I made a confession this past Saturday at St. Francis Xavier Church, a Jesuit-run community, in Manhattan. The confessional booths there are "architecturally" (I hope that's not too grand a term for them) interesting. Maybe "ornate" goes too far.

Anyway, I entered the booth to confess and found no screen. I didn't want to make eye contact with the priest and I averted my view to avoid looking at him. Shouldn't there be a screen in such a setting?

Both the penitent and the priest are supposed to have a behind-the-screen option when working with a fixed confessional.

But what if the priest wants the screen and the penitent does not?

D. Utrum attento praescripto can. 964, § 2, sacramenti minister, iusta de causa et excluso casu necessitatis, legitime decernere valeat, etiamsi poenitens forte aliud postulet ut confessio sacramentalis excipiatur in sede confessionali crate fixa instructa.
R. Affirmative.


http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ponti ... ae_lt.html

Either one has the right to insist on it.

That's interesting. I should have not deleted the post I deleted above. I began to ask if there is a need for something like the Pat Venditte Rule for when a switch hitter comes to bat against a switch pitcher . From Wikipedia:

Honestly - though I prefer to have a screen, or some means of having anonymity - this is not a hill to die on. I used to go to confession from time to time at a certain shrine where they had daily confessions. Instead of a fixed screen there was a heavy curtain in between the priest and the penitent. One priest there started to pull back the curtain - that is, it would be pulled back when you went into the confessional, not that he would do it mid-confession. Anyway, I asked him to put it back and he said that he had been attacked by a "penitent" and that he didn't want the curtain there so he would "have a fighting chance" against further attacks. I didn't insist, but neither did I look at him while confessing.

Oh no, let's take a look.






Ah, here's your problem.

I've weighed in previously in these forums somewhere about how this Jesuit-run community uses a modified version of the Creed that reads "and became human" rather than "and became man." I spoke to one of the priests and the pastor about that. The priest said he understood my concern. Yet the pastor told me that was a more inclusive presentation to which I replied that the Creed is an historical document that should not be changed. I also added that in such a climate of sexual or gender confusion as today's zeitgeist, that such a change is especially inopportune.

One of the priests wrote something in the bulletin complaining about homophobia but not about homosexual acts. The same priest, during a homily, mentioned how a lesbian friend got into a relationship and, as a consequence, reformed her life - by losing weight. In another homily he mentioned how many of "our" ancestors were immigrants without mention of how many - probably a very high percentage - were legal immigrants unlike today in the USA. The community has a float in New York City's annual Gay Pride Parade. Fr. James Martin recently spoke at the church. Maybe it is a blessing that I get to monitor these things, regrettable as they are.

The Jesuits, I believe, have more canonical saints in the Catholic Church than any other order. My how they have fallen. I am not registered in that Jesuit community but am a parishioner elsewhere in Manhattan where I have not heard any whiff of dissent or malpractice such as the lack of a screen in the confessional. One of the priests there is both a former Carthusian monk and a former Jesuit, interestingly.

Carthusian, then Jesuit, or the other way around?

It's complicated: now I'm unsure that he was ever a Jesuit priest, though he went to a Jesuit high school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cQSSSXguL8

This interview, however, may raise some eyebrows, too.

maybe that was just an excuse? Why would a priest be attacked by a penitent? I guess stranger things...

but some priests belong to secret groups and while they themselves keep massive secrets, they hypocritically want to know all about everyone else..

no idea whether this applies in your situation but I don't trust most priests these days.. unless they are the old fashioned kind, the Traditional Mass kind

priests used to face east during Mass. Now that they face the congregation, it seems it is virtually all about them..

I see a lot of rash judgment and prejudice in your words.

Priests have been attacked, even killed, and that's fact. One was attacked recently, not sure if he survived the attack. His attacker shouted that it was "for the victims". Priests do have to be very careful now.

If priests belong to secret groups and you know about them, they aren't very secret. Do you really know about any secret groups, or are you spreading rumor?

Your comments are nothing more than hearsay and opinion, or just mean-spirited. Whether you mean them in that way or not, you should take a moment to ask yourself if you are being true to facts, or just grinding your own personal axe.

When considering conversion, I visited about a dozen parishes. In about three, the pastor was overtly unavailable for consultation ... as he would not make an appointment for such (although, to be fair, it may have been one or more of the phalanx of women in the parish office who gave the impression that they were there solely to interrogate, however inappropriately, anybody wishing to talk to the pastor and who would pass judgement upon the merits of the request). Those parishes went right off my list.

One item I investigated in the parishes I evaluated was whether the confessional provided a screen, integral in the design of the confessional, or not. In one, there was no such option -- just a closet with two chairs and a wicker contraption that divided the chairs but without any sort of screen. In another, the office lady was very proud, while showing me the "confessional" -- little more than two chairs placed facing each other in what appeared to me a medium sized equipment room, that in her parish the old fashioned confessional had been eliminated and the more modern and inviting and open and innovative and on and on facing of chairs was the way they did it there and wasn't it wonderful? Those two parishes also went off the list.

Sigh. I don't know who was the more unsettling, the interviewer or interviewee.

do you even have a parish?

i would laugh but not terribly funny..

I only go without a screen because the priest already knows my voice anyway and also, I don't have any big sins to confess anyway since I am a very good Catholic... laugh

anyway, I think there should always be a screen regardless. I would love to go back to pre Vatican 2

sigh.. the good old days

Yes, I have a parish.

I go to confession at three different parishes -- depending. All have booths with screens. I don't care whether the priest knows my voice or not. No screen, no confession. The single exception is during Easter, as hordes appear to confess when multiple priests can be located at multiple points, including points in the pews.

i dont have any nefarious aka mortal sins to confess and most of the time don't care if anyone hears me or not but i still dont like going w/o the screens. Sometimes people say this and that (confess this/that) and then regret what they didn't think they would regret, namely that maybe someone other than the priest heard them.. but even if that never happened, i just dont like going w/o the screens. I am a totally pre-Vatican 2 person

The following is from Catholic Herald, 30 January 2019:

Priest steps down from CDF following accusations of sexual harassment in confession