The Lord’s peace be with you.

Recently some work has begun on remodeling the old confessional in St. Thomas Aquinas’s church to restore it to use, and we’ll commence work in the coming months on the one at Star of the Sea and the second confessional at Holy Redeemer. We are remodeling confessionals at Columbia River Catholic to be safer and more comfortable. To do this, we are converting them into anonymous-only confessionals. Here’s why:

These remodeled confessionals will have a wall and door in them that will separate the priests from the penitents. This will prevent penitents and priests from being able to physically touch each other, unlike our current face-to-face confessionals. It will also dramatically reduce the chances of a priest being falsely accused of touching another in the confessional. This isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. I am friends with a retired priest who was falsely accused of raping a boy 30 years ago. That boy is now a man, and when he made the accusation (five years ago), he said it happened in the confessional when he was a boy. Fortunately, the confessional he said it happened in was an anonymous-only confessional with no access from the priests’ side to the penitents’ side. His accusation then shifted to the sacristy where he said it happened before or after Mass when he was an altar boy. Fortunately, his Dad testified that his son was never an altar boy anywhere, and that they had only been to Mass at that parish for about a month. The accuser dropped his accusation at that point, but the damage to the priest’s reputation (and psyche) was already done.

Another safety feature is protection from assault. This hasn’t happened to me in years, but on at least two occasions with an angry male penitent sitting in front of me, in a closed face-to-face confessional where my only way out is to pass through the penitent, I had to seriously prepare myself for assault. As a priest, you’re cornered in there, and we all know that some mentally ill men, or super angry ones, can be physically dangerous. I’m surprised I don’t hear more about this from my brother priests.

Another safety issue is misplaced attachments. While priests are typically not good looking 😊, they are typically really good Catholic men, and of course celibate, i.e., single. When you mix that combination in a man with a woman in conversations of the greatest intimacy, through face-to-face confessions (eye-to-eye contact) over a period of months or years, a romantic attraction can ensue on the part of the penitent or priest. In my twenty-two years of ministry, multiple women have developed romantic attachments to me because of ongoing face-to-face confessions. One even legally changed her last name to mine and began to stalk me! On the other hand, I have never had (to my knowledge) a woman develop a romantic attraction for me through anonymous confessions. The laws of nature are at play here, and emotional boundaries can be crossed exponentially easier in face-to-face confessions over time than through anonymous confessions.

Another positive aspect of anonymous-only confessionals is the coercion factor. In the past the few years there has been a national movement to force priests to violate the seal of confession. A law was passed in this state a couple of years ago to do just that. Fortunately, the courts stopped it. In anonymous confessions a priest can frequently honestly claim that he doesn’t know the identity of the person whose confession he heard. He certainly doesn’t want to know the identity. Archbishop Etienne raised this point at the Presbyteral council: if the state did mandate violating the seal of confession, then we would end face-to-face confessions as policy. Anonymous confessions are a relief for priests as they don’t want to know the sins of individuals any more than you do. They just want to absolve them.

Anonymous-only confessionals simply make priests, and most penitents, feel more comfortable; both secure in knowing that the confession is anonymous and confidential, and that the experience is safe.

The last positive reason I can think of for moving to anonymous-only confessionals is the turnaround time between confessions. People who sit in front of a priest for confession tend to take longer than someone behind a screen. This has to do with our natural relational instincts. In face-to-face confessions we are respecting the need to make a personal connection with the person in front of us, in addition to the confession itself. In anonymous-only confessions that personal connection isn’t a concern, so they tend to be more focused on the sins and not the connection between the priest and penitent. For these reasons, anonymous confessions are quicker, which means the priest can hear more confessions and absolve more sinners!

With all that has just been said, we will continue to host penance services where face-to-face confessions happen. This is because face-to-face confessions at penance services are in line of sight of others, eliminating concerns around accusations of touching; priests can get up and walk away if they feel threatened or compromised; and because the misplaced attachment dynamic doesn’t have the longevity it needs to develop in a one-off confession at a penance service.

I should add here that priests have a right to anonymous-only confessions. While it is important to me to have anonymous-only confessionals here, I do continue to hear confessions face-to-face under appropriate circumstances e.g., penance services, visiting the homebound or someone in a hospital, or someone coming into my office for spiritual direction or a whole life confession, et cetera.

Before the 1970s, confessionals were for centuries built to be anonymous only. After everything I’ve just said, it raises the question: why did we ever abandon them for face-to-face confessionals? I don’t know the answer to that, but we’re fixing it now.

A couple of practical things about the newly remodeled confessionals:

They will have space for walkers and wheelchairs. This means that we will not be restoring the confessional at St. Thomas to what it was before, with the priest in the middle and potential penitents on either side in separate booths. I love that model for its turnaround time, but we need to sacrifice speed for inclusion. In the redesigned confessionals, the priest will be on one end of the confessional behind an enclosed wall while the penitent will be on the other side. They will communicate through a non-visible screen.

At St. Thomas Aquinas, moving back to the old confessional will enable the ushers to have the old baptistry room back. This is really important at St. Thomas because the narthex/vestibule is so small that we would really benefit from being able to use the old baptistry for things that sometimes end up cluttering the narthex. It is also much easier for the ushers to access from the narthex than the old confessional in the nave.

Now a word about the Sacrament of Confession—Go! One of the precepts of the Church is the need to go to Confession at least once a year if aware of mortal sin. Failure to do so is a mortal sin! With that said, the Church has always recommended monthly confession. The saints went to confession monthly, bi-monthly, or even weekly. Pope Saint John Paul II and St. Teresa of Calcutta both went to confession weekly. The religious sisters of St. Teresa’s religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, all go to confession weekly as part of their religious rule. I try to go weekly too. If you went to confession once a month, and you did that for the rest of your life, I promise you profound progress in the spiritual life and in your communion with God. The change that would happen in you overtime would also profoundly affect the people in your life for the better. So why not go?

Here’s our current confession schedule, which you can find on the inside cover of our bulletin and on our website.

Holy Redeemer Friday 4:00pm-5:15pm; Saturday from 9:10am to end of line and from 2:30-4:15pm; Sunday 7:30-8:15am and 10-10:45am.
St. Thomas Aquinas – Wednesday 5:00-5:45pm; Saturday 4:00-4:45pm; Sunday 7:30-8:15am.
Our Lady Star of the Sea – Sunday 10:45-11:15am.

May Almighty God Bless You,

August 9, 2026 | Confessionals

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