A Comeback for Confession

Time ^ | September 27, 2007 | TIM PADGETT

[NYer]

One of the first things Roman Catholics do when they enter the confessional is utter how long it has been since their last confession. But Franca Gargiulo can't remember the last time. Gargiulo is a spiritually thoughtful woman who went to Catholic school as a girl and at 44 still attends Mass at St. Dominic Catholic Church in San Francisco. Confession--telling your sins to a priest and receiving absolution--is one of her faith's seven sacraments, but for Gargiulo it now seems as anachronistic as prayer veils and meatless Fridays. "It lost its efficacy for me," says Gargiulo. "It was too much a perfunctory exercise about church rules instead of Christ's teachings."

Increasingly, it seems the only thing U.S. Catholics confess these days is that they rarely if ever confess. In a 2005 survey by the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 42% said they never go to confession. Only 14% said they go once a year, and just 2% said they go regularly. The fading away of one of Catholicism's best-known traditions has finally gotten alarming enough that bishops have begun turning to modern marketing tools to reverse it. "Confession isn't about rationalizing or explaining away the wrongs we do," says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who has used radio commercials and billboard ads to promote the sacrament in his archdiocese. "It's about having the courage to admit them and experience the healing forgiveness that's waiting."

Any revival effort has a long way to go. Confession has been in steady decline for decades. Reasons range from long-standing doubts about church teachings to the current obsession with public mea culpas that have largely supplanted the confessional booth.

[Continental Soldier]

No, not a joke, and not intended to be disrespectful in any way. Recently, I attended a Catholic mass and was surprised at the large number of parishoners who received communion, virtually everyone in the church. Should I believe that they all went to confesssion the day/night before? If so, why the talk about the vanishing confession? Surely, the churches must be filled with confessors and the story false. Yes? No?

[the invisib1e hand]

Should I believe that they all went to confesssion the day/night before? If so, why the talk about the vanishing confession? Surely, the churches must be filled with confessors and the story false. Yes? No?

1. believe what you wish. 2.by "all the talk," do you mean the Time story? What authority have they to know what's vanishing and what isn't, what's "coming back" and what isn't, with regard to the Eternal Church?

I've never found a confessional empty during posted hours, and some have been known to make a confession any time by asking a priest, myself included.

[the invisib1e hand]

I always lied in Confession. As kids we’d make up trivial stuff and hold back on “impure thoughts”, etc. The goal was to avoid a lengthy penance, which I ignored anyway.

this appears to be an attempt at making your own "comeback."