EXCERPT: Why has confession collapsed? Some blame the new format. Some blame Vatican II’s less strict style of Catholicism. Some blame secular culture’s guilt-free, sin-blind ethos.
I suspect all these things are factors, but they overlook another key factor: the self-destructive consequences of the “golden age” of Confession.
The problem was rooted in the sheer volume of confessions. Even with abundant numbers of priests, the typical large parish could only manage so many weekly confessions by keeping each confession short. But since priests needed to impose penance before each absolution, They required some way of rapidly determining a “fair” penance even for the most complicated confession. This forced clergy to develop a short-cut method for matching the “punishment” (penance) to the “crime” (sins).
Seminaries responded by training clergy to rapidly rank each sin. Thus moral theology boiled down to classifying hundreds of immoral acts into “venial” and “mortal” sins, along with the rationale for each category. Little attention was paid to any in-depth study of good and evil, grace and freedom, conscience and responsibility.
Meanwhile penitents were trained to prepare for confession by “examining your conscience” using a similar “shopping list” of sins from which to select personal failings – again, with little reflection on the shape of one’s whole moral life or the course of one’s moral development.
The concrete results: penitent and confessor met in the box armed with corresponding mental checklists. As the penitent listed items they confessed, the confessor silently ticked off “matching” penances (usually a certain number of “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys”) to ensure that the punishment would fit the crime.
In my experience, this whole process – driven by efficiency and leading to rote ritual acts – amounted to nothing less than the reduction of sin, guilt, and responsibility to mere trivial matters. The most appalling sins got routinely dismissed. This trivialization caused a general dulling of the moral sensibility of laity and clergy, especially regarding behaviors that harmed other individuals (e.g. betrayals of trust) or society itself (e.g. racism, ethnic prejudice, or the glorification of violence).
It is no accident that this trivialization coincided with an era of widespread priestly sex abuse. That scandal’s history shows many priest abusers confessed to bishops, performed some “penance” (ranging from suspension to confinement in religious houses to some period of distant exile) and then were routinely returned to their priestly duties – recycled into new parishes to abuse new victims.
Bishops apparently thought that a good act of contrition and a suitable penance settled the matter. In short, they had so trivialized the moral life that they became blind to the real nature of sin: corrosion of the abuser’s character; long-term effects on victims and the consequent need to make amends, impact on millions of Catholics; damage to the credibility and authority of the institutional church; offense to God.
This attitude has not yet disappeared. Benedict XVI’s recent apology to the Irish people included just such a prescription for abuser priests:
I urge you to examine your conscience, take responsibility for the sins you have committed, and humbly express your sorrow. Sincere repentance opens the door to God’s forgiveness and the grace of true amendment. By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions.
Because the “golden age” of confession trivialized morality, routine confession ultimately became irrelevant to people’s real lives.
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