It has been said that the main function of confessionals in today’s Catholic churches is to hold the cleaner’s bucket and mop.

Be that as it may, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is certainly taking a very long count , it is generally agreed. It is food for thought that at Mass the numbers of those present receiving the Eucharist are higher than ever. It is highly unlikely that these represent some travelling corps of blasphemers but simply people who try to make their peace with God without going into a confessional.

That this is an unsatisfactory approach has been made clear yet again to us at this season by the Last Supper Gospels , and Our Lord’s quite clear instructions to the Apostles that whose sins they shall forgive, they are forgiven. In other words, a means of forgiveness is in their hands.

The Church , whose foundation the Apostles carried on, has done this in many ways, the most recent being auricular confession- the ‘Bless me, father, because I have sinned’ method we all know.

So if in 2020 people no longer use auricular confession, another much simpler and clearer method of carrying out Christ’s permission must be found. That is what He asked. To use once more this blog’s favourite quote of all time, (yes the one about the Lanarkshire headmaster alleged to have said at a school assembly’As Our Lord said, and I must say I think He was correct’) why don’t we find one ? And why don’t people go?

1. In St Patrick’s Anderston,Glasgow, there was a confessional which was entirely dark. My grandmother once went into it, found her way to where she felt the grille was, and stated her case for forgiveness, to hear a voice behind her asking,’Were you looking for someone?’ To be more serious, some people have apparently had very bad experiences in confession, some true some probably fictional. Some also may well have asked for what they got through trying to con their way to absolution by showing no signs of a firm purpose of amendment. Not everyone finds auricular confession congenial, but we are all human and that form of coming back to God is all we have within the sacramental framework.

But need it be ?

2. Tragically for everyone, particularly for non-paedophile priests, social media tells us of those who cannot bring themselves to confess to a priest in case he is a paedophile. (The writer has had the experience of doing this, he later discovered. It is not a comfortable experience), In general, given all the paedophile criminality and its cover ups, there must be a certain amount of perfectly human resentment. Few penitents, I suggest, are capable of accepting the legitimate intellectual acrobatics of ‘ex opere, operato’ and don’t see why they should chance it.

3. Behind this lies what the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church stubbornly refuses to accept, that there are people who in 2020 do not like or trust the secular priesthood. The reasons for this are understandable and human but the current system does not allow for them. The Flock wants to have its sins forgiven as is its right. If this only this could be accepted, our Church would be transformed.

4. All this could be avoided if the Roman Rite would allow the Flock to receive General Absolution in a penitential service without the necessity of having sins forgiven twice (!) by later auricular confession, almost always to a secular priest, celibate and supported by a parish, as Canon Law insists. The Roman Rite was moving towards another point of view, I believe, until this was stamped out by the Polish Pope and the Emeritus Pope. (No comment- at the moment)

5. Dr Johnson once said, not entirely cynically, ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. I think all of us know the feeling in April,2020. We all hope that many of the Flock’s disaffected will want to come back. 2020 may be a great opportunity for the Roman Rite to atone for all the disasters of its past by changing Canon Law to allow a penitential service with General Absolution at the start of every Mass.

6. You may well ask why this bizarre addition of double forgiveness is added to General Absolution . It is well concealed. I have searched the internet until my fingertips are in ribbons , and I have found a possible reason ! A priest on the internet says: ‘Hearing confessions is spiritually very healthy for priests’. Oh well, that’s all right then. In all charity, even with a couple of gins, I cannot accept this as a reason for depriving the Flock of forgiveness.

7. The Roman Rite, through the Corona virus, has been prevented from ministering to the Flock. Once this scourge has left us, it can again offer forgiveness- and the Eucharist- to the Flock. May it do so in an entirely new way by allowing a penitential service before every Mass, without the absurd necessity of further, auricular, confession. The penitent makes his or her disposition personally to God. That is enough within the context of General Absolution.

8. To avoid any possible misunderstanding about the orthodoxy of this blog- which is about as orthodox theologically as one can get without being offensive-I refer you to Cardinal Pole at the Council of Trent. He pointed out that the Council should not conclude that because Luther said it’therefore it is false’. So there.