Priest calls for general absolution as confession boxes ‘stand idle’

CATHOLICS should be given general absolution twice a year because they don’t go to confession any more, an outspoken priest said yesterday.

The practice is only granted in extreme emergencies.

But Fr Tony Flannery, 59, an outspoken Redemptorist priest, said it should be given to congregations by parish priests because the confession boxes in churches were not being used.

“We rarely, if ever, go into confession boxes anymore. They stand idle in most churches or are used as storage space,” he said.

In his newly published book, Keeping the Faith - Church of Rome or Church of Christ, he recalled how he and a missionary priest had attempted to hear confessions at a church in a psychiatric institution.

In the first confession box, a vacuum cleaner fell out on top of the missionary and when the other box was opened, brushes and brooms fell out.

“The confession box was being used for storage. It is an image of the state of the sacrament in today’s Church. I am suggesting we should return to a practice of the medieval church. Twice a year, bishops and abbots gave general absolution to all the faithful.”

Fr Flannery said confession had been used by the Church to control people in the past by generating a sense of anxiety and fear. He said there was still a need for individual confession as well, but only if changes were made.

“The penitent should not have to say how long since their last confession. That is irrelevant. The length of time since the person has been to confession is of no importance whatsoever. We must also get rid of this notion of the priest as judge.”

Fr Flannery grew up in Co Galway, and joined the Redemptorist order in 1964. He is based in the order’s house in Athenry and has campaigned for change in the Church through retreats, missions and his four previous books.

He believes the Church should free priests from compulsory celibacy, and open itself to the prospect of ordaining women priests.

He said that while the Church needed to be fairer to gay people, it also had to face up to the number of gay men in its seminaries.

But Fr Flannery said he could not encourage young men to join the Church because it had to be replaced by something new.

“I believe that what is old and tired has to die, and that new growth will come from other sources, maybe other ones. The weeds of the past need to be cleared away with the harrow in order to make space for a spring crop,” he said.