Every year I get e-mails about priests who will not hear confessions during the Triduum, especially on Good Friday. They say the directions in the Missal forbid confessions.
Errr...
Huh?
Now, I might be mistaken here, but even I, having been raised in perhaps the most "liberal" of all the dioceses of Canada ... even I know that you're supposed to go to confession on Good Friday, even if it is the only day of the year you go.
Did something happen in Novusweirdoland while I was looking the other way?
What a bunch of freaks!
Sheesh, what's next?
Are they going to tell us next that we're not supposed to pray for the conversion of the perfidious Jews to the Holy Faith?
Well, I was raised in the (very liturgically correct until ~1969) Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
ReplyDeleteWe were NEVER told that we should go to Confession on Good Friday. We were told to obey the law of the Church requiring Communion during the Easter season.
(...to confess to one's pastor annually; to receive Holy Communion at least once a year and that around the feast of Easter. --New Advent summation)
I think that the Confession 'requirement' may have had to do with the law of receiving Communion--the timing would certainly make sense.
There used to be a rubric in the Missal (1970) which said, roughly, "No celebration of sacraments on Good Friday". Of course, what it meant was, "no Masses, no Ordinations, no Marriages, no Confirmations, only emergency Baptisms". In other words no _celebrations_. But anyway, some people took it literally.
ReplyDeleteNow, of course, it explicitly says "except Penance and Anointing".
(Rubric #1 for Feria VI in Passione Domini.)
AM
(Hilary, do you still read e-mail?)
Yes, Sorry Andrew. I've sent your little note around to some of the gang here but haven't had much response yet from the people in the know, but that is probably only because most of them are away just at the moment.
ReplyDelete