Confession ‘is a place to encounter God’s mercy, his forgiveness, and not only that, to receive grace,’ says Dominican Father Thomas Petri.
How long is too long when it comes to confession? The question has taken over social media threads recently, with lay Catholics frequently airing frustrations over long confessional lines stalled by sessions that sometimes last 30 minutes.
“I’ve lost track of how many times I actually haven’t been able to go to confession because I couldn’t wait in the line,” said Ashley McGuire, a mother of five and senior fellow at The Catholic Association. “Either it was too hard wrangling children or I just ran out of time.”
What is a proper time to spend behind the screen? And where does the line fall between a proper confession and spiritual direction?
We turned to Dominican Father Thomas Petri in a recent EWTN Radio interview to get his take.
Father Petri, a moral theologian currently serving at St. Louis Bertrand Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, emphasized during a recent episode of Conversations with Consequences that confession is meant to be a swift, direct encounter with God’s mercy rather than an open-ended psychological session. In fact, he lightheartedly calls out
