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To: AnAmericanMother

Good points. Our EF generally gets a late start because virtually everyone, to a person, lines up for Confession beforehand.


35 posted on 02/25/2010 6:57:22 PM PST by steve86 (Acerbic by nature, not nurture)
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To: steve86
We have Saturday afternoon Confession before the 5:30 Mass. They allow a good hour and a half, and sometimes (despite our priests regularly preaching on Confession) the priest is just sitting like the Maytag man. I have been some Saturdays when there were 30+ people waiting, other times I was the only person in the place. It seems to be completely unpredictable.

I asked our rector about adding another time, maybe a weekday evening, and he said that he and the other priests have way too much to do to just sit . . .

Monsignor does insist that ALL the priests and deacons be present in the narthex before and after ALL services, and unless they are out of town, there they all are. So you can always corner a priest before Mass and ask if he can hear your Confession. My daughter tends to blow in from college late on Saturday night, and the priests are happy to hear her Confession if she shows up a little early for Mass. (She hates going at college because the local Jesuit parish is so weird. If she can't get the 90-year-old old-fashioned Jesuit, she feels like she hasn't really been to Confession . . . .)

The numbers do tend to go up in Lent. And the Penance services in Advent and Lent (with a short service and homily beforehand and then individual confessions to a dozen or so priests gathered for the occasion) are always packed to the rafters.

41 posted on 02/25/2010 8:06:50 PM PST by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of ye Chasse, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment))
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