is bilious just thinking about it,
and he certainly doesn’t want to ask a whole lot of questions about this
abomination, so if you mention something else in the same confession, he’s
going to talk about that instead.
Vanity is always a good thing to confess. Of course, you’re not as gorgeous as me, but that probably
doesn’t stop you from thinking you are, and you can confess that. I always do. Similarly, my son usually J-walks on the way to confession
so that he can confess that. Be
creative!
A Final Word
No
matter what you’ve done the Confessional is always open, to you and God’s mercy
endures forever. As our Holy
Father has recently reminded us, “Don’t be afraid of confession, it’s no worse
than a bad cold.” Remember the immortal words of Little Richard, “If God can
save a broken-down old homosexual like me, then he can save just about
anybody! Woo — Bless My Soul!”
