ARTICLES

Who Goes to Confession?

San Franciscans Speak Out

By Joe Marti

During the Lenten season, priests around the Bay Area urged people to receive the sacrament of Confession.

Frances O. is the mother of a one-year-old named Charles and is pregnant with her second child. She said that the last time she went to confession was about ten years ago at St. Ignatius. "I don't attend confession anymore," she explained, "but I go to the 'communal penance' service once a year during Lent. I feel safer in a group." She has developed opinions about the sacrament that she feels are shared by those of her generation. One of them questions the very form of confession as understood by doctrine. She said, "I think it's a big political thing that was started in the early Catholic Church. I think the Church puts a big guilt trip on people, and it's not necessary."

At Saint Cecelia parish, Bobby M. has been going to confession weekly "for many years" and says that it helps him. He said, "Some people just go once a year because that's all the Church requires. But if you are a serious Catholic Christian and you want to be closer to Our Lord, you should go often. Saint Teresa of Avila would go every day, so...." He added, "Sometimes it's not just confessing your sins. Sometimes it's for help during a time of struggle. It's really helped my spiritual life."

Spencer was in the neighborhood of the cathedral and stopped by to say a quick prayer. He hasn't been to confession in twenty years. "I don't think most Catholics believe that the priesthood has the power or dispensation or whatever they used to have, only because the Church has changed so much, even in my time, and I'm sixty. I can remember when you had to wait to eat for twenty-four hours before you went to Communion, and when only the priest could hold the host. Today many priests have not acted appropriately or kept their vows, and a lot of people have just said, "I'm not going to do it." Nevertheless, he believes the Church thinks of it as an obligation, "just as priests keeping their vows are an obligation, but they don't." He added, "The Church has gone through major changes. Nuns don't wear the habit anymore, and they're left out to retire in apartment houses. And when bishops go out and blow 20 million bucks, like the one in Santa Rosa did...." he trailed off. "People in my generation were trained not to speak up, so when they don't like something, they just walk away," he said. But that sense of obligation, the younger generation doesn't have it, according to Spencer, and he thinks it is permissible to blame the Church in part for it. When he asked when he last heard a priest talk about confession, he said, "I haven't heard a priest speak about confession for a long, long, long time. It's not one of their major issues."

John H. said he went to confession, "last week at Saint Ignatius, which is generally, a lot more lax." He said, "They usually don't ask you to do an act of contrition. I would say that my home parish, Saint Dominic's, is more orthodox, more traditional." The last time he heard a priest speak about confession was during Lent at Saint Dominic's. He said, "The pastor there, Father Xavier, gave a couple of homilies over the course of Lent on confession." When asked why he goes at all, he said, "I don't do it 'cause I enjoy it, but I go to confession because I believe it's something you need to do." However, he said that most Catholics feel the same way, because, "Catholics these days are so badly catechized in the first place."

Geronimo Cuevas identified himself as a Venezuelan and pastor of Saint Mary's Church in Salinas. He was dressed in civilian clothes. He said he visits the sacrament about once a month. "I talk every week about it from the pulpit." he said, "and we have confessions every weekend from four to six and sometimes we go until eight or eight thirty at night." Offering a unique perspective as a priest and as a foreign national, Father Cuevas observed, "Not many people come to the sacrament of reconciliation, compared to the number of Catholics. I think people in the American society have washed away their feeling of sinfulness. That nothing is sinful now. People in this country tend to minimize their sense of sinfulness. Nothing is a sin."

Monica A., a parishioner at St. Cecilia, last went to confession "probably a year ago on Good Friday." When asked when she last heard about confession in the church, she said, "A couple Sundays ago, a priest had it in his homily. I'm not sure how long ago before that it was. I can't remember." She went on, "Honestly, I go because I feel I have to. If my husband goes, I'll go. I'm not at the point where it helps me yet, because I'm intimidated by it. It's something I want to do, but I'm not quite there yet." When asked where this unease with it came from, she answered, "I don't know, because I don't think it's a bad thing. But it's still hard for me." Her husband, Carl, had gone the Sunday before. He said, "I probably go once every two months. I'd go a lot more often if they offered it, and last Sunday was the first time on a Sunday in at least two months." He cites availability as one of the main obstacles to his going as little as he does. He said, "They didn't even have it on Mercy Sunday at Saint Ignatius a few weeks ago." When asked to recall the last time he heard a priest talk about it, he paused. "I'd really have to think about that. The last time I heard about confession wasn't from a priest. It was on a retreat at USF in 1996. I don't think I've heard a priest talk about confession since I left Chicago in 1994."

Paul K. lights up at the mention of confession. "I go about every week and a half." He said that the last time I heard a priest speak about confession was on Mercy Sunday, about what a gift from God penance and reconciliation is, and that we can begin anew. Confession is fundamental to your spiritual development because it forces you to face your faults dead in the face. "Spiritually it furthers and, in the case of myself, puts me back in communion with God." He added, "The exercise and the process makes me better. I think of all the regular sacraments, it's the one least used." He went on to tell a story about his formation in an all boys' Catholic high school. He said, "I had a teacher in a great Catholic high school, who just told us, "I don't believe in confession. I don't think you can tell a priest your sins and he can make it all better."

Gertrude H., a retired wife and mother of two grown sons, last went to confession about two months ago. "I go probably once a year," she said. "There was an Indian priest visiting who gave a very good sermon on confession. But it's very seldom that I hear about it." She goes, in part, because "to be a practicing Catholic I have to go once a year, but I would have to go more often if I committed a serious sin." She heard a priest speak about confession during Lent, but does not often hear her pastor emphasize the sacrament. She said, "I think when the Church changed that's when I started withdrawing because of a confusion over what was a sin and what wasn't. And when the confessor doesn't know, or gives you ambiguous answers to a sin you may have confessed, it's unclear, and even mortal sin was unclear."

Asked how she developed this feeling that priests were unequipped to deal with sin in modern times, she paused. She then said, "I think when it first hit me between the eyes that the priests were unclear was when I heard from the pulpit, during a Sunday Mass, 'Isn't it wonderful that we don't have to go to Mass anymore, and that we're here instead because we want to be here.' Also when a priest said from the pulpit, "Don't ask me to make up your mind about birth control, just use your conscience.' She cited this as deterioration in the trust felt between penitent and priest. "So I just decided to talk to God myself," she said, "I feel that most Catholics feel this way."

Her husband, Paul, said he does not remember the last time he went. He said, "During Lent I heard the priest remind people that they should go. But I don't think it's something you have to do, because you get general absolution at Mass. I mean, I haven't committed murder or anything. I think most Catholics feel the same way as I do." He summed up, "How can people be clear on sin and confession when in one parish the priest feels one way, and in another parish the priest feels differently? When can you get to confession when they only have it for forty-five minutes a week? How can they expect the parishioner to be clear? Half the time the priest is late or in a hurry. There's no time to meditate or contemplate. I think God must take that confusion into consideration when people die. With children you begin with simple stepping-stones, as far as what's right and wrong, etc. I think that people have to be taught like that again, with stepping stones, and I think it ought to start from Rome on down."

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