I Confess That I Don´t Like to Confess

No I´m not giving Confession up or trying to persuade people not to go to. However, I´m sure I am not the only one who does not like to sit or kneel in front of a priest and tell him my sins.

After all we know we are sinners. We state this fact openly right at the beginning of mass when we say, “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned through my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do…”.

As we have admitted in public that we are sinners is it worth saying anything else? Do we really need to go to a priest and confess these sins? Can we not confess directly to God and ask him to forgive us? According to Church doctrine we can. However, we cannot be sure that God will forgive us in the same way that a priest can absolve us on the spot.

The authority for this is found in John 20:23 when Jesus tells the disciples, "If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."  As the successors of the disciples our priests can do likewise.

Having admitted that we need the priest as a “middle man” we find ourselves confessing to a human being like ourselves and not to God on high. This priest is often a stranger and may not be the choice you would make if you could pick your own confessor. Personally I find it difficult to confess to a priest who is about 40 years younger than me and looks as if he has just graduated from the seminary.

Another point is anonymity. Before I came to Brazil I had always made my Confession in a confessional box where the priest´s face was partly hidden by a screen and he sat in profile. This meant that he could not recognize you - in theory anyway. However, in Brazil I found myself more often than not sitting at a table facing the priest as if I was being interviewed for a job. Even in churches with traditional confessional boxes the screen had often been removed.

As he is human like us, the priest himself is a sinner. We know we will never have a confessor who has not sinned but does it not detract a little to imagine that the confessor might be an even greater sinner than the penitent? After all not every priest is a saint. Also, who has not been embarrassed or felt ill at ease confessing? This could be because you did not want to admit to a certain sin or did not feel the priest would understand your problem. So you don´t confess that particular sin or downgrade it or cover it up in a way you would not if you were confessing directly to God. Priests know this. I suspect they are like doctors who know when their patients are lying to them, pretending to have taken their medicine when they did not or underestimating the amount they ate or drank.

On the other hand if we confess directly to God we can say anything we want and know that no one will hear of our shortcomings. The downside is that we will never hear God say the words "I absolve you from your sins…" as a priest does and that nagging doubt that you have not been absolved will remain. Having to confess to a fellow human being who is also a sinner means humbling yourself and accepting his authority. There is also no certainty that the priest will absolve you. Don´t forget a priest has the power to withhold absolution if he feels you are not genuinely repentant.

Despite all this I still have doubts about Confession and would like to raise a couple of point in closing. Why are we obliged to go at least twice a year? Why not once a month? What´s the point of building up half a year´s supply of sins and dumping them on the priest´s lap in one massive pile?  Obviously there are practical reasons why people would not be able to go once a month but there are practical reasons why people cannot get to mass every Sunday yet it is still a mortal sin if someone misses mass deliberately without good cause.

Another doubt is over the penance the priest gives. In my case this has always involved saying prayers. I have never been told to do anything practical like apologize to someone I have offended, make a donation to a charity or do voluntary work on a project to build a house for homeless people, for example.

In general my sins have been venial but what penance would a priest give someone who had confessed to really serious sins such as murder? The priest is bound by an oath of silence and cannot contact the police. He could try and persuade the murderer to give himself up and face justice but if the murderer refuses to do so what kind of penance can a priest give? Tell him to say a decade of the Rosary? Going to the other extreme what penance can a priest give  a child of seven or eight? In fact why do young children even go to Confession? I remember inventing “sins”. It was as though I was being made to feel guilty for something I had not done. I feel sorry for the priests who have to listen to dozens of children “confessing” in this way.

Another example is women. Do women have difficulty discussing certain subjects with priests? I don´t know as I have never asked anyone, man or woman, about their confession but I imagine there are some aspects of their private lives that women would not want to talk to a male priests about, particularly a young one. I might be wrong here because in general I have noticed women spend longer in the confessional box than men.

One final point that might explain my ambivalence about Confession is the amount of time the priest has available for each penitent. Many churches have a notice board listing all the preparations you should make before confessing yet most of us know that the priest has no time to grant you this luxury especially before Easter and Christmas when the number of penitents increases enormously.

Like doctors, priests face a torrent of “patients” and rarely have time for an in-depth diagnosis. I am always amused when I see a film or read a novel in which a penitent and priest indulge in a long discussion on the meaning of life, death, sin etc. as I know that this does not happen in real life. For example, when I made my first Confession after returning to the Church following a long absence the priest did not bat an eyelid and gave me absolution after five minutes with a penance that certainly did not compensate for my ingratitude to Mother Church over the previous four decades.

Catholicism is not the only religion that includes Confession but as this sacrament is a pillar of our faith I feel it could be strengthened. Some changes should be introduced such as raising the age at which a child confesses, making penance more practical, even severe, and ensuring that priests and parishioners have more time together.

© John Brander Fitzpatrick 2026