Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: September 29, 2019
Last month I celebrated my 40th priestly anniversary. So last week I began to reflect a little on some of changes I’ve experienced as a priest of the Diocese of Baton Rouge since 1979. I began by noting the steep decline in the number of parish priests since then.
What else has changed? Well, I’m not going to get into changes at weddings, other than to say that there were far more of them “in the Church” back then. Oh, and wedding fashions were worse: there were far too many grooms and groomsmen at weddings in pastel, doubleknit tuxedos with super-wide lapels, a style we should all try to forget!
But I will mention one sacrament that really has changed since then, and that’s the Sacrament of Penance, or confession. When I was first ordained, the Church was in the midst of a real popular “lack of interest” in confession. It was not unusual for children to celebrate their First Reconciliation in second grade and not again until they were preparing for marriage! Sometimes an entire week’s worth of scheduled confessions would go by without a single penitent: my first pastor, Msgr. John Weber, famously bragged about always bringing his Time magazine, Sports Illustrated, and the previous Sunday’s crossword puzzle into the confessional with him! (He finished them all, every week!)
Apparently this was due mostly to society’s rejection of objective standards of wrongdoing in the 1960s. A very famous book written just before I was ordained, Whatever Became of Sin? by Dr. Karl Menninger, examined the growing hesitancy of “modern” people to admit faults; it captured and described the spirit of the age a bit, I guess.
But somewhere along the way, during the papacy of Pope St. John Paul II, interest in confession began to build again. In our own diocese some of this began under Bishop Stanley Joseph Ott’s leadership, and especially in the small groups formed in the famous “Renew” program of faith-sharing that he pushed. I have to admit it really reached something of a zenith under retired Bishop Robert Muench, whose personal interest in boosting confession by adolescents in Catholic high schools really made a difference among thousands of teens, who are now young adults and parents, of course.
In any case, things have changed. Now our reconciliation room before daily Mass is often chock full: 15 to 20 or more each day. Sure, some of the penitents are of the scrupulous sort, unable to believe that God can forgive venial sins or thinking that they commit far more sins than they really do. And a few others instead of confessing their own sins prefer to tell the priest all about other people’s shortcomings – spouse or child or president or pastor or pope, usually! – which is a true waste of time!
But these days, at least it seems to me, most confessions are made by people doing their best to do better. They’ve realized that facing up to weaknesses and shortcomings helps – even if just lack of self-discipline or habitual failings – motivating them to be closer to the Lord in prayer and charity. By acknowledging their sins they are also able to count their blessings, and keep their life of faith in perspective. There is a earnest seriousness about many of them and their religious priorities – without being out of touch with the real world – that I think bodes well for the future. At least I hope so!
Meanwhile, I’m yours in the Lord,
Fr. Paul
