Tag Archives: Confessional

2024-04-28 · 4:57 am

Confessional renovation? Ideas for priests!

Saint Peter didn’t take the Keys of the Kingdom with him when he gave his life in witness to the Lord.

Saint Peter left those Keys with his successors, who provide them to bishops and to priests.

They use them especially in Sacramental Confession.

If you want the Pearly Gates of Heaven opened for you by those Keys: Go to Confession!

Meanwhile, our Confessional at Prince of Peace got an upgrade. I hope it lasts for a little while anyway.

I took off the old “megaphone” hollow closet door, bought a new door, circular-sawed it down to size (the width of blade along the side and the top), then bought and set about cutting up heavy ceiling tiles and attaching those to the door with washered-screws, adding a “bumper” in the front of the door over against smash-everything-in-sight-vacuum-cleaners, and then also an under-door sweep in the back, all of this making the Confessional rather sound-proof. Finally.

Then an appropriate San Damiano Crucifix image dear to my heart went up on the door to assist people in choosing not to lean against the soft ceiling tiles on the door should there be standing room only (very rare, that). The image is from a friend who died decades ago, who helped me with my thesis. He was great with cuneiform mud-writing of very many millennia ago.

Let’s take a look at the bottom:

Ready to go! People are better at going to Confession when they see that the priest doesn’t use the Confessional as a broom closet, but rather spruces it up in honor of the Sacred Mysteries of our Lord’s Mercy being applied therein. And in helps really, really a lot if the priest preaches up Confession and talks about how much he himself loves going to Confession.

There’s much more I’d like to do as time goes on. Right away after I came to the parish, we added an interior wall and Confessional screen. It used to be – I’m not kidding – a shower curtain hung on a window curtain rod by wires from the ceiling. We have to choose to get over the catastrophe post-Vatican II, and start getting back to the basics. We gotta make it to heaven.

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2020-01-06 · 11:48 am

Some progress with the Confessional

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This parish, Holy Redeemer in Andrews, NC, has a work-Confessional. No brooms, vacuum cleaners, zambonis or what not in our Confessional, converting it into a janitor’s closet. No, no. The clean-up here is for the soul, and is done with the abrasive force of none other than the Blood of Christ Jesus.

There’s more work to be done, like framed acts of contrition in various language to be added to the penitent side just to either side of the screen, and framed absolutions in various rites and languages on the priest side. Also, I’d like to move the crucifix and two oval pictures of Jesus and Mary alongside the door where it’s easier for the priest to see them. Then some kind of CD player for chant to be played softly as a noise muffler. Usually, there’s tons of prayers going on outside in the church, a rather raucous rosary (I like that) or an enthusiastic part of the Liturgy of the Hours. (I like that a lot).

More things to be added in future. But the huge consolation with all this… is that this is a working-Confessional. The heaviest use is during early morning adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Of course.

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