Nick Alexander has a new song out.
For those who may not be aware, Nick Alexander is a musician doing the Weird Al Yankovic schtick in a Catholic vein.
His latest song is "This Time Of Forty Days," based on the Police song "King of Pain."
It’s available for download on the Catholic Music Network and makes suitably lighthearted listening for Fat Tuesday (before we get all serious on Ash Wednesday).
A large sun temple of the Egyptian pharaohs has been dug up under an outdoor market in Cairo:
"The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital’s Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis — the center of pharaonic sun worship — was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.
"Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features ‘resemble those of Ramses II,’ said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities."
<tongue in cheek>
Don’t these archaeologists remember what is commonly believed to have happened to the raiders of King Tut’s tomb? Not to mention to the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
</tongue in cheek>
JIMMY ADDS: It’s always nice to hear from our old friend Zahi Hawass. Nice to know he’s keeping busy.
A reader writes:
Are the Old Testament Prophets considered saints? And, if so, why aren’t they spoken of with the title of St Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc. I thought they were raised from the netherworld by Christ after His crucifixion and brought into heaven.
Anyone who died in God’s friendship before the time of Christ is now glorified with Christ in heaven, so they are saints in that sense.
For some reason, however, the custom of referring to Old Testament figures as saints never developed in Christian circles. This is a matter of linguistics and devotion more than theology, though.
With a few exceptions, we also don’t know for a fact which Old Testament figures made it to heaven and which didn’t. That, however, wouldn’t have been the reason that the custom didn’t arise. Most of the saints who are in the Roman Martyrology got there because of popular acclaim, not because of a papal intervention. Since the Old Testament presents many of these people as if they were God’s friends (even if we don’t have knowledge of the very ends of their lives in omst cases), there was certainly as much evidence for regarding them as saints as many in the Christian age who were canonized by popular acclaim.
I suspect that part of the reason early Christians didn’t acclaim them in this way is that they weren’t viewed as examples for us as directly as people living in our own age. They seemed more distant from us in a certain way because of the age in which they lived.
It also may be partly because–as revered figures from the Old Testament–their salvation was never really questioned, and so there was no push to have the recognized as saints. The approval that the Old Testament seems to give them may have been considered approval enough, so there was no need to get them extra recognition.
(The latter would also apply to those in the New Testament, but they’re closer to us in time; as dwellers in our own age, they’re more direct examples for us to follow.)
This is all just speculation, though. I don’t think we can say with certainty what the reasons were that the custom of who get’s called a saint developed as it did.
After the recent post about time travel, some readers wondered about the morality of interacting with the past and whether we would be obliged to refrain from changing historical events or not. In other words, would we be bound by a "temporal prime directive" against interfering with history if we travelled into the past.
This is actually something I’ve thought about, so here are some reflections.
The fundamental moral axiom is "Do good and avoid evil." This axiom is binding on all people, all the time. It is part of human nature. If we were transported into the past it would be binding on us then. We would have to do our best to do good and avoid evil, just as we are bound to do it now.
The question is whether interfering with history is a good or an evil–and whether it is even possible.
As sci-fi writers, among others, have speculated, changing history may not be possible. It may be, for example, that if we end up in the past then this does not represent a change to history. We were always part of history, and so whatever actions we take in the past played their proper role in how history did unfold.
If this is the case then three things follow: (1) We can’t change history because our introduction into it was always there, and it will unfold exactly as it did in our timeline and (2) we therefore don’t have to worry about whether we’re changing history. We can just do our best to do good and avoid evil. Also (3) we can avoid wasting our time trying to prevent outcomes that we already know (e.g., we may as well not try to stop 9/11 from happening). The issue of a temporal prime directive thus fails to arise if this is how time travel works.
There is also another version of how history is unchangeable. It could be that we were NOT part of history the "first time" it unfolded, and our insertion into the past OF ITSELF represents a change. It would appear, if this is how things work, that arriving in the past of itself creates an alternate timeline–one that is different than the timeline in which we originated.
But if that’s the case then, no matter what we do in the alterate timeline, we aren’t really changing history–not OUR history. That’s back on the original timeline that we left. The new timeline that we’re living in is one that budded off of ours.
If that’s the case then we are under no obligation to protect our own history because we have no ability to affect that history. That’s a timeline we are no longer part of.
It might be possible (depending on how time travel works) to get back to that timeline, but that would mean leaving the alterate timeline (no matter what good or bad we’ve done in it) and getting back to our original reality, in which we never appeared in history. If this is the case then visiting the past is like visiting an alterate universe. No matter what we do there, we won’t have to live with the effects of it once we return to our own home timeline.
So while in the "past" (really an alterate past) we would have the liberty to do good and avoid evil to the best of our ability. Stop 9/11? Sure! It’ll help the folks out who live in that timeline, even if our 9/11 will still be there when we return to our own timeline.
On the other hand, it may not be possible to get back to our own timeline. If we jump forward into the future, we may be jumping into the future of the alterate timeline that was created by our insertion into the past. In that case, we’ll have to live with the effects of what we’ve done. That’s an added incentive to be careful about what we do, since we’re now personally invested in the future of this timeline, but it doesn’t affect the fundamental moral calculus of how we should behave in it. Even if we weren’t going to stay in this timeline, the Golden Rule would tell us "Don’t mess up someone else’s timeline if you wouldn’t want someone else to mess up yours."
Since, on this option, we’re not really changing our own timeline, the issue of a temporal prime directive does not arise–at least not directly.
Of course, we could get scrupulous about the effects out actions will have on the timeline. Perhaps all kinds of "Monkey’s Paw" situations will arise and by trying to fix problems, we’ll actually make them worse.
Could be.
But that’s something we have to live with all the time back home in our original reality. We don’t know what the ultimate effects of our actions are going to be. We just have to do our best, based on the knowledge we have at the moment, to do good and avoid evil. If we’re in an alterate timeline but have an idea where it’s going to go based on the way our timeline did then that’s a bit of extra knowledge for us, but we can’t start out by second-guessing ourselves to death, worrying excessively about whether we’re helping or harming. We have to just do the best we can with the info we’ve got.
(And if we don’t like the results, we can jump back into the "past" again and bud off a new timeline where we can try to do things better. This, however, isn’t really fixing the existing timeline; it’s just transferring us to a new timeline where we hopefully won’t make the same mistakes.)
At this point we don’t have any experience with changing the "past," so we don’t really know whether attempting to do so generally produes good or bad (or neutral) results. It could turn out that attempts to change major historical events invariably makes things worse, but at this point we don’t have evidence for that. If evidence started accumulating then instituting a temporal prime directive of some kind would make sense, but imposing one up front would not make sense.
The mere fact of us being in the past when we weren’t originally means that some changes are made to history, and once we’re there we can’t avoid affecting things–just breathing and taking up space does that. So we may as well not second guess our ability to help the new timeline that we’re in until we get solid evidence that such attempts are more harmful than helpful.
(NOTE: God could have a "Please don’t mess with history" rule, but since he didn’t put it in the deposit of faith in our timeline means that we would likely only figure it out by experience. However, the very fact that he lets us go into the "past" when we weren’t originally there is an indication that he doesn’t mind us working to improve alternate timelines.)
On both of the two theories I’ve just sketched out, changing history isn’t really possible: in the first case because we were always part of history and in the second case because we are in an alterate timeline and not our own.
But is there a third possibility?
Could we really go back into OUR history when we weren’t there originally and change things?
I don’t think so. If we weren’t in history originally and then we put ourselves there then it seems to me that it’s no longer OUR history. It’s a new history–an alterate timeline. That seems to be true by definition.
And, as always happen when you try thought experiments that involve breaking things that are true by definition, you get paradoxes.
Thus if you suppose that we can inject ourselves into a history that we weren’t originally part of, you get things like the Grandfather Paradox. Since I don’t think that physical paradoxes can exist in actuality, I don’t think that this kind of time travel is possible.
There are other ways conceptualizing all this. In fact, there are a mind-numbing number of other ways (see that Grandfather Paradox article for examples). But seems to me that in the end it boils down to the two kinds of considerations I’ve mentioned here: Either our actions in the past were always part of history or we aren’t really living in "our" history as soon as we’ve entered the past.
Either way (and in any other scenario one might want to propose), the fundamental moral axiom still applies to us: Do good and avoid evil. The knowledge we had of how "our" history unfolded simply gives us extra information as we attempt to do that.
Since I am notified of all new comments to my posts, whether or not they are old, I’ve been following a discussion currently raging on my original post at JimmyAkin.org, About A Blogger… The originator of the discussion was horrified over a question-and-answer I did sometime back on the Catholic Answers Forums and that was published in one of Catholic Answers’ newsletters.
"Recently I received a Catholic news flyer in the mail, in which Michelle Arnold answered someones question regarding forgiving others who do not repent first for their sins. Michelles answer was very startling to say the least, and for which her reponse was… we are not obligated to forgive others who do not ask for forgiveness (paraphrasing here).
"Her teaching on this matter is extremely in conflict with what Christ Himself taught us to do. Christ taught us through His example and words. Christ forgave all those who were crucifying Him on the cross, despite the fact that the perpetrators were not asking for forgiveness while torturing Christ on the Cross. In fact, Christ said ‘forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.’ Christ also instituted the Lord’s Prayer for us to pray, and in it, it clearly states that we must forgive others who tresspass against us, and does not state to wait for their repentence first!"
Ordinarily, my practice has been to avoid commenting on very old posts so that old discussions will not be perpetually rehashed. But since this discussion is still going strong in the combox, I finally decided to comment.
First, a link to the original Q&A from which the published Q&A was drawn:
My answer in the thread:
"[T]here is no requirement for a human being to forgive someone who is unrepentant. Indeed, if the person disagrees with you that he has even sinned then announcing your forgiveness may prove counter-productive since it is likely to cause annoyance and resentment. All that is required is that you continue to hope for that person’s ultimate salvation.
"That said, sometimes those who have been deeply wronged find it personally healing to try to forgive that wrong, even though the person who wronged them may not want their forgiveness. If a person who has been wronged wishes to try to forgive the evil committed against him, that can be meritorious and may make it easier to offer that forgiveness to the wrongdoer should that person ever request it."
If you have ever had someone with whom you have had a disagreement approach you and say "I just want you to know I forgive you," then you’ll understand what I meant when I said that offering forgiveness to someone who hasn’t asked for it and may not be repentant "is likely to cause annoyance and resentment." In order for your forgiveness to matter to someone, that person has to believe that he has sinned and needs your forgiveness. If he feels that he is perfectly justified in his actions, he is not going to be grateful for your forgiveness and your presumptuous offer of it can actually cause further damage to the relationship.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t internally try to forgive someone a wrong you believe that has been done to you, which is why I said that some people find it personally healing to try to forgive great wrongs done to them. It just means that it may be better not to announce your forgiveness to that person until it is requested. If nothing else, your preemptive offer of forgiveness may short-circuit any promptings that person may feel to examine his conscience (e.g., "I don’t need to seek forgiveness; I’ve already been forgiven and didn’t even need to repent.")
The reader’s reference to Christ’s own actions on the cross is also problematic. Christ wasn’t just forgiving his executioners, he primarily was petitioning the Father for the forgiveness of all of mankind collectively. That he said so aloud was necessary for the unique action he was accomplishing and should not be indiscriminately modeled by those whose individual circumstances differ radically in nature from the universal redemption of mankind accomplished by Christ.
As a side note, this is why the WWJD slogan ("What Would Jesus Do?") sometimes annoys me. There are things that Jesus did that cannot and should not be modeled by Christians because what he did is unique to his being God. For example, it would be wrong to overturn tables and chase out the bingo players at your local parish on the premise that Jesus cleansed the temple of the moneychangers. In that case, trying to apply a WWJD template to the problem would give you exactly the wrong action to take in addressing the question of Wednesday-night bingo at Our Lady of the Gambling Den Parish Community.
For more information on the subject of forgiveness, see the article by Jimmy that I linked in the online Q&A.
A reader writes:
My husband is in RCIA, and he thinks he has to be in the Confessional for 6 hours, relaying every horrid thing he ever did in his childhood, like the one time he killed a bird out of meanness, and all those times he didn’t keep holy the Sabbath growing up, etc.
Okay, just to make sure you know: Your husband doesn’t need to confess anything from before he was baptized. Baptism wipes out all sins prior to it, so if he wasn’t baptized until sometime after he was an infant then he doesn’t need to worry about that chunk of his life.
And he keeps asking me for an example of a venial sin. Believe it or not, I can’t think of an example.
Well, killing a bird out of meanness and not keeping the Sabbath holy as a non-Catholic strike me as two good examples.
Killing a human is a grave sin, but killing an animal is not–unless by killing it you somehow gravely damage a human being (e.g., by killing the horse of a man who needs the horse to earn his livelihood or killing a very expensive purebred pet or something).
Similarly, non-Catholics are not obliged by canon law to attend Mass or to refrain from servile labor on Sundays. Their obligations for Sunday observance are much more general and, not being bound by a specific standard, they generally do not sin mortally if they fail to go to church or otherwise observe Sundays. This is especially so for those raised in households where Sunday observance was very lax.
Second, our pastor and instructor, whom I love and respect, kind of laughed and said, "I’ve been a priest for 35 years and I haven’t yet met someone who’s broken all ten Commandments."
I was thinking to myself, "Oh, yes you have. You’ve met me."
Further, my husband has also broken all ten. All one has to do is read one of those Examination of Conscience books to figure out that most people have broken all ten.
True, but you have to realize that the things listed in an examination of conscience aren’t all mortal sins. For example: "Have I stolen the property of another?" is only mortal if you gravely harm the person from whom your steal. If you take a box of pens home from work then that’s going to be venial (unless for some really weird reason the existence of your place of employment hinges on its having that box of pens or something).
If you steal a thousand bucks from work, though, that’s going to be mortal since that thousand dollars represents a thousand dollars of damage that was done to some person or persons (like your fellow employees) who would otherwise have it (the loss of a thousand bucks being a serious matter for anyone who isn’t very wealthy).
My husband was raised in a single parent home where religion was not a priority. I asked him the other day, "When you (stole the candy, killed the bird, missed Church) did you know it was a sin?" He replied that he knew in his heart those things were bad, even if he didn’t know they were ‘sins’. So, does he have to confess them?
The fact that he couldn’t articulate the word "sin" in connection with them doesn’t of itself mean that he’s off the hook, because he still knew they were wrong and did them anyway. But the fact that he was raised in this kind of religiously lax family (in the case of missing church) and that he’s talking about very small things (stealing candy, killing a bird) mean that the grave matter needed for mortal sin is not there.
Am I going to be an old woman before my husband emerges from the Confessional?
That would depend on whether there is a mini-black hole or other extreme gravitational force in the confessional that could warp spacetime while your husband is making his confession.
I mean, we’re trying to have kids, for crying out loud.
Good luck with that! We need more kids around!
Can you, at your leisure, please explain ‘First Confession: What to Say, What not to Say"?
In a post I did earlier today (by a strange coincidence), I talked about how the process of making a confession generally works, and I’m sure that they’ll give your husband additional guidance in his RCIA course.
I would say this, though: It is clear that your husband is currently suffering from a case of confessional scrupulosity, by which I mean that he’s overestimating what sins he needs to confess. This is a normal thing in persons just coming into the Church, because he hasn’t yet had a chance to learn what does and does not need to be confessed. As he learns more, this tendency should go away.
A standard piece of advice for people who have scrupulosity is that they are to confess ONLY those sins which they are CERTAIN were mortal sins and to refrain from confessing everything else, simply saying "And for all my sins I am sorry."
I would therefore look through the Ten Commandments, with a knowledge of the different ways one can offend against them, and say, "Can I remember any cases where I KNOW that I GRAVELY offended against one of these DELIBERATELY and KNOWING that it was a grave violation at the time?"
Since he was raised in a religiously lax family, he likely did not know that many of the sins he may have committed in his life were grave violations, even if they were.
Making this kind of confession will suffice. As long as he doesn’t deliberately hold back something that he KNOWS to be a mortal sin then the absolution will be valid, and if he later comes to the conclusion that something he failed to mention was mortal then he can confess it at that time.
I’d also be patient with him. First confessions of adult converts can often take a while. I think that my first one lasted for something like 45 minutes (though that may be a bad memory and it may have been considerably less). It took so long not because I had that many mortal sins to confess, but because I was new to confession and was in the same situation as your husband.
I didn’t know what to confess and I wasn’t efficient at it, so I went into too much detail and confessed all kinds of things I didn’t know to be mortal, just to be sure. I didn’t know, for example, that I could just say "I have THIS to confess and THAT to confess" and move through things swiftly. Today the same initial confession would take me five minutes–ten tops, depending on any questions the priest wanted to ask me.
Also, if it is going to take a long time, you can simply stay home while your husband does it. He also might want to make a special appointment for it rather than making other people wait in line during a really long confession.
One thing that might help your husband get through it would be to write out a list of what he needs to confess. If he does this, he should do it BY HAND (NOT on a computer, where there could be an electronic record of it created accidentally or by spyware).
If he thinks he may be overcome by emotion, he can also hand the list to the priest and say "I confess THIS." If he does that, he should afterwards get the list back from the priest and DESTROY it (tearing it into little bits and flushing it down the nearest men’s room toilet would be a good way).
Measures such as these should allow him to get through the confession more quickly and get back to your marriage . . . already in progress.
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As someone who has surveyed the various Catholic singles sites and even posted a profile on one of them, I know the difficulty of finding marriageable like-minded Catholics. Although the Internet match services are somewhat distasteful for me — although the ticking of my biological clock overrode that personal distaste for a while — they have been very successful in matching people who would otherwise never have met. I know couples who have been the beneficiaries of the good these sites can accomplish and so I’m hardly one to seek to tear down good services.
That said, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when I surfed into TraditionalSingleCatholics.com, a site that seeks to match you with the RadTrad Catholic man or woman of your dreams:
"Begin meeting other Traditional Catholic singles from around the country today. With a full membership, you are able to email and chat with other members and post on our Message Boards; plus, you’ll be notified of new emails as you receive them, as well as upgraded services our website will offer in the coming months.
"The owners of this website are Traditional Catholics, and we, as well as many all over the world, continue to pray that the Traditional Latin Mass and Catholic Faith will be made available to all for the salvation of souls."
"Michelle," you might be murmuring, "Aren’t you being a bit harsh? Just because these proprietors like the Latin Mass and think the Catholic faith should be spread throughout the world hardly makes them RadTrads."
True. That’s why you need to know that the site links to the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, the sedevacantist Society of St. Pius V, and the sedevacantist Novus Ordo Watch. It hosts an article that seriously proposes that the canonization of John Paul II would be "a large slap in the face to all the saints who did defend the Catholic faith."
"Okay, okay," you’re saying, "The site’s loony. You’re not going to find the man of your dreams there. But why do you care if RadTrad Catholics do find the man or woman of their dreams at that site?"
Fair question.
I care because it saddens me that there are Catholics so isolated from the mainstream of life within the Church that they cannot find marriage partners on a mainstream Catholic singles site. And I care because the couples that form on that site will likely perpetuate that sense of isolationism into the next generation. A Catholic isolated from his own Church is like a blood cell isolated from the body through which it is supposed to flow. The more Catholics who are so isolated, now and in future generations, the more blood there is being drained from the mystical body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27).
A reader writes:
My friend is an awesome convert, and is in RCIA, but being denied the rites and Sacrament because he is divored without an annulment. He is not remarried or engaged or even in a relationship. He is eligible for RCIA, is he not? How can I prove this to the gal who runs the program? She denied him the rite of election today.
First, that’s horrible. Your friend may be devastated by this, and you should do all in your power to console him and to set this straight.
Assuming that the RCIA director is clear on the fact that your friend is not married or planning to marry in the near future (you should verify that she knows this), the most expedient way to do set things straight may be to talk to the pastor of the parish, who presumably is better informed on this point than the RCIA director.
The Church makes no requirement that people who are divorced get an annulment before they can join the Church. That is nowhere in canon law, and the burden of proof is on the lady to show where it is. (It ain’t there.)
The reason that people need annulments after divorce is to prove that they are free to remarry, not to prove that they can join the Church. As long as your friend is not remarried (or engaged or in a relationship) then he has no pressing need for an annulment.
It may be advisable for him to pursue one in case he wants to remarry in the future, but the fact is that annulments are NOT a prerequisite for joining the Church. All kinds of divorced people join the Church without annulments. You only need one if you want to remarry.
I mean: Suppose that there is a divorced person who’s marriage to his wife is valid, so that he is bound to her and not free to marry someone else. Okay, fine. He can’t marry anyone else. But that has NOTHING to do with whether he can join the Church.
God is not in the business of keeping people out of his Church just because they are divorced. There can be very good reasons why a civil divorce may be necessary–even when the marriage is valid–and the Church acknowledges this (cf. CCC 2383).
Now, if it becomes necessary to get into the canonical details of this case (which it shouldn’t be if you talk to the pastor), here is where to start:
Can. 843 §1. Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.
§2. Pastors of souls and other members of the Christian faithful, according to their respective ecclesiastical function, have the duty to take care that those who seek the sacraments are prepared to receive them by proper evangelization and catechetical instruction, attentive to the norms issued by competent authority.
The clauses in blue indicate that if your friend is to be denied the sacraments of initiation on the grounds that he lacks an annulment that they’re going to have to cough up a law that prohibits such persons from receiving them, and there ain’t on such law.
You’ll also note that section 2 of this canon mentions precisely NOTHING about needing an annulment.
Further,
Can. 18 Laws which
establish a penalty, restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an
exception from the law are subject to strict interpretation.
Here the blue text tells us that in order to bar your friend from exercising his right to freely embrace the Catholic faith, they’re going to have to come up with a law that unambiguously denies him the exercise of that right because of his lack of an annulment. The law has to be clearly do this in order to meet the strict interpretation test, so no trying to bend ambiguous clauses to come up with the solution the RCIA director wants.
Now let’s suppose that your friend is not baptized. What are the requirements of baptism for adults?
Can. 864 Every person not yet baptized and only such a person is capable of baptism.
Can. 865 §1. For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins.
Ain’t nothing in there about an annulment if you’re divorced and not remarried.
Okay, so suppose your friend is already baptized and needs to be confirmed? What are the requirements for that?
Can. 889 §1. Every baptized person not yet confirmed and only such a person is capable of receiving confirmation.
§2. To receive confirmation licitly outside the danger of death requires that a person who has the use of reason be suitably instructed, properly disposed, and able to renew the baptismal promises.
Again: Nothing about nedding an annulment if you’re divorced and not remarried.
The burden is therefore entirely on the RCIA director to cough up a law that says people are to be barred from being initiated into the Church for this reason–and it has to be a clear law whose requirements stand up to strict interpretation.
Rather than hash all that out with her, though, the simplest thing is likely to be to talk to the pastor.
Please reassure your friend–who may well be devastated by this turn of events–that the Church cares for him and wants to facilitate his joining it and that the woman who denied him rite of election on these grounds is an idiot.
She is, however, an idiot who is trying to do what is right as she understands it, and that’s a good thing, so he should try to understand that as he prays for her to get smartened up.
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NEW AND IMPROVED! Now with fewer typos!
A writer writes:
I’m a writer, working on something that incorporates a back and forth between a priest and a congregant in a confession booth. I’m not Catholic, and when I asked a Catholic friend for some help, he was sad to say he couldn’t remember the last time he went to confession. He did, however, give me your name as someone who might be able to shed a little light on the situation. You don’t know me from Adam,
That’s okay. I don’t know most folks from Adam. There are six billion of us, after all.
and I’m sure you’re a busy guy, but if you had a couple of moments to field a couple of questions, it would be most appreciated.
Sure, no prob.
The info I’m looking for is pretty basic. The character in the thing I’m writing hasn’t been to confession since he was a little boy. So he’s pretty rusty when he enters the booth.
Okay, first a bit of general info: They aren’t called "booths." They look like that–or used to, at any rate–but the term you’ll want to use is "confessional." Also, these days they don’t look like booths in most churches. They’re like little rooms, and they’re usually designed in such a way that you can either sit opposite the priest on one side of a screened partition or so that you can go around the other side and make your confession face-to-face if you want.
If your story is set in the past (say, pre-1970) or if you just want a more traditional feel, you can still use the booth set-up. A few parishes still have those.
As a bit of research for your story, I’d suggest visiting a Catholic church and looking at the confessionals. It’ll help give you a better idea how to describe them in the story. Notice the colors and textures and smells (though all of these will, of course, vary from parish to parish). If you need to know the names of things in the room–like the kneeler that may very well be present in front of the screen–ask someone from the church office to explain them.
BTW, try to pay this visit when confessions are not being heard. It’ll inconvenience folksand confuse the priest if you’re there poking in the confessional around while people are waiting in line for confession.
When someone enters a confession booth, who speaks first? And what’s said?
Typically the penitent will begin by making the sign of the cross (i.e., crossing himself) and saying "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." If the penitent stops at "and of the Holy Spirit" then the priest may say the "Amen."
If the penitent doesn’t say the Trinitarian formula, the priest will probably do so as a way of prompting the penitent to start. If the penitent still doesn’t start, the priest may say in a friendly, inviting manner, "Go ahead" or simliar words.
According to the rite (as found in a book called The Rites, volume 1, which goes into all this in great detail), the priest then invites the penitent to trust in God, using one of a number of different invitations.
In practice, the priest doesn’t make this invitation if, as usually happens (so far as I know), the penitent launches into his confession after the sign of the cross is made.
The TV version has the congregant starting first, saying, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." But if the congregant wasn’t sure how things went, might the priest start?
The classic way of beginning is by the penitent saying "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been X amount of time since my last confession." If the penitent doesn’t know how long it’s been, he may simply say "It’s been a long time since my last confession." The priest might ask how long, and the answer "Years" would be acceptable.
Actually–and most folks don’t know this–the mentioning of how long it’s been is not mandatory. The rite only calls for the priest to ask for this if he doesn’t know the penitent.
Is there ever any discussion re: what types of sins might be discussed? For example, if someone hadn’t been to confession in a long time, might the priest suggest he start with sins of the heart, sins of the flesh, sins of the mind, etc.?
Yes, this kind of thing will happen. If the penitent hasn’t made an examination of conscience before going in to confess, the priest will help him do so in the confessional (assuming that there’s time). The typical way this would happen would be for the priest to walk the penitent through the Ten Commandments, asking if he can remember any offenses against the individual commandments. (Be sure to use the Catholic numbering of the Ten Commandments if you go this route. SEE HERE AND SCROLL DOWN.)
The priest may, though, simply ask the penitent what sins are on his mind, and afterwards he may ask if there are any other sins that he is aware of that he needs to confess. (You only need to confess mortal or major sins; not venial or light ones.) The priest may also give the penitent counselling advice, particularly about how to avoid sin in the future.
After the penitent is finished confessing the priest will assign him a penance (typically some prayers, such as an Our Father and a Hail Mary or a decade of the Rosary or something, or he may assign him to read the Scripture readings for that day).
Then the priest invites the penitent to say an act of contrition, in his own words or using a set formula. If the penitent isn’t sure what to do the priest may lead him through a simple act of contrition like:
Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Then the priest extends his hands or his right hand and says the words of absolution:
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
As he says the Trinitarian formula he makes the sign of the cross with his hand, and when he is done the penitent says "Amen."
Then the priest says something to dismiss the penitent, such as "The Lord has freed you from your sins. Go in peace."
There are a lot of variations on how this all happens. You might want to check out The Rites volume 1 (a local parish will have it) to see some of them. One thing that is not supposed to vary, though, are the words of absolution as I gave them above. The priest has a lot of flexibility elsewhere, but he’s supposed to say the words of absolution verbatim. (Regrettably, not all priests do.)
One thing I’d recommend is that after you write this scene you show it to an actual priest and ask him if what you’ve written rings true. If he spots any major problems, you’ll be able to fix them before turning in your story to–well, wherever it is you’re planning on submitting it.
Good luck!
Over at the InsightScoop, Carl Olson has just outed himself regarding the fact that he watches TV, including which particular shows he watches.
He did so because Mark Brumley dared him.
Then Mark e-mailed me and dared (well, suggested) me to do the same.
Now they have a blogstorm going of bloggers and other Catholic notables outing themselves as TV watchers and naming their favorite shows.
Now, per Mark’s daresuggestion, here is my own:
Since I never use my blog to talk about anything other than apologetics, it may come as a shock to readers that I, too, watch television.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I’m a bit out of the loop when it comes to some of the shows that they’re talking about over at InsightScoop. I mean, I’ve heard of them, but I can’t actually tune in to them due to the fact that I’m out square dancing much of the time–at least when the shows are on.
As a result, there is really only one current show that I’m guaranteed to tune in for every week, other shows that I’ll watch if I’m still awake, and other shows that I plan to watch when they’re released on DVD (allowing me to skip the annoying and offensive commercials, as well as the annoying and offensive waits until next week’s show).
So here’s my list, divided by subcategory:
WHAT I ACTUALLY TUNE IN FOR
WHAT I’LL WATCH IF I’M STILL AWAKE
SHOWS I’LL WATCH ON DVD ASAP AFTER THEY’RE RELEASED
SHOWS I’LL GET AROUND TO WATCHING ON DVD
SHOWS I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY SEEN BUT MAY WATCH ON DVD
SHOWS I WON’T WATCH ON TV OR ON DVD
So how about you? What’s your list?