Faithful Become Slow to Confess

The News-Press
March 17, 2012

http://www.news-press.com/article/20120317/LIFESTYLES/303170011/1133/GREEN/Faithful-become-slow-confess?odyssey=nav|head

Sin just isn’t the same anymore for many Catholics. The threat of damnation doesn’t seem to pack the same punch it used to.

The Catholic faithful have been deserting the confessional in droves. The most recent statistics show that, during the past few decades, the practice of confessing your sins to a priest has plunged to the point where 75 percent of Catholics say they never go to confession, or do so fewer than once a year.

The Diocese of Venice is pushing to remedy that. It has launched the “Light is On” campaign to bring members back to the confession booth during Lent, the 40 days of spiritual reflection and repentance before the celebration of the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday.

The campaign offers confessions from 5 to 7 p.m. Fridays and 9 to 11 a.m. Saturdays at all of the 60-plus parishes in the diocese. The area covers about 250,000 Catholics in Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, Glades, Manatee, Sarasota, DeSoto and Hardee counties. The campaign also features TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, videos and information on the diocese website explaining the nature and benefits of confession.

The majority of Catholics who bypass confession includes Colin Venuti, 80, of Cape Coral, a retired policeman who says he attends Sunday Mass 99 percent of the time and always takes Communion.

But he never goes to confession.

“The pope can tell me to go to confession and I’m not going,” Venuti said. “I don’t believe in that. I don’t need a go-between from me and God. I don’t think I’m a real sinner. I used to be. But I owe God a lot.”

Edward Kisser, 81, of North Fort Myers, said he hasn’t gone to confession since he got out of the military service in 1955. He didn’t like the change from the confessional to face-to-face confession.

“You no longer go in and go on the kneeler,” he said. “Now you face the priest and tell him directly what you’ve done wrong.

“I feel that God is the ultimate forgiver, so I pray to him for forgiveness of my sins.”

The reasons

There are other reasons Catholics discount the need for confession other than the belief God doesn’t need a middleman, experts say.

People don’t have the time.

They misunderstand the concept or purpose of the sacrament.

Few times are available to go to confession because of growing disinterest and lack of priests.

Their idea of what sin is and whether they are sinful has changed.

In the “Light Is On” campaign TV commercial promoted by the diocese, a young businessman talks into the camera: “I noticed a difference at work, at home – my whole life changed.”

A young, dark-haired woman says: “I felt the pain start to go away.”

The diocese launched the campaign after seeing its success in other dioceses throughout the country, said spokesman Billy Atwell. The diocese doesn’t have any local statistics on the decline of confession, but “anecdotally, it is known that less Catholics are going to confession than in previous generations,” Atwell said in emailed responses. “In speaking with priests and the laity, that seems to be turning around, however.”

The sacrament is about reconciling with God, Atwell wrote.

“With so much hurt and pain in the world, and with modern struggles leaving many looking for relief, many Catholics are taking advantage of the healing component of confession,” he wrote.

Mass attendees

The statistic of 75 percent of Catholics bypassing confession comes from a study called “Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among U.S. Catholics,” published in 2008 by the nonprofit Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, associated with Georgetown University. The section on confession addresses differences by region, generation, education and more.

The report shows a connection between those who regularly attend Mass with those who go to confession, said the Rev. Daniel Merz, associate director in the Divine Worship Secretariat of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The report states that 61 percent of Catholics who attend Mass regularly also go to confession at least once a year,” he wrote in emailed responses.

Venuti’s practice of going to Mass but not confession would appear to dispute that theory. Venuti said he also has another reason for bypassing confession: reports of sexual abuse by priests.

“I don’t need to go to some guy who may be a bigger sinner than I,“ Venuti said. “I will not go to confession, especially in light of all the immorality that has taken place and making headlines and everything else.”

However, Merz wrote it looks as if young adults are starting to come back to confession, as compared with the generation following the reforms of Vatican II in 1962-65, which addressed the role of the church in modern life.

Mark Gray, researcher and co-author of the study, said the overall point of view is that confession is one of the most underutilized sacraments today.

“I think there’s been changes in the way Catholics conceive of what’s sinful, how sinful it is, and just their image of God ,” Gray said. “A lot of Americans see a God who is not as judgmental.”

In older movies, Gray said, God has a booming voice off-screen.

“In modern films, God is George Burns or Morgan Freeman,” he said.

But the church’s teaching has not changed.

“The change is in the mind of Catholics and within broader American culture,” Gray said.