[fruitbat72]

Hello, non Catholic here with a genuine question

Is it usual that the priest receiving confession is aware of the identity of the person seeking absolution? Or do they pretend they don't know them?

[hayleymumof3]

Is it usual that the priest receiving confession is aware of the identity of the person seeking absolution? Or do they pretend they don't know them?

In congregations where the priest has been there a long time I am guessing they know who is confessing and just pretend not to know.

[BobTheBottersnik...]

They know, because more often than not, it's a member of their congregation. I imagine that for the first few weeks a new priest wouldn't know, but they'd soon realise.

[meggs1]

They don't always confess with the screen anyway.

At my friend's church they just sit in a little room with the priest.

[Saecularis Angel...]

It also depends where you are. A CBD church or a Cathedral, or somewhere that's a focus of pilgrimage, will often have random unknown people walking in asking for confession. Even if you just sit in a room together, there might be no exchange of names and you might never see them again. That's much less common, for example, in a little country town.

It's my observation that people who use confession regularly tend to develop a preference for a priest they find particularly helpful; it's more the one-off visitors or the people deliberately going where they're not known (which can be a way to deal with emotions of shame and guilt, if you know you never have to see this particular priest again), who tend to be unknown.

This post has been edited by Ange Vert: 16/11/2012, 02:40 PM

[Bacongirl]

It's been a long time since I went to confession. But we always had the option of the screen open or closed. Even when open, we sat side by side with the partition between, so even then, you didn't have to look the priest square in the face.

As a teen it was easy to omit things as I didn't have that face-to-face thing IYKWIM.

At my old church, the priest entered his part of the confessional, and the those waiting were scattered through the church. There was no 'queue' so the priest really wouldn't know who went in first or last or in the middle. With the partition closed, if you were not a regular member of that church or had regular conversations with the priest, I would think it would be hard for them to recognise you.

[Pooks*potters]

Another non Catholic here.

I don't get it.

I don't get why the priest is involved at all, or what he adds to it.

Can anyone explain that?

(Sorry to hijack thread OP but your question has me wondering!)

[Old Grey Mare]

Another non Catholic here.

I don't get it.

I don't get why the priest is involved at all, or what he adds to it.

Can anyone explain that?

(Sorry to hijack thread OP but your question has me wondering!)

I have wondered this as well. Why isn't it enough to confess your sins to God? From my observation and talking to Catholic friends it seems that God takes a back seat in the Catholic church somewhere behind Mary, the Pope and the priest. Does he really need all these "middle men"?

[BobTheBottersnik...]

The cynical response is so the church can continue to control the population via the mechanism of knowing everyone's business.

I'm not sure of what the theological background to it is.

[*Greenbag*]

In the traditional-style confessionals, where it's essentially two stalls with two separate doors to enter and just a little speaking hole with a curtain in between, the priest would only know if they recognise your voice, or see you waiting outside before hand and know who you are.

If you go to confession at a big city church (who are often the only ones that have regular confession times these days), you rarely know the priest, and he certainly doesn't know you. There are different priests on duty every week and there's such a huge turnover of people that you'd be lucky to come across the same one twice.

A country town, where the priest knows everyone in the congregation, the priest would probably recognise your voice, but in my experience they sort of respect your privacy by not indicating that they might recognise you.