Can I Make my Confession Online?
Question: Could one make a confession over Zoom or other Internet services?
Answer: The short answer is: No. The Church teaches that sacramental confession and absolution require the physical, interpersonal encounter of penitent and confessor to facilitate the forgiveness for grave sins.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “individual, integral confession and absolution remain the only ordinary way for the faithful to reconcile themselves with God and the Church” (1484).
Individual and integral here mean an interpersonal encounter between penitent and priest.
Furthermore, the Code of Canon Law affirms: “Individual and integral confession and absolution constitute the only ordinary means by which a member of the faithful conscious of grave sin is reconciled with God and the Church” (960).
The Church has consistently upheld the importance of the personal encounter between the penitent and the priest in the sacrament of Reconciliation. The priest acts in the person of Christ, providing counsel, comfort and absolution to the individual penitent.
The Church acknowledges that there may be rare cases of “physical or moral impossibility” that excuse someone from the ordinary form of individual confession. However, making confession via Zoom or other Internet services, or indeed the telephone, does not fall under this exception.
As the Church teaches at present, such remote confessions would ordinarily fail to fulfil the requirement of the penitent making an “individual, integral confession” to the priest.
The Pontifical Council on Social Communications in 2002 made it clear that “there are no sacraments on the Internet; and even the religious experiences possible there by the grace of God are insufficient apart from real-world interaction with other persons of faith”, an observation that also applies to streamed Masses.
Moreover, there are unresolved questions about the privacy of Internet services. The possible surveillance of electronic devices — be it for advertising, which is happening, or by governments — creates a valid concern about maintaining the seal of the confessional, which is absolute. For that reason, it is also advisable for priest and penitent to leave their cellphones outside the confessional.
Of course, as the Covid pandemic taught us, there are times of extra-ordinary emergencies when face-to-face confession is not possible, and when penitents may waive their right to the privacy of their confession. Such situations require sensitive pastoral solutions which at all times have God’s love and mercy at their centre.
Published in the August 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine
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