No Sinners Left (!?)

 It would be nice if that headline were true, right?  A review of a new book, For I Have Sinned (James O'Toole, Harvard U Press) written by Nick Tomaino, has some eye-popping stats about the decline and fall of the Sacrament of Confession (in NewSpeak:  "Reconciliation") since the late 1800's.

... New sanctuaries in Manhattan, born to keep pace with the city’s immigrant population, sprouted across the city. At St. Francis Xavier, between July 1896 and June 1897, 10 priests reported hearing 173,394 confessions. A similar dynamic obtained uptown, at St. Ignatius, where Fr. Patrick Healy kept meticulous notes. He heard 9,047 that fiscal year, accounting for about 11 percent of the parish total. The schedule varied with the season—August being a slow month (253 penitents), October the busiest (1,188)—but the demand was a given and spanned all hours of the day, all week. On May 30, 1896, Fr. Healy heard 73 in the afternoon, and 102 more between 7:45 and 11 that night. Come June 11, he noted in his journal that the pace had been "slack," for he heard "only 88."...

Compare those hours to the ones afforded at your local parish.  I dare you.

 ...Read the bulletins at both New York parishes and you’ll find the sacrament is offered for one hour on Saturday afternoons or by appointment, the norm in many American Catholic churches. The long lines of penitents, a familiar sight before liturgical celebrations, have been reduced to a handful....

Checking the offerings at three suburban parishes in this area, we find two which have the Sacrament available beginning at 8:30 AM on Saturday, one which has it for one hour on Saturday, one at noon on Sunday, one between 2-5 on Friday.........and all offer "appointment times".  The nearby exurban Basilica--staffed by more than 4 priests--holds Confessions for 1 morning hour 4X/week and 2 morning hours on Saturday.

Not a heavy schedule.

The author of the book offers a few explanations, some of which can be dismissed outright ("brusque" priests, the relaxing of the Friday discipline).  

The author of the review emphasizes a few which are more likely a problem:

... O’Toole offers a more convincing explanation in his discussion of contraception. As a Vatican commission assessed the new technology, many Catholics began to believe the Church’s teaching "might not be so irrevocable after all." Reports had leaked that a majority of the body had coalesced in favor of revision, the anticipation of which seemed to affect parish lives. O’Toole writes of a Chicago priest who said, "We didn’t harangue on birth control because we sensed people didn’t believe it." The same priest later admitted that he didn’t, either....

That is one big one.  Since that time (1966), artificial contraception has been a "given" in the lives of most Catholics, and they have passed that nonchalance on to their children, mostly to protect the chilluns from the *problem* of pregnancies, both pre-marital AND during "working years."  That way, the chilluns can have nice things, you see.

There are other good reasons.

 ...Nearly half of U.S. priests, according to a contemporaneous survey, believed they should simply affirm what in effect were penitents’ opinions. Only 13 percent denied absolution to those who confessed to using contraception and refused to stop, centuries of Church law notwithstanding.

O’Toole writes that "sin was being redefined," thanks in part to gymnastics in moral theology by figures like Karl Rahner. So long as Christians had directionally chosen God, the thinking went, they needn’t worry as much about discrete behavior....

This is the "My Truth" thing in Catholic mode.

(Rahner was a Jesuit, in case you didn't figure that out).

THIS is what we suggest is the main problem: 

...Many in the Church, meanwhile, began to preach less about individual sin and more about collective wrongs. O’Toole writes of a seminarian who was taught to think of sin more generically, "less likely to be found in ‘specific acts’ than ‘hanging like a smog of bad atmosphere’ around human life and activity." The ascent of pop psychology likewise injected a deterministic view of human affairs into the mainstream. The faithful needn’t worry about discrete behavior because they weren’t in control of their choices anyway.  ...

We've heard several decades of "homilies."  We can count on ten fingers or less the number of them which bored in on the mortal sins of contraception, masturbation, homosexual activity, and fornication.  But those "social sins" like taking action against illegal immigration or questioning the morality of abusing taxpayers to feed layabouts?  Plenty.  Just as bad, because it's stealthy:  'exegesis' of the day's readings.  That is often interesting, but very rarely do those readings touch on Big Sin.  Even more rare?  Mentions of Hell.  IOW, even if you did a Big Bad, not to worry!!  We have imagined that there is no Hell.  Thanks John Lennon!

Bishops are the ones who lay out what parish priests may and may NOT talk about in their sermons.  Perhaps in the next decade, we will have Bishops who actually believe that there are a lot more souls which desperately NEED saving. 

And maybe we'll have priests who--like St John Vianney--will do whatever it takes to save them through Confession.