Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a traditional time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving for many Christians. Lent is also a time when the Catholic Church emphasizes the need for repentance, conversion and penance. A group of Catholic priests in the United States has chosen Lent as the time to seek expansion of the opportunities for confession and sacramental reconciliation.
Catholics of a certain age “went to Confession” on a regular basis, privately telling a priest the list of mortal and venial sins he or she had committed since the last confession. After making an Act of Contrition and a firm commitment to sin no more, the penitent received a penance – usually a set of prayers to be said – and finally, individual absolution.
Most Catholics today however have little or no such experience – and that is a reality that concerns the members of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests. Their concern first surfaced at the 2013 Assembly in Seattle, and now the AUSCP, with over a thousand members, hopes to convince the bishops of the United States to do what they can to expand possibilities for Catholics to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
What the priests are asking is defined in carefully chosen canonical terms, and requested within a well-reasoned theological framework. No special terminology is needed to describe the reality: 45 percent of U.S. Catholics never celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation; another 30 percent “go to Confession” less than once a year.
— Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, 2008.The priests have asked their bishops to seek full Catholic Church approval for the full restoration and implementation of the Rite of Penance that was approved following the Second Vatican Council.
• Rite 1 includes private confession and absolution.
• Rite 2 includes a common liturgical service followed by individual confession and absolution – a practice that is often truncated as large numbers of penitents meet a small number of priests with limited time available.
• Rite 3 envisions a communal celebration with communal absolution, with a requirement that a penitent follow up at a later time with a private confession if grave sins are involved.
The priests, who as a group have literally hundreds of thousands of hours of experience in the confessional, believe that Rite 1 private confession should be available every week. They believe that Rite 2 does not offer adequate pastoral care for penitents, but that Rite 3, with a communal liturgical service and communal absolution, would best allow the parish community to “commit anew to conversion, experience the merciful love of God, and work with the Lord in his ministry of reconciliation.”
— AUSCP Background DocumentTechnically, the AUSCP is asking the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to request an indult from the Holy See to allow celebration of the Rite 3 of Penance in parishes in the United States.
Celebrating the sacrament in this fashion, they believe, may actually bring more Catholics back to personal, private confessions – the practice that has been all but abandoned by 75 percent of Catholics in the United States. Rite 3 would “move hearts in the future toward the value of periodic personal confession with its availability of pastoral counseling and spiritual direction.”
A letter from the AUSCP, dated February 10, 2015, was sent to Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, president of the USCCB, to members of the conference’s Committee for Divine Worship, and to all bishop members of the conference.
The full text of the letter to Archbishop Kurtz, and to the U.S. bishops follows this release.
The AUSCP 14-page background document regarding full restoration and implementation of the Rite of Penance will be posted Wednesday, February 18, at http://www.uscatholicpriests.org/our-work/
Father Bernard “Bob” Bonnot, a priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, chairs the leadership team of the AUSCP and is available to speak for the association.
Priests ask bishops: Make Sacrament of Penance more accessible
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