Why are more people going to Confession? | July 5, 2026

Confession lines used to be short enough that a priest could sit for an hour and hear only a handful of people. Now we’re seeing the opposite, and it’s not just in one parish or one generation. In this episode, I share what I’ve watched change across Oklahoma and beyond, including the moment it clicked for me at a national youth gathering where priests heard confessions for hours on end and the line still kept moving.

Changing the schedule helps, but it doesn’t create desire on its own. What draws people is something deeper: a need to be healed, to tell the truth, and to hear mercy spoken out loud. When life feels shaky and sin feels heavy, the words of absolution can feel like oxygen. 

************

Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

Transcript

A Movement Of The Spirit

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is Living Catholic with Father Donald. And now your host, Father Don Wolf.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome, Oklahoma, to Living Catholic. I'm Monsignor Don Wolf, rector of the shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. There's something happening. It's all around us. In fact, it's happening all over the world. There's a movement of the spirit taking place, and it's being felt in all manner of places. A while back I described several aspects of this surprising upsurge. We're grateful to see it among us and happy to know it's not simply a matter of news reports and surveys, but something that we can touch and feel among us right now. It's happening. But the few things I touched on last week, the growth in those who are entering the church and increasing number of seminarians in the country, and the explosion of individual ministries and enterprises in our time, they are not an exhaustive list of what's taking place. I'm not a religious sociologist, so I can't give you a rundown on what's happening in every corner of our society or on the doorsteps of all of our parishes, but I can report that there are several other phenomena at work among us that I've seen and touched. They're also worth noting at this time. After all, we are one people. Our hearts are our own, and we respond to the Lord in our own ways, and that individuality goes to the center of ourselves. I mean, just talk to parents as they watch their children grow. They'll tell you that a child has his or own per his or her own personality from about as early as you can see. It doesn't take long before they know their child by his or her characteristics and character. An individual unlike the brothers and sisters in the family, no matter how many there are. Just spend some time in a parish talking to the people there. Listen to them tell their stories and relate the content of their lives. They are individuals. But in the midst of that, we're all gathered into one body. We live as one body, even as we are the sum of our individuality. The currents of life run through the foundations of our intellect and affect and touch all of us. When we're positive and affirmative as a people, our lives individually are touched by it. And when we're burdened and bowed down by the darkness of life, each of us feels it. What touches us collectively also touches us individually. And what we feel in our souls and in our hearts as individual persons also influences and touches the whole society. We're in the game of life together. There are two aspects of religious practice that I've noticed becoming more prominent in our age. Both are surprising to me because my experience of them in my youth was very different. I never imagined they would change or take on a new power of meaning.

Why Confession Used To Be Quiet

SPEAKER_00 3:14

And the first of these is the sacrament of confession. The sacrament of reconciliation has become something different than it used to be. When I was first ordained, we offered confessions in our parishes regularly. True, we weren't very creative in that we offered them at the same time as in previous generations on Saturday afternoon, because that was the traditional time when people went into town and went shopping. In most of our parishes, this was the hour that had been established, and it was the time that we stuck to. Besides, everyone knew that if they wanted to go to confession, that was on the schedule. And it was true in just about every parish across the state. We had confessions on Saturday afternoon. And only a few people came. We'd go to the confessional, sit down behind the screen, and a few people would come in to be shriven. Normally the schedule was for about an hour, and in the sum of time we'd hear confessions for what? Maybe 20 minutes of that hour. This was not only in the parishes I was in, it was the norm for all of the priests I knew. The sacrament was still practiced, it was still offered, it was important to some people, but it was not a stern element in the spiritual lives of most of the people in the parish. Following the renewal of the rite of confession, many priests acted on the suggestion that it might be more congenial to have a time when the whole parish could gather for confessions rather than just dribble in at one time on Saturday. In response to this challenge, pastors put together penance rites and invited several priests to come and hear confessions all at one time in parishes. And this was relatively successful. And we priests in Oklahoma were very committed to helping one another make this accessibility real. We traveled all over the diocese during Advent and Lent to make ourselves available for entire parishes to come together at one time and celebrate the sacrament. But we were always aware that we were touching only the smallest part of the parish. Again, we were grateful for what we could offer, and we wanted to make the celebration of the sacrament as robust and meaningful as we could, but it didn't seem to touch the needs of many. Not only that, most of those who came were on the gray end of the spectrum. We were much more likely to see a person with a walker than with an infant, a grandmother rather than a grandchild, a student of life rather than a student in school. This carried over into the other collective moments we had with our people. I remember when we had the statewide youth conventions at St. Gregory's in the 1980s. Young people from all over would gather for a day of talks and activities, usually culminating with Mass in the late afternoon. As part of their time together, confessions would be offered by the various pastors and monks who were in attendance. And they would go on for maybe 30 minutes at most. We made time for everyone who wanted to go, and they went. With all that, we normally had plenty of time left over. It wasn't considered to be an integral part of the liveliness of the day. The practice of the sacrament of reconciliation was waning quickly and steeply. But things now are changing. The first thing to note is that I'm hearing from all over the diocese that confession lines are long, and most places have been challenged to expand the schedule of times when they offer the sacrament. I visited all around the diocese, and I've noticed that it's more and more common to have moved out of the Saturday afternoon time slot to offer confessions on other days and at other times. As a sacrament, the practice is picking up. It could be the case that younger pastors have begun to realize that the old schedule just doesn't work anymore, and so they finally got busy changing it. They wanted to be more effective, so they actually took the initiative to reach more people. And there's nothing like true interest compared to sullen resignation to get new results. Maybe it was a crop of new pastors with renewed commitment. But certainly it was more than that. You can change the hours of operation, but if people aren't interested, they're not going to come, no matter when you're open. The change in schedule followed a renewal of interest. It was about 20 years ago that I began to notice the signal change in confessional practice. It wasn't

The Youth Shift And Long Lines

SPEAKER_00 7:50

so much at the parish, it was among young people at the National Youth Convention. Over the course of several years, our parish took our youth group to the convention, and when we arrived, the organizer asked priests to commit themselves to hearing confessions throughout the conference. Since we had good leaders and responsible adults, I turned the kids over to them and went to be of service in the confessional. During the several times that I went to the convention, I heard confessions for eight hours a day, pausing only for lunch and dinner. It was amazing. At one point, the entire gigantic room in which perhaps forty of us were present hearing confessions, it was completely full, and the line of those young people going to confession stretched down the hall. Several times in the subsequent conventions, additional rooms were added so that even more priests could be made available. Something obviously had changed. It's not uncommon to see long lines at confessionals these days. Certainly at the shrine and at Sacred Heart, the confessional lines stretch out a long way. Partly this is attributable to the fact that we minister to so many people and we offer a unique service in both places. It's only natural to presume people are going to respond in unique ways. In the course of a week, we hear confessions for a sum of nineteen hours. There are several of us, so it's not a hugely burdensome responsibility, but it is a lot of confessions, and it is a lot of hours to sit behind the screen. But we do offer them, and we offer them because people come. They're seeking reconciliation and they want to grasp what's being offered. In the four years I've been at the shrine, I estimate that I've heard more than 40,000 confessions. Conditioned by my experience from when I was first ordained, never in my life did I imagine that I would have this experience in my priesthood. Having thousands and thousands approach the confessional screen to ask for the Lord's gift of forgiveness is a remarkable experience. I'm glad to offer it and happy to celebrate it with whomever comes. But the offer is only as good as the response. It's the response I'm most intrigued by.

Why Absolution Feels Like Air

SPEAKER_00 10:10

There has been awakened some aspect or portion of our collective experience that cries out for the need to be healed and reconciled. Perhaps there is more preaching about it. Perhaps people read about its benefits more often. I don't find those explanations particularly persuasive. I think it's much more likely there is a religious power moving through people in our day. They're looking for real contact with the gift of God in their lives. They've awakened to the truth that it's not enough simply to sleepwalk through life. They want to feel and hear the promise of God at work amid the foliage of their lives. And they have correctly identified the confessional as one place where this can become available to them. After all, there's nothing quite as bracing as hearing the words, I absolve you of your sins. For those who are searching for some kind of purchase in a world that offers so little footing, finding relief from the plunging truth of sinfulness is like breaking the service to take a breath of air. It's an experience more and more people are looking for and finding. In the long run, it's a validation of one aspect of the doctrinal life of the truth, which is that the church, in its sacraments and liturgical practices, responds to the needs of people. It's possible to shut down what the church does or to redirect it to other understandings. But since the church is responding to the hunger and thirst for holiness that is part of being human, when people don't find it, they'll go looking for it, deny it, or just have it slip out of practice, and people will rediscover it or go in search of it until they do find it. The hunger to have our sins forgiven and the good news made available to us at the deepest and most discouraging levels is one that does not disappear. Even though it is dropped out of favor and became a symbol of being old fashioned, what is offered in confession feeds the soul. As long as souls are hungry, they're going to come looking, and as long as they're looking, they're going to find it in the sacrament. It certainly has not dropped out of style to hear your sins greeted with the promise that God knows and understands and has opened the storehouse of the divine graces to fill the one who has opened his heart. One of the defenses of the integrity of our sacramental practice is the observation that what the sacramental life offers is what we people are starved for. One of the most powerful comments from a sacramental theologian about the development of the various rites and practices in the church was about their origins. In examining the history of how the various sacraments have been celebrated, he said, These rites were not invented, they were discovered. When we're hungry for the encounter with God in the presence of Christ, and we configure our lives to the revelation we have received, we discover how God comes to us. We don't just dream it up. For those who truly want to relieve the burden of guilt and sin, even when their vocabulary for such experiences is underdeveloped and underexplored, they will eventually stumble into the experience of the confessional. When they do, they'll have the same revelation as so many have had in the last generation, which is there's something there. Not only is it merely there, it's for them. This is the heart of the experience that we're noting in our world today. The good news has not gone out of style, nor has it become irrelevant. It has been covered over and deprecated, it has been diminished and dismissed, but it hasn't ever disappeared. Father Ronald Rollheiser gave a great image for this in one of his talks. One group of brothers from his religious order lived in a house in which there was a bamboo thicket outside their front door. They wanted to expand their driveway, and the thicket was in the way. So getting out their machetes and shovels, they eventually cut down the thicket and began to dig out the roots. But it was a lot tougher thing to do than they thought. After digging down almost three feet and cutting the growth down to there, they gave up, thinking that they had done enough to remove it. They covered it with fill and then poured concrete over it. And everything was fine for about a year. Then the concrete began to bulge. The bamboo wouldn't stay dormant. It was growing. The good news is something like that. No matter what you do, it can't be denied that it is a gift to humanity. It won't stay trimmed or repressed. Given this truth, it's no wonder people line up at the confessional. It's part of what it means to be a human being, to be a believer, and to be hungry to find Christ in your life.

The Camino Revival Explained

SPEAKER_00 15:17

The other aspect of our contemporary experience that has surprised me is the amazing excitement about walking the Camino. In just about every venue, from almost every corner of the world, and in just about every context, people tell me about their experience on the Camino, their plans to go, or their desire to make their desire to make plans. It's not the fact people walk the miles or enjoy their arrival. It's that they do this with such enthusiasm and with such brio. I never had imagined it would be so. In 1985, I visited Compostela in Spain. This is the traditional terminal point of the traditional Camino de Santiago. While I was there, I visited a bit with the locals, who told me that the number of people who came there from walking the way was almost negligible. This was 1985. It had been popular as a route of pilgrimage and devotion from the time of the Middle Ages, but by the mid-80s it had dwindled to almost nothing. Maybe a few people a week came to town as part of this devotion. And why would it remain popular? It had developed through the Middle Ages as a walking trip from Paris to Santiago, both centers of devotion and piety, beginning with the visit of the Cathedral of Our Lady and the Chapel of the Crown of Thorns, both in Paris, and then a passage through the countryside to visit the tomb of Saint James, Santiago. Pilgrimages were an important part of the piety of the Middle Ages, the most important and the most notable one being the trip to the Holy Land, to visit and to pray at the sites of the life of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels. The Muslim occupation of the holy places made this impossible, or at least much more difficult, and so the various smaller pilgrimage journeys substituted for the great journey. The Camino was part of this. By the mid-80s, though, the energy for this kind of travel had waned. There were so many other things in the world to see, not to mention that the Holy Land was open, mostly. Walking the trails winding through the Pyrenees and staying at the rude accommodations along the way, praying at the chapels and the churches scattered there seemed a very small bite of a very large apple. Plus, it was all very interior and personal, not at all conformal to the preaching and preoccupations of so many of the clergy who longed to see the world transformed by belief in Christ. What's walking 20 miles a day and praying compared to adjucating to end hunger or protesting the unfairness of segregation? The Camino and the thirst for pilgrimage dropped out of favor, and in a big way. But now it's come roaring back. I can't say when the tipping point came, only to note that I looked up one day and suddenly everyone was interested in going to Spain to be a part of the experience of walking the Camino. In fact, I never heard the term outside of Spain or beyond the history books until it burst on the scene about 20 years ago. From obscurity and obsolescence to a phenomenon of our culture, going on pilgrimage to the tomb of the apostle has become written into the travel agenda of every serious person. It's been remarkable. And, I hasten to add, this interest and excitement has spilled over into the many different venues of pilgrimage experiences. Did you know you can walk a Camino of St. Francis with three different routes, all leading to or from Assisi? I didn't know there was such a thing until four years ago. Had it turned out it had been around for hundreds of years, but it has now revived from its doldrums like the one in Spain. The pilgrimage centers in England, especially at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, has become newly popular as well. Visiting there a few years ago, I found out that the local parish has had to accommodate their new popularity, which they've done by buying and working to restore what will be a new parish hall. The building that they're remodeling was built in the 12th century. While I was there, the local pastor took us to see a church built in honor of Our Lady by the survivors of the Battle of Agincourt, which was in 1415. History lives, especially around those pilgrimage spots. The most amazing part of this revival is that it has happened among those who are not especially religious. In the movie about walking the Camino, starring Martin Sheen called The Way, he plays the part of a detached adult who gave up on the faith years before. He's surrounded by his companions on the journey who are there for a whole variety of reasons. None of them are particularly religious or are looking for a particularly uplifting Catholic experience. All of them are looking for something, even those who can't decide what it might be. Going on pilgrimage is so that they might find something. All of this has happened also without official promotion or emphasis. Nobody in the Vatican thought it would be better if people began to imitate what their forebears did in the Middle Ages. There was no one who prescribed this as the future and growth of the church in the 21st century. Certainly there was no plan to make a pilgrimage the connection point for those who were distant from the life of the church or from religion altogether. It seems to have arisen on its own, without plans or procedures or proposals, which makes it all the more curious. As in the comments about sacramental rituals, it's something that seems to have been discovered, not invented. There is something in us that cries out for the enactment of the journey, of the progress from one thing to another as a way of encountering what is real and important in life. We want to know that we're on the road to somewhere, even if it's up and down the mountain trails in northern Spain. The Camino is the discovery that this little taste might be the reminder of the satisfaction that awaits. There are a couple of aspects of walking the Camino also that are particularly attractive. The first is that it begins and it ends. That seems like a pretty minor point. But one of the most discouraging parts of any talk about the life of the spirit is that it's for all lifelong. If you're not ready for a life decision all of the way to the horizon, a few miles or a few hundred. Or a helpful beginning. Not only that, you know when you've arrived, the cathedral greets you at the end of the journey, welcoming all of the pilgrims, whatever the purpose or proposal of their journey has been. The second is that the journey is the destination. That is, walking the way is the reason to go. The difference between a pilgrimage and a trip is that you go on the trip in order to get where you're going. Traveling is the interlude between setting out and arriving. On a pilgrimage, the trip is the reason to go. Arriving is important so that the travel has its ending, but the going is the reason to set out. And the third is that it's hard. It can be extremely difficult and include walking the 900 miles from Paris to Santiago. It can be less difficult and include portions and sections at different times, maybe only a hundred miles or so, or it can be fifty or fewer miles, whatever the pilgrim pilgrim wants it to be. But it's not easy. And that's the point. To begin is to face the prospect of accomplishing something, of putting oneself to the test, of going the distance. In our humanity, these seem to be aspects we never escape or get beyond. We want to begin and end. We want to fill our lives with accomplishment, and we need to test ourselves. It's no wonder this new enthusiasm has arisen among us. It's because it has to. There was a remarkable article about this posted just the other day by a Baptist theologian who is reflecting on rituals and traditions. He called it the physiology of faith. He meant you don't come to belief without being involved in belief, and the greatest involvement is a full body experience. If he keeps up that line of thinking, he'll be a Catholic in no time. It seems he's already one, he just doesn't know it yet. Maybe he's walked the Camino to come to the physiology of faith. That it has happened in the church is a hopeful sign. Again, the church is not the invention of careful pastors who thought having an organization would be good for the future. The church is an outgrowth of the life of Christ among us. Jesus came to restore the humanity lost in the fall from grace. It's no wonder that if we begin looking for the truths arising from our human experience, we find it. We find all of them in the church. In fact, it's the greatest testimony of the life of the church, of the life of the church that there is. It was the great pastor Tertullian who said, the soul is naturally Christian. It would appear, looking out over the travel brochures and movie titles, that things haven't changed. Things are happening, and they're happening now, and they're happening here. Back in just a moment. We live

Prisoners Of Expectations Poem

SPEAKER_00 25:26

prisoners of expectations, chained to opinions and habits plenty, conformed to the gulag of exact specification, governed by others' passions and intensity. Social animals, we live in a matrix intricate in all of its permutations, often upside down in its asymmetrics, condemned by its twisted refutation. But can we risk, dare the impossible, and be the self we've been given to be? Living through all our days unfalsible, through the fog of arrogance, can we see? True, only if there's an anchor unmoved, lashing us to a place and to this time, such that our passions cool and we are behooved to settle here where our crudities refine. That's prisoners of expectations.

Archives And Closing Invitation

SPEAKER_00 26:52

This includes our opportunity to continue to penetrate into some of the depth of what it means to be living Catholic. I also want to remind everybody that it's possible to go to our website of Oklahoma Catholic Broadcasting OCB and find back programs from our uh from the archives here. Uh it's fairly easy to navigate. If you go to the archives button on the website, you can find the various programs that we've had over the previous years. As a total, there's nearly 700 programs from Living Catholic, all of which can be available to those who go looking for them. So if you have a particular question or simply want to know what we've been doing over these last many years, it's possible to find them on the Oklahoma Catholic Broadcasting website. I hope that in the weeks to come, you can join us as we continue to explore what it means to be Living Catholic.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okr.org.