Scottish Catholic Observer

THERE’S much talk of taking the Church to where it’s needed today, rather than waiting for people to come in. We’ve seen the Church, near Galway, with its highly successful, drive-by ashes service on Ash Wednesday, and, last Lent, the diocese of Salford took penance on to the high street, using its double-decker ‘Mercy Bus,’ crewed by priests, hearing Confessions.

Meanwhile, all across Europe, our traditional ‘turn up at a set time, queue and confess’ confessionals are lying empty, as most people have turned their backs on the Sacrament, possibly as a consequence of generations of preaching that seems to have given scant mention to sin. One of the unintended consequences of the Year of Mercy, I believe, was to further undermine the whole concept and awareness of sin, and seeking God’s forgiveness for it, for the message seems to have come across that God can forgive anything, which, of course, he can, but not without repentance for our sins.

That, and confessing them, seem to have gone by the board, for, with an all-merciful God, why would you need to bother with Confession?

Now, let’s get the ‘good old days’ out of the way, first. Yes, as a 66-year-old, I did go to Confession at least every two weeks as a child in the 1950s, and trotted out the same ‘sins.’ I had slackened off to about one-a-month by the time I was married in 1975, as, from the Second Vatican Council onwards, the Church was at pains, quite properly, to correct the excesses of sin-awareness and guilt that most of my generation were brought up with. But, as the years passed, the baby seems to have been thrown out with the bath water, until, like most people, I now go at Easter and Christmas.

And, just for fire insurance purposes, and call me paranoid if you must, I’ll go immediately before flying long-haul to see the grandchildren in Australia or the son in New York.

It’s not enough, for what we’re all missing out on is the benefit of exercising our Catholic consciences when we examine them before Confession, the sheer relief of receiving absolution, the spiritual health check, and the graces—do we still have those?—which accrue through the Sacrament.

With the decline of Confession, we’ve seen the rise of psycho quackery, counselling and much talk of mental health problems, especially among young people. Much could be taken on board through the benefits of the sacrament of penance, which also pulls us up and makes us think about our place in the world, our track record spiritually and the basic fact, whether we like it or not, that our actions on this world determine where we’re going in the next.

Sorry, but, whether we like it or not, Purgatory, Heaven and Hell haven’t gone away, you know. They’re just through the paper-thin wall that separates us, daily, from eternity.

What the Church should be doing is running campaigns actively promoting the spiritual, psychological, and sociological benefits of Confession, while combining that with new ways for people to access the Sacrament.

These need to go far beyond the current method of sitting in a queue, outside a confessional, and tutting inwardly as some people take hours, while trying not to have your turn stolen by someone outflanking you with a quick dash from the seats behind.

If you do wait until the Confession rush hours of pre-Easter and Christmas, you can rest assured long queues and raised tempers, as only Catholics preparing to receive the sacrament of penance can display.

I witnessed a man who had waited for 45 minutes in a queue at Glasgow Cathedral last Christmas, stand up and let forth a string of choice oaths not appropriate to the situation, before storming out of God’s house.

Maybe a fast-track queue reserved for those in a hurry, like the man,  who had clearly slipped out of an office, might help, perhaps offering Confession to those with five sins or fewer!

But, there is another way, and that is to use internet tools, such as Skype or FaceTime, with penitents logging in and the priest hearing Confessions, face-to-face, via today’s technology.

This would certainly put Confession on the news wires, but, most of all, it would make it accessible to a generation, the one that doesn’t come to church, but which accesses virtually everything online, when and where they want. I can hear many saying that there could be problems with the seal of Confession: hacking, and the fact that the penitent, traditionally, in the pre-internet era, has been required to be physically present, as has the priest.

But times have changed. There are fewer priests, and, in any case, our daughter, Mary, came across a priest in the Dolomite region of Italy who offered Confession over the phone to skiers in remote resorts around his parish. Maybe using technology isn’t that new. So let’s embrace today’s technology, and confess that we need to revive Confession. The Church in Scotland, after all, hit the headlines, last year, when it launched a Confession-finder app. It’s surely not a big step then to take that concept further, and simply log-in and confess.