We’ve talked about general experiences, we’ve talked about music, a bit about liturgy..now let’s talk about penance. I’m going to share some interesting thoughts from Sin in the Sixties by Maria C. Morrow, then relate a bit of my experiences of the era (spoiler alert: not much, to tell the truth), and then invite you to share your own experiences. Remember this is not intended to be a debate or discussion spot. I’d just like to hear what your experiences were, both before and after the Second Vatican Council, although since I’m sharing the insights from a particular book, you might feel moved to comment on that – so feel free - and again, from any perspective, of course.
This topic won't be complete without mentioning the experiment that took place in many dioceses in the 70s of delaying a child's first confession until a year or two after First Communion. I recall that my mother had to cajole our pastor into hearing my younger sister's first confession prior to her first communion. This would have been 1971. As a result some children never went at all. It eventually took a papal decree to put an end to the experiment.
My first confession was in about 1974. I stopped going for about 15 years when my sins started to get a bit "juicy". I'm 57 now. I still feel the need to confess some of my teenage sins, when the memories come to me. I just recently confessed stealing 8 cases of Heineken from a delivery truck, with 2 of my friends, when I was a kid. The priest was great. I said something like "Father, my friends and I did so many dumb, sinful, things and I just remembered this one I never confessed". He said "that happens to me all the time, lay it on me". He also talked about this confession as an encounter with Jesus. He was very talkative, and the penitents were stacking up outside the confessional.
I've had nothing but good experiences in confession, and try as I might, I only got my wife to go once as an adult. She brings her mother monthly and I try to encourage her gently about once a year.....we can't crack her!
I tell my friends and family that if they are frightened, and haven't been to the sacrament in a long time, to go to confession in NYC, to St Francis of Assisi church on 33rd st......right across from Penn Station. They've heard it all a thousand times. Good luck trying to shock those priests! I would put it in second place behind places like Fatima and Lourdes for the amount of confessions heard.
I feel like a lot of the emphasis on obedience might’ve been better served by a focus on humility. Penitential attitude flows from humility more than a more detached sense of obedience, not that they aren’t connected.
And, from the clerical perspective, greater humility might’ve saved us from the liturgical abuses and irreverent masses post-1969.
I converted to the Catholic Church in 2000. During the RCIA course prior to conversion, the very liberal priest (but good pastor) told our class in his talk about confession, to just "tell me what is on your mind." I did go to confession with him before confirmation, but never after that because I did not know how to tell him all the things that were on my mind. Not long after my conversion, I attended an adoration session at my home parish. The confessor was the parochial vicar. I intended to go to confession then, but changed my mind when he came out of the confessional, interrupted the adoration, and loudly exclaimed that he would not listen to any confession if the person wanting to confess did not have "a list." I had no idea what list he was talking about. It took a number of years of my own independent research to discover that I was supposed to be going to confession regularly, as well as how to do it the right way (number and kind).
My family became Catholic around 1980, so a touch late for your question, but still relevant I think:
1. In my Canadian diocese (and I believe most Canadian dioceses at that time, since everybody used the same CCCB catechism program, called "Come to the Father"), First Communion was routinely done a year before First Confession - because "little kids don't really sin," as I recall.
2. In that same Canadian diocese, virtually all the parishes at that time offered General Absolution services as a complete and satisfactory substitute for individual confession. Very observant Catholics in that diocese, e.g., a family friend who was a daily Mass-goer and father of four, boasted about not being to Confession for decades, because "we don't do that any more."
3. My Minnesotan husband (born 1973) did "First Confession" at his parochial school, and never learned until 20 years later that Confession was anything other than a once-in-a-lifetime event, like Confirmation.
I went to Confession for the first time when I was 6 or 7. I don't remember much about it, but I went to a 2-room gradeschool for grades 1-6, and when I was in 3rd grade the new priest came in to practice with the 2nd graders. He called on a girl who was too embarrassed to say any sins, so he told her to say she killed her grandmother with a butcher knife. Everyone in the room laughed, and whenever one of them couldn't think of something to say when they practiced, that's what they said. This was the 61-62 school year; I suspect you couldn't do that nowadays.
Once, maybe in 1963, our family didn't go to Confession for a couple months, and our new pastor whom we ended up having until a few months before we moved really yelled at me for it having been so long and made me promise never to go that long without going ever again. Which of course I broke when I dropped out of the Church from 1970-1980.
One Lent when my Mom was pregnant her doctor put her on a specific diet that wouldn't have been allowed under normal circumstances but she was given permission to obey her doctor.
When we didn't have to abstain from meat on Fridays any more, we stopped doing so. I don't think anybody paid any attention to the point that we were supposed to do something else instead.
I also remember at the parish we moved to between my 6th and 7th grades they had adoration every Sunday afternoon at 2. We went every week. I was sometimes allowed to be the organist even though I took my piano lessons from the lady across the street who charged 75€ as opposed to however much the sisters at the school charged. We played 3 songs, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, and often Come Holy Ghost although sometimes Praise the Holy Trinity. Once I hit high school I was much less involved there.
The reconciliation rooms were in full use by the time I was a boy, but I don't recall ever being asked to meditate on a scripture reading. Nor was "the satisfaction... mutually agreeable." I got sometimes quirky penances and sometimes Three Our Fathers penances, but never one in which I had any choice in the matter. Also "A girl who was negligent of household chores might be required to bake a cake for her mother" definitely would not have been a politically correct penance for very long after 1976, if even then.
I remember not only first confession but the main sin I confessed, which was a successful plot to re-obtain my own gift in a Christmas grab bag and a detailed subsequent lie to my mother to cover how this could have happened. (In my defense, this was a few years earlier, before I was at the age of reason, but it had called back to my mind by a video shown to the CCD class with the easily applicable name "Jimmy and the White Lie," which had already led me to confess this and a few other lies to my mother on my way home the same night it was screened.
This topic won't be complete without mentioning the experiment that took place in many dioceses in the 70s of delaying a child's first confession until a year or two after First Communion. I recall that my mother had to cajole our pastor into hearing my younger sister's first confession prior to her first communion. This would have been 1971. As a result some children never went at all. It eventually took a papal decree to put an end to the experiment.
Are you sure it ever ended? I thought it was still going strong in most places today. It surely lasted long beyond 1971.
They were definitely still doing it in the mid-80s in Ontario.
You were right. This Vatican decree was 100% real. And even was under Paul VI, not John Paul II. But I am doubtful if obedience to it was the norm.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_19770331_penance-communion_en.html#:~:text=First%20penance%2C%20first%20communion&text=Children%20must%20receive%20the%20sacrament,Worship%20and%20for%20the%20Clergy.
My first confession was in about 1974. I stopped going for about 15 years when my sins started to get a bit "juicy". I'm 57 now. I still feel the need to confess some of my teenage sins, when the memories come to me. I just recently confessed stealing 8 cases of Heineken from a delivery truck, with 2 of my friends, when I was a kid. The priest was great. I said something like "Father, my friends and I did so many dumb, sinful, things and I just remembered this one I never confessed". He said "that happens to me all the time, lay it on me". He also talked about this confession as an encounter with Jesus. He was very talkative, and the penitents were stacking up outside the confessional.
I've had nothing but good experiences in confession, and try as I might, I only got my wife to go once as an adult. She brings her mother monthly and I try to encourage her gently about once a year.....we can't crack her!
I tell my friends and family that if they are frightened, and haven't been to the sacrament in a long time, to go to confession in NYC, to St Francis of Assisi church on 33rd st......right across from Penn Station. They've heard it all a thousand times. Good luck trying to shock those priests! I would put it in second place behind places like Fatima and Lourdes for the amount of confessions heard.
Try getting her to start trying to get indulgences. One of the requirements for them is going to Confession.
I feel like a lot of the emphasis on obedience might’ve been better served by a focus on humility. Penitential attitude flows from humility more than a more detached sense of obedience, not that they aren’t connected.
And, from the clerical perspective, greater humility might’ve saved us from the liturgical abuses and irreverent masses post-1969.
I converted to the Catholic Church in 2000. During the RCIA course prior to conversion, the very liberal priest (but good pastor) told our class in his talk about confession, to just "tell me what is on your mind." I did go to confession with him before confirmation, but never after that because I did not know how to tell him all the things that were on my mind. Not long after my conversion, I attended an adoration session at my home parish. The confessor was the parochial vicar. I intended to go to confession then, but changed my mind when he came out of the confessional, interrupted the adoration, and loudly exclaimed that he would not listen to any confession if the person wanting to confess did not have "a list." I had no idea what list he was talking about. It took a number of years of my own independent research to discover that I was supposed to be going to confession regularly, as well as how to do it the right way (number and kind).
My family became Catholic around 1980, so a touch late for your question, but still relevant I think:
1. In my Canadian diocese (and I believe most Canadian dioceses at that time, since everybody used the same CCCB catechism program, called "Come to the Father"), First Communion was routinely done a year before First Confession - because "little kids don't really sin," as I recall.
2. In that same Canadian diocese, virtually all the parishes at that time offered General Absolution services as a complete and satisfactory substitute for individual confession. Very observant Catholics in that diocese, e.g., a family friend who was a daily Mass-goer and father of four, boasted about not being to Confession for decades, because "we don't do that any more."
3. My Minnesotan husband (born 1973) did "First Confession" at his parochial school, and never learned until 20 years later that Confession was anything other than a once-in-a-lifetime event, like Confirmation.
I went to Confession for the first time when I was 6 or 7. I don't remember much about it, but I went to a 2-room gradeschool for grades 1-6, and when I was in 3rd grade the new priest came in to practice with the 2nd graders. He called on a girl who was too embarrassed to say any sins, so he told her to say she killed her grandmother with a butcher knife. Everyone in the room laughed, and whenever one of them couldn't think of something to say when they practiced, that's what they said. This was the 61-62 school year; I suspect you couldn't do that nowadays.
Once, maybe in 1963, our family didn't go to Confession for a couple months, and our new pastor whom we ended up having until a few months before we moved really yelled at me for it having been so long and made me promise never to go that long without going ever again. Which of course I broke when I dropped out of the Church from 1970-1980.
One Lent when my Mom was pregnant her doctor put her on a specific diet that wouldn't have been allowed under normal circumstances but she was given permission to obey her doctor.
When we didn't have to abstain from meat on Fridays any more, we stopped doing so. I don't think anybody paid any attention to the point that we were supposed to do something else instead.
I also remember at the parish we moved to between my 6th and 7th grades they had adoration every Sunday afternoon at 2. We went every week. I was sometimes allowed to be the organist even though I took my piano lessons from the lady across the street who charged 75€ as opposed to however much the sisters at the school charged. We played 3 songs, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, and often Come Holy Ghost although sometimes Praise the Holy Trinity. Once I hit high school I was much less involved there.
I think maybe this was meant to be the link for the Times article?
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/11/archives/new-jersey-weekly-new-penitential-rite.html
The reconciliation rooms were in full use by the time I was a boy, but I don't recall ever being asked to meditate on a scripture reading. Nor was "the satisfaction... mutually agreeable." I got sometimes quirky penances and sometimes Three Our Fathers penances, but never one in which I had any choice in the matter. Also "A girl who was negligent of household chores might be required to bake a cake for her mother" definitely would not have been a politically correct penance for very long after 1976, if even then.
I remember not only first confession but the main sin I confessed, which was a successful plot to re-obtain my own gift in a Christmas grab bag and a detailed subsequent lie to my mother to cover how this could have happened. (In my defense, this was a few years earlier, before I was at the age of reason, but it had called back to my mind by a video shown to the CCD class with the easily applicable name "Jimmy and the White Lie," which had already led me to confess this and a few other lies to my mother on my way home the same night it was screened.