Contrition

Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: May My Non-Catholic Friend Go to Confession?”

Q: I have a close friend who has told me she slept with someone. Should I tell/recommend that she go to confession? This friend is a recent Muslim convert to non-denominational Christianity. However, she is still figuring out which church she wants to stick with. She once asked me if she could try out confession with me, and so I brought her to confession with me before any of this happened. She liked it and said she might try it again. I know she feels guilty about what she did because when she first brought it up she talked about hell, like she was going there. I’m worried for her soul. Is this reasonable? Am I being irresponsible for not offering to go to confession with her again or is it not my place to say anything to her at all? I worry so much for her because I remember my own experience with premarital sexual actions and how long that weighed on my conscience before I actually got around to confession. I eventually had to be told to go to confession; however, she’s such a new Christian, and I don’t want to cross boundaries. What should I do? – M.L.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: It’s admirable that you are trying to help your friend. She obviously has a conscience and seems to be seeking the truth.

It would be good to remember, though, that since she isn’t Catholic, she really can’t take advantage of the sacrament of confession. (She could in an extreme case, but that’s another issue.)

She would first need to receive instruction in the faith. Later, if she decides to join the Church, she could go to confession, be confirmed, and receive Communion. But let’s not rush things for the moment.

First, you might encourage her to try to make a perfect act of contrition (sorrow for having offended God).

If she is attracted to confession, then you might encourage her to look into the Catholic faith. Depending on her age, she could enter an RCIA program at a local parish.

In the meantime, you might want to encourage her by reading the Youth Catechism (or YouCat) together. Along the way, the question of chastity and sexual ethics will likely come up. That would be a good time to answer her questions.

Helpful, too, would be for the both of you to watch together our Retreat Guide on confession: “From Sorrow to Joy.”

It sounds as though she already realizes the sinfulness of what she did. Maybe you and her and other friends could look to pursue activities that will help her avoid falling into the same sin again. As you deepen your friendship with her, it will be easier (we hope) to talk about moral issues.

So this could be a great opportunity for you to share your faith as well as to grow in it. That would be the mark of a true friend.

You might want to intensify your prayers for your friend, and ask the Blessed Virgin Mary for assistance. Count on my prayers.

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“Ask a Priest: What If I’ve Never Been Sorry for My Sins?”

Q: I have not confessed my sins for about a year since I am not sorry for my sins. I don’t think I was ever sorry for my sins in my 26 years. I have become lazy and haven’t been asking God to grant me the grace of repentance as much as I used to before. Should I confess my sins and tell the priest at the beginning or end of the confession that I am not sorry for my sins? Or should I wait till God gives me the grace to be sorry for my sins? Also, should I receive the Eucharist in this situation? Can I receive the Eucharist so that I receive graces through it to be sorry for my sins? Or would it be using the wrong means to achieve a good thing? Also, through the Internet, I have found that we cannot receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin except in grave situations and when a confessor is not available and then too, you have to remember the obligation to make act of perfect contrition. Can I make a spiritual communion in a state of mortal sin? – R.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: It’s good that you are at least showing interest in confession. This might be a sign that the Holy Spirit is trying to nudge you closer to God.

A valid confession requires, among other things, a sense of contrition for sin and a firm resolution to change and avoid sin. Without contrition, or sorrow, a confession wouldn’t be valid. From what you mention, one wonders if any of your confessions were valid. Perhaps this was due to your having received poor instruction in the faith.

In the case when someone can’t get to confession for lack of opportunity, the person should make a good examination of conscience and make a perfect act of contrition. This kind of contrition is sorrow for sin based on love of God rather than fear of punishment.

Even a perfect act of contrition normally wouldn’t be enough to receive Communion. A person still needs to actually go to confession with a priest. What the perfect act of contrition could do is save a soul from eternal loss in the event of death.

You could, however, make a spiritual communion. You can do that at any time, in any state of grace.

The “grave situation” you saw mentioned on the Internet would be a rare incident, such as a groom who wants to receive Communion at his wedding Mass and it’s impossible to reach a priest privately. In that case a person would have to make a perfect act of contrition with the intention to confess as soon as possible. “Grave situation,” by the way, doesn’t include cases where people are embarrassed to stay in the pew at communion time in a parish Mass.

Under no circumstances could a person in mortal sin receive the Eucharist in a bid to get the grace to make a good confession. That would be a sacrilege.

The ideal, of course, is that you make a good confession as soon as possible. That will take serious preparation.

You mention about getting lazy. Sloth is a serious problem. It makes us grow indifferent toward the things of God and the spiritual life. Our Lord has a way of letting us feel the full impact of that indifference. Life can start to become stale and frustrating. We stew in our own juices.

Our Lord doesn’t do this because he wants to punish us. Rather, we sometimes have to hit bottom before we realize how much we need God.

This might be such a moment. The good news is that there is hope. Our Lord is anxious to show his mercy. But he won’t force it on you. You need to repent and seek his mercy voluntarily. The ball is in your court.

For now it might be good to try to pray to Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary for assistance. Also helpful might be our Retreat Guide, “Father of Mercies.” There is no need to keep mercy waiting.

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Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: Can It Get Worse If I Committed a Mortal Sin Already?”

Q: When I commit a mortal sin I fall into this ideology that “Well, I’m already in mortal sin, how can it get any worse?”, and use this to become despondent. Is this true — can mortal sin be made worse by continuing it after the initial incident? I hate this ideology and don’t understand why I fall into it. What should one do when in mortal sin before Saturday confession? Are spiritual practices such as the Liturgy of the Hours or the rosary of any use when someone is in the state of mortal sin? I feel as though I am falling into a pattern of every week, falling prey to these sins, and I’d like to learn how to best conquer them. Nothing I’ve tried works for very long. God bless. – G.E.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: What you describe is a common occurrence. It’s more of a temptation than an ideology. A person falls into mortal sin and then quickly grows despondent and piles on other mortal sins. This makes a bad situation worse.

Despondency can be one of the devil’s tricks. He whispers to someone before a fall, “Go ahead, do it. It’s no big deal. You’re a nice guy. Everyone does it.”

Then, after the fall, the devil is there to whisper, “You are a loser. Do you think you should be forgiven? No use trying to stop sinning — you’re already over the edge.”

The best response would be good to get to confession as soon as possible, before the despondency grows. Discouragement is a slippery slope you want to avoid.

If you can’t make it to confession, at least make a perfect act of contrition (that is, have sorrow for sin, based on love of God).

In the meantime, keep up the prayers. The merit for them will kick in once you are back in a state of grace.

To battle your sins, you might consider compiling a program of life, a systematic way to tackle your vices and work on the virtues.

To that end you might find the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwHfPpXbN5U helpful.

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Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: Is Falling Into the Same Sins the Same as Being Unrepentant?”

Q: I have a lot of recurring sins and a bad habit of making terrible decisions, and I often feel like I have no control over them. But I have been trying to make a bit of progress through talking to the priest at my university and through counseling. My priest told me I should come to confession frequently, and that would help with my problems. But I keep making the same mistakes, falling into the same patterns when I leave the church. I know it’s not right to take absolution in confession if you are not really sorry, so I need to know the difference between recurrent sins and just being unrepentant for them. I felt so much better knowing that I could come to confession every time, but I can’t just go and then not try — that’s just using the priest. I feel so hopeless and trapped about this. – O.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: The fact that you are trying to overcome habits of sin, and are going to confession frequently, is a good sign. It indicates that you are serious about your spiritual life.

This is precisely the moment when the devil will try to get you discouraged, so you want to be on guard.

That said, it is good to remember that for a valid confession you need to have contrition and some kind of resolution to avoid sin again.

The contrition, or sorrow, can be perfect (based on love of God) or imperfect (based on fear of punishment). Sometimes it is a mix of the two.

For the sacrament of reconciliation, either type of contrition is sufficient, so long as you have the intention “here and now” not to sin again.

This doesn’t mean that we must convince ourselves that we are going to be perfect the rest of our lives. But we do need to have the intention to try to avoid falling into the same sins.

What we cannot do is go into confession with the intention of casually returning to our sins. We couldn’t, for instance, go into the confessional on a Saturday afternoon to admit to sins of drunkenness while already planning that night’s drinking binge. That would amount to a sacrilege and would render the sacrament invalid.

Now, it shouldn’t shock penitents to find that they are confessing the same sins again and again. We tend to wrestle with the same kinds of vices on a continual basis. This shouldn’t get us discouraged. It is part of the human condition. Many of us are disposed, for various reasons, to one type of sin or another.

If the struggle keeps us humble and keeps us coming back to the sacrament of confession, there is something healthy in that.

Again, the key thing is that we have a desire to leave our sins behind each time we go to confession. God has his way of giving us the grace we need to move forward, but his schedule isn’t always one we can understand fully or one we would prefer.

On a practical note, it would be helpful to work on the virtues most opposite those areas where you sin. If you give in to gossiping, for instance, then work on the habit of speaking well of others. If you give in to gluttony, then offer up a little something at each meal for the person who most needs your sacrifices.

Also, it’s important to deepen your own relationship with God through personal prayer. If you want to grow in this area, you might find “The Better Part” app useful, or this explanation of Christian meditation, or this video about Christian meditation.

Keeping focused on the positive is a great way to overcome the negative. With God’s grace, of course.

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Today’s secular world throws curve balls at us all the time. AskACatholicPriest is a Q&A feature that anyone can use. Just type in your question or send an email to [email protected] and you will get a personal response back from one of our priests at RCSpirituality. You can ask about anything – liturgy, prayer, moral questions, current events… Our goal is simply to provide a trustworthy forum for dependable Catholic guidance and information. So go ahead and ask your question…

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Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: Is Divorce and Remarriage Considered Worse Than Murder?”

Q: I am 76 years old and have been “remarried” for the past 15 years after having divorced. It’s my understanding after having researched this subject on Catholic websites, that absolution after confession appears to be granted and available to all Catholics, including murderers, but not for divorced Catholics. So, if true, this tells me that my “sin” of divorce is more serious in the eyes of the Catholic Church than the sin of murder. It seems that a murderer on his/her way to their execution can simply go to confession, confess their sin, receive absolution, then proceed to receive Holy Communion. The Church will forgive a murderer, but a divorced Catholic will never be able to partake in all of the Church’s sacraments unless they agree to the ordeal of inquisition by annulment! What do I not understand? Did I not interpret this issue correctly? -A.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: Thanks for your note. It might be good to focus on two points here. One deals with contrition, the other with the nature and dignity of marriage. (Divorce, by the way, is not necessarily a sin in itself.)

For a valid confession, a penitent has to have contrition (sorrow for his sins) and the resolve to make amends (the intention in the here-and-now to avoid sin again).

Thus a murderer can receive absolution if he is contrite and resolved not to sin again. A divorced-and-remarried Catholic who doesn’t have an annulment and who doesn’t want to seek one lacks the proper contrition; the person isn’t ready to make a good confession if he intends to keep on living with and having relations with his partner. The key here is that he doesn’t intend to give up the sin – hence, he can’t be validly absolved.

The point isn’t that the Church considers divorce and remarriage a worse sin than murder. The point is that someone who persists in living in an irregular union does not really have the required contrition for his sin and thus cannot receive absolution. This is not to say that some divorced-and-remarried don’t harbor regrets about their situation. The problem is they aren’t taking the proper steps to fix their situation.

The prohibition against divorce and remarriage comes from the lips of Jesus himself. “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the one who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).

What the annulment process involves is the Church investigating and finding that there was a defect in a marriage from the start. The process is not an “inquisition”; rather, it is an attempt to learn the truth of whether both partners met the conditions for entering a valid marriage in the first place.

Many people who have passed through the annulment process have found peace. They are able to bring a chapter of their lives to closure. They can understand better what went wrong. Often it gives them a kind of new lease on life. Perhaps you might want to reconsider pursuing an annulment.

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Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: How do I get out of the loop of sinning and then continually asking for forgiveness?”

Q: If we are saved, what are the negative impacts of sin? If we are forgiven for anything, why should we do good? I want to do better and I need motivation. What I constantly hear is that we are forgiven and that if we ask for forgiveness then everything is fine again, and it sets me in a loop where I can just sin and then ask for forgiveness over and over. –J.W.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: Be careful. It’s easy to misinterpret that phrase “We are saved.” True, the Catechism in No. 621 says, “Jesus freely offered himself for our salvation.” No. 622 adds, “The redemption won by Christ consists in this, that he came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many.'”

A cursory reading of those numbers could give the impression that our salvation is assured because of Jesus’ sacrifice. What is assured is that Jesus has opened the possibility of our reaching heaven. But that is no guarantee that everyone will, in fact, do so.

No. 1949 of the Catechism uses more nuance: “Called to beatitude but wounded by sin, man stands in need of salvation from God. Divine help comes to him in Christ through the law that guides him and the grace that sustains him: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.'”

Note those words “man stands in need of salvation” — we need salvation, it’s not a given.

The negative impacts of sin are numerous — just pick up any newspaper or click into a news website to get a sampling of the evils out there. And that’s just the stuff that gets reported. The Catechism in No. 1855 says, “Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.”

Now to the rest of your question. It’s good that you want to do better. It’s important that you seek forgiveness for your sins. But, again, be careful about language. To say that “everything is fine again” after we ask for forgiveness needs to be clarified.

Yes, our sins are forgiven when we make a good confession (see here). But a good confession demands contrition (sorrow of some kind for having sinned) and a resolution to not sin again. Ideally that resolution should be real and fervent. That means we come out of confession wanting to amend our ways. Without some kind of resolution, the confession might not even be valid. We couldn’t confess, for instance, having watched bad videos, when we have every intention of then going home and watching the same kinds of videos.

That we fall into sin again is another matter. We are human, we are weak. Our Lord knows this. The important thing is that we keep trying to fight bad habits and develop good habits. All that demands effort and prayer and sacrifice — a lifelong task. So to say “everything is fine again” after confession doesn’t do justice to how much we have to fight to overcome our faults and failings.

Then, too, receiving absolution for our sins and doing the penance is not enough. There is still a temporal punishment due for sins. Think of this analogy: Imagine your neighbor through negligence breaks your car windshield. He apologizes and you forgive him. You have “absolved” him, in a sense. But justice demands that he also pay for a new windshield — that’s what temporal punishment is about. It’s about restoring a certain order to things.

No. 1472 of the Catechism touches on this theme: “Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the ‘eternal punishment’ of sin. On the other hand, every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the ‘temporal punishment’ of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.”

What this means in practice is that we need to make up for the temporal punishment due to our sins. We can do this through a range of remedies: prayer, almsgiving, fasting, acts of charity, etc. These are the kinds of things that can and should keep us busy all our life. What we don’t make up for in this world, we would have to make up in purgatory (assuming we don’t die in mortal sin, in which case we are lost forever).

So, if someone sins with the idea that he can just confess it later and get off the hook, well, that’s a very faulty attitude. It treats of God’s mercy in so casual a way as to be presumptuous.

What all of us need to do, in the face of our sinfulness, is be humble, ask forgiveness, start over, and make a daily effort at growing in our relationship with God. This helps us to rise above that “loop” that you mention, and to really strive for holiness — and happiness too.

True happiness comes from a deeper and deeper friendship with God. Every sin wounds the friendship. Yes, God will forgive us, but how can our friendship really grow (and thus my happiness in this life really grow), if I am constantly offending my friend and then asking for forgiveness? The friendship will never get to advance in that way. To really grow in holiness and happiness, my friendship has to grow, and that means I have to stop offending my friend.

When you go into confession, resolve to come out a man recommitted to doing your Friend’s will at every moment. And remember Pope Francis’ words, “The Lord never tires of forgiving.… It is we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” Count on my prayers that you never tire of asking forgiveness and resolving to do better. God bless.

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Alex Kucera

Atlanta

Alex Kucera has lived in Atlanta, GA, for the last 46 years. He is one of 9 children, married to his wife Karmen, and has 3 girls, one grandson, and a granddaughter on the way. Alex joined Regnum Christi in 2007. Out of the gate, he joined the Helping Hands Medical Missions apostolate and is still participating today with the Ghana Friendship Mission.

In 2009, Alex was asked to be the Atlanta RC Renewal Coordinator for the Atlanta Locality to help the RC members with the RC renewal process. Alex became a Group Leader in 2012 for four of the Atlanta Men’s Section Teams and continues today. Running in parallel, in 2013, Alex became a Team Leader and shepherded a large team of good men.

Alex was honored to be the Atlanta Mission Coordinator between 2010 to 2022 (12 years), coordinating 5-8 Holy Week Mission teams across Georgia. He also created and coordinated missions at a parish in Athens, GA, for 9 years. Alex continues to coordinate Holy Week Missions, Advent Missions, and Monthly missions at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Cumming, GA.

From 2016 to 2022, Alex also served as the Men’s Section Assistant in Atlanta. He loved working with the Men’s Section Director, the Legionaries, Consecrated, and Women’s Section leadership teams.

Alex is exceptionally grateful to the Legionaries, Consecrated, and many RC members who he’s journeyed shoulder to shoulder, growing his relationship with Christ and others along the way. He knows that there is only one way, that’s Christ’s Way, with others!