How does the Catholic “confession” work? Is it up to you to confess every sin on your own or are you probed by the priest about all of your behaviors?? In other words, do they ask penetrating inquiries???
When children go in for confession, are they asked if they masturbate? Are they asked for descriptive details if they do?? And is the priest visible during the confession???
when i went to confession, it was basically, “so, anything ya wanna confess today?” and you’d usually say something like, “i was mean to my grandma when she was only trying to help me blahblahblah”, the priest would ask you how you felt about it and why you were sorry, etc. no probing questions.
course, the last time i went to confession was… 9th grade? something like that. but from my experiences, they don’t really pry, and they never said, “are you gonna confess about THIS? well, how about THIS? or THIS?!”
and i missed the last question that you had.
you asked whether or not the priest is visible. it all depends. “on what?” you ask. it depends on the church and it’s policies, how liberal/traditional they are, what the confessee prefers, etc. when we first had reconciliation (4th grade), there were the three priests of the church stationed in various places in the open (one was up front, two were in the pews in opposite corners). you’d go up to one and talk face-to-face (no one else could hear you). but we also have long rows of the confession rooms that can be used if that’s what you prefer. in that case, you sit in one cubicle and the priest sits in the one next to you, and there’s a screen between you and him. there are little crosses above the doors that light up when people are in them. 
I haven’t been to Confession in a lonnnggg time, but normally the priest just listens. He usually doesn’t ask. If there’s a line, he’d rather get you out and keep the line moving.
The old pastor at the church I went to as a kid did ask one question: “Do you go to Mass every Sunday?” If you answered yes to that, presumably you could have gone on a murder spree with little remorse.
Geesh! Just because some priests are pedophiles doesn’t mean that they all are!
I was taught a standard form of words to use when in the confessional box:
Please forgive me Father for I have sinned. I have (insert x number of small sins - jealousy, greed etc).
Then the priest may ask if I’m sorry for these sins to which I answer yes. Then he says go and say 5 Hail Marys and 2 Our Fathers and sin no more.
But the real reason I responded to this GQ was to ask whether you really live in a place called “Gobbler’s Knob”?
At my first confession around age 7 or so, I got shy and didn’t know what to say when the priest asked what sins I had to confessed. So he gently asked “Have you ever lied to your parents or teachers?” and I said yes, and he said to ask God’s forgiveness, and we prayed and that was that.
I believe it’s “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was…yadda yadda yadda such and such date…”
It’s been YEARS since I’ve gone, but at our church, you could either use the traditional method, of kneeling infront of the screen, or you could see them face to face, sitting in a chair with a little window over it-sort of like a counter.
It wasn’t a big deal and priests do NOT ask questions like that. Or they’re not supposed to. Traditionally, the screen was manditory, because confession is supposed to be anonymous.
From my childhood as a Irish Roman Catholic (via my grandma) who had to take confession in order to recieve Holy Communian and so on, it mostly consisted of going in, saying “Forgive me father for I have sinned” and then rattling off a few things you felt guilty about doing. Mine generally consisted of “I stole a sweet from my friend Katy”. You definitely couldn’t see the priest, they were always encouraging and patient, and at the end they would tell you to say five Hail Marys and four Our Fathers and you’d be off home feeling like you’d been a Good Girl.
There was nothing sinister about it. They never asked me “did you do this/that?”. It was a simple, routine bit of church life. Go to mass, light your candle, say your confession, say your prayers, and go home. That’s all there is to it. I don’t go to mass now, and I don’t hold any religious beliefs, but not because I was treated badly by the Catholic church. Don’t listen to ridiculous rumours.
For me, I’d go into the confessional–never heard of this face-to-face stuff–and kneel down on the kneeler. The priest would open this little sliding door, revealing a screen through which only a little light passed. There was no way he could see who I was; other churches have different set-ups, though.
I forget who would start talking first. I think it may have been the priest, uttering some kind of little prayer or something, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, what happened next was me saying, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was umpteen days/weeks/months ago.”
“Yes, my son. And what sins have you committed?”
“Murder, rape, and mayhem. And I looked at Sally’s test paper to find out the answer to that geography question.”
“And are you sorry for your sins?” or something to that effect.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Then we’d say an Act of Contrition. And then I’d be given penance, usually some combination of prayers. I remember when I went as a little kid, my classmates and I would compare penances after Confession, and I usually had to say more prayers than everybody else for some reason. Well, I was kinda precocious, I guess.
Anyway, after that Act of Contrition there would usually be one or two brief words, and maybe some kind of blessing–it’s been a long time and I don’t remember exactly. And then, usually with a huge sense of relief, I’d leave.
The only time I ever heard a priest ask “probing” questions was when I accidentally heard part of somebody else’s confession. The confessee said, IIRC, something about adultery and the priest asked if the guy was still married, which, under the circumstances, was probably appropriate. I even made one or two confessions of a sexual nature, and there was no probing by the priest.
Priests asking leading questions make for a great gag on television, but I’ve never heard of it happening in real life.
Oh, and FTR, I probably spent more time with priests, nuns, and monks than most kids when I was growing up, and never experienced anything improper. Just thought I’d interject that, considering everything that’s been happening within my former church on the news and stuff lately.
All this based on my experiences as a Catholic kid around, say, fifteen years ago. The Church changes its rituals every once and a while, but I think the Act of Reconciliation is still more-or-less the same.
Now go in peace to love and serve the Lord. 
It’s been so long that I can hardly remember but it was pretty much a form thing with the same ritual being repeated every time. The one sin which I had to confess every time was masturbation and I forget what was the code for that but you definitely didn’t say that word in church. It was something like “impure thoughts and actions” or some such expression. Anyway, one day I was at some unfamiliar church and i go through the first few phrases but the priest is deaf as a wall and so I say I have “committed impure actions” (or whatever) and the guy says WHAT? and I have to say it louder and louder … except we are in a church full of people who are dead silent and I am certain every single one can hear every word and, of course, everybody knows what “impure actions” means to a 14 year old. So I am getting more and more embarrassed and don’t know what to do because i am not going to say it any louder… finally I just left without finishing. I was mortified and my face must have looked like a tomato. haha, today I’d have some fun telling the priest my fantasies in full detail of having a nun do a striptease for me. I’d ask him what do nuns wear underneath and it would be him running out of the church.
Face to face confessions were introduced in the U.S. in the late 1970s. It was around that time you could also start to receive Communion in your hand instead of having the priest place the host on your tongue.
However, you have the option in both cases.
Actually confessions were never mandated to be anonymous. Often times when people are ill, they will confess to a priest who is visiting them.
Well, no, it wasn’t manditory. I just meant, it was supposed to feel as if you were anonymous. After all, I’m sure most priests knew who was who, especially if you had a lot to confess.
I still remember my first confession-weeks before, I had seen a woman go into a confessional, and being curious, since my first confession was coming up, I tried to inch the curtain open a bit. My mother caught me and dragged me out of there.
So, I confessed that.
It’s pretty casual here with the campus priests, you can just go into their office and they’ll close the door. They also have services every week as some of the posters have described, where all the priests are just in isolated corners of the room, and everyone else mills around in the center until someone finishes.
They never ask leading questions, that I know of. You just go and say whatever’s bothering you, whatever you feel guilty about, and so on. Then you say your Act of Contrition, or make one up if you want to, get your penance, and get blessed and forgiven and whatever else is in that prayer at the end.
And incidentally, Mephisto if you accidentally hear someone’s confession you’re under the same rules as the priest would be about keeping it secret. Not to scold you or anything, my priest just happened to mention that to me a couple weeks ago and I thought I’d pass it along 
Sure, I figured as much. I think it’s a pretty sure thing that nobody knows who the sinner I overheard confessing was, so I felt safe using it as an example–maybe I shouldn’t have. I would be horrified to know that I let Spiratu’s secret slip . . . just kidding. Even though I’m not a Catholic anymore, I still respect the secrecy of the Confessional and would never divulge what very little I may have overheard a decade or two ago.
So, Mephisto now that’s out of the way, was the guy married?
^^ LOL! I think I better shut up about it . . . you already made me feel guilty–perhaps you’d make a good priest!
When I was still a Catholic. my church had face to face and screened confessionals, so you could choose. They also had a portable screen with a built in kneeler that could be set up. This was for peak times around holidays when the crowds would come in. It was rarely used later on unless a visiting priest was staying with the resident priest.
When we were being prepped for our first confession (2nd grade), the priest told us that the screen was for people who might feel ashamed or embarassed to confess face to face. In a small church like ours, the priest usually knew who everyone was anyway. Unless they were people from another parish, who were uneasy telling their sins to their regular priest.
You were supposed to confess everything you could honestly remember after searching your conscience. Usually our priest would ask if that was everything unless you told him that you were done. I was never prompted to tell more detail, but most of my sins were bland vanilla stuff anyway. Once during CCD class, the priest met with the boys to talk to us as adult members of the church. He told us that as teenage boys we all “choked the chicken” (that’s how he put it) and the next time we were in confession we would have to confess that along with the other stuff we did to make a sincere, complete confession. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone or embarass us with it, that as a priest he couldn’t mention it to anyone anyway. But we would know and God would know if we told it.