"Family Confession"

A reader writes:

A friend of mine says she attended confession with her whole family.

I.e., they were all confessing together. I wonder if this is

advisable, but is it valid? Does the sacrament require privacy to be

valid?

This is gravely illicit but would be valid unless somethign else is affecting the situation. Privacy of confession is not needed for it to be valid, though it is needed for it to be licit, and this kind of situation completely flies in the face of the Church’s law on this point. Any priest who did this is gravely violating liturgical and canon law as well as engaging in a highly destructive practice whereby some family members might feel pressured to hold back things they don’t want other family members to know or, if people blurted these things out in front of others anyway, they might harm family relations.

Further, the seal of the confessional binds all of these people regarding what they heard other family members say. You can disclose your own sins out of the confessional if you want, but you can’t disclose anybody else’s.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

2 thoughts on “"Family Confession"”

  1. If a child went to private confession, would the child’s parent be sinning if he made the child tell the parent what the child had confessed? When I tell young people to go to confession, one reason for their reluctance is that their parents might get suspicious that they’re behaving badly.

  2. I imagine that this would have a VERY chilling effect on the family members in confession. More so for the parents than the kids! I am not ready to dash all the illusions my kids have about me just yet!

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