{"id":5000,"date":"2006-07-29T16:54:52","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T21:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2006\/07\/29\/a-confessional-out-of-dilbert\/"},"modified":"2006-07-29T16:54:52","modified_gmt":"2006-07-29T21:54:52","slug":"a-confessional-out-of-dilbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2006\/07\/a-confessional-out-of-dilbert\/","title":{"rendered":"A confessional out of Dilbert?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The dread, damp palms and anxiety may still be there, but Catholic confession has moved out of the dark, creaky booth where a priest listened to penitents and then meted out penalties to every last sinner to show up.<\/p>\n

The confessional box has largely given way to a lighted room where priest and penitent can gaze into each other’s eyes and have a private conversation about lapses in holy living. That’s especially true in Arizona, where Catholic churches tend to be newer.<\/p>\n

Or sinners can still anonymously recount their wrongs kneeling behind a screen on a table in a well-lighted room, uttering the traditional words, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned” and noting the date of the last confession. Largely gone is the dark confessional booth, tagged the “sin box,” with a kneeler and demarcating shuttered divider between the two parties.<\/p>\n

Also gone are the long lines of penitents who humbly spill out their venial and mortal offenses to God through a priest who is forbidden from repeating them to anyone.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally I prefer the older confessionals to "reconciliation rooms" and especially the type displayed in the picture. I have never seen one setup like that, but it seems rather problematic to me. For one I guess you would have to approach this confessional cubicle from a specific angle to retain the canonical right of the individual penitent to remain anonymous. The other problem I would see is that a traditional confessional or a dedicated room would at least act as a baffle to help to prevent people from overhearing your confession. An open confessional would require awaiting penetents to stand much further away to avoid this problem.<\/p>\n

Now of course compared to what happens during this amazing sacrament the furniture involved in facilitating it is of no consequence. Though I think we need a visual indicator that the sacrament of confession isn’t something mundane, but something quite exceptional. What could be more exceptional than forgiveness of sins when we truly repent?<\/p>\n

I have also always wondered how someone who is forced to make an appointment for confession retains there canonical rights to anonymity? Would you have to give a false name and then say you will meet the priest in the confessional at a certain time? Would you have to confess to giving a false name?<\/p>\n

On the light side the confessional pictured looks like it would make for a really challenging game of ping pong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dread, damp palms and anxiety may still be there, but Catholic confession has moved out of the dark, creaky booth where a priest listened to penitents and then meted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}