Catholics returned to confession this Lenten season with priests describing longer lines and a different emphasis—less like a recital of wrongdoing and more like a search for grace. In Chicago, Rev. Patrick Gilger said penitents often arrive feeling unworthy, but that reaction is also a sign that they want to change and “are displaying the fact that they want to be good.” “The fact that somebody shows up to confession is a lived act that they desire holiness,” Gilger said.
The sacrament of penance and reconciliation is described by priests as a regular practice for Catholics, typically weekly or monthly, in which penitents disclose sins to a priest, pledge not to commit them again, and receive forgiveness along with a penance. Priests said the path back to receiving Communion again depends on the confession of grave sins before Communion, and they portrayed the act as both personal and communal: a moment when Catholics confront fault, but also seek a pastoral word that helps them move forward.
Rev. James O’Toole, a Boston College professor emeritus and the author of a new history of confession, said confession has become a kind of “marker” practice among Catholics that Protestant and other non-Catholic neighbors do not share. Priests and religious educators, however, said the confession experience has shifted in recent decades. O’Toole said that until the last decades of the 20th century, Catholic parishes and schools often used lists of sins arranged by how “grievous” they were, from “mortal” sins to “venial” offenses, and that confession then was often “a quick affair,” followed by prayers such as “saying 10 Hail Marys.”
Rev. Thomas Gaunt, who leads Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, said the Church does not compile national data on confession, which limits how precisely anyone can measure whether confession attendance is rising. Still, Gaunt said priests in the United States have noticed an uptick, and several clergy described confession as evolving from memorized formulas into conversations centered on God’s mercy and love. Rev. Mike Nugent, ordained in 2023 and serving at Saint Ambrose Catholic Church in Annandale, said confession has moved toward a different framing: “There’s only so many ways to go wrong. There’s an infinite number of ways to be right and to have God’s life coursing through you.”
Priests also emphasized that confession is not a “get-out-of-hell-free card.” They said a priest cannot grant absolution, or God’s forgiveness, if the penitent is not willing to change, but that confessors try to mirror the mercy shown by Jesus to sinners in the Gospels. Gilger said what sin means in Catholic theology is the intentional turning away from God, adding that confession is meant “to allow the God who wants to be with us to rush back into the emptiness that those sins have created.” Other priests described confession as “therapeutic” for both the penitent and the confessor, particularly in a culture they said is more eager to judge than to forgive.
Rev. Brendan Hurley, who oversees the penance preparation program at the Pontifical North American College near the Vatican, described confession as a space where people can confront themselves and then experience mercy “from God through another person, mercy, forgiveness, and hope.” He said people seek more than condemnation: they come for relief and encouragement that can help them accept forgiveness while acknowledging what they need to address.
Along with changing emphasis, priests described confession as a confidential act with strong boundaries. The “seal of the confessional,” they said, is absolute, and Vatican officials have fought legislative efforts to compel confessional disclosures. When penitents kneel behind a screen or sit face-to-face with a priest, priests said many want to offload a burden and hear a specific word of encouragement. Rev. John Kartje, rector of Mundelein Seminary in Illinois, said: “You need trust, you need openness, you need vulnerability, you need honesty.”
Priests said they also see confession as offering concrete pastoral relief, including in urgent situations where people may have limited time or may disclose serious wrongs they had never previously spoken. Others, they said, may arrive with vague statements or with misunderstandings about what the church calls sinful, such as on moral issues that some Catholics no longer discuss openly. Priests said the response they aim for is not a harsh tone—rather, they focus on reminding penitents that God’s love remains near. “Then people know what the thing that they’re doing is that’s keeping them away from God,” Gilger said.
Seminarians also train for that pastoral reality. O’Toole described earlier seminarians’ study of “clear rule books,” while Hurley said today’s emphasis includes “creating a space where the penitent can feel comfortable.” Hurley and others said seminarians practice confession with professors and with each other, and that priests themselves regularly go to confession as part of their formation. Rev. Kartje said new priests can fall into strictness if they assume “this is all on you,” and he said the healer is the Holy Spirit, even as he and other priests provide absolution. “I’m hearing your confession. I’m saying the words of absolution. But the only real healer is the Holy Spirit,” Kartje said.
For Nugent, confessing is also marked by the gratitude and trust people show when they speak with humility. Nugent said: “When someone comes and says, ‘Father, these are the things I’ve done,’ there’s so much honesty, so there’s so much humility, a great generosity of spirit, a great faith in the God who will forgive them.” Gilger said the hard confessions stand out, but what he remembers most is the people themselves—“how amazing people are”—and what he described as the consoling impact of listening.