Illicit Confessionals

Most parish Churches in the USA (and the bishops who oversee them) are breaking Canon Law with the exclusive "confessional rooms" in those churches, exposing their priests and people to scandal.

Can. 964 §1. The proper place to hear sacramental confessions is a church or oratory.
§2. The conference of bishops is to establish norms regarding the confessional chair (sedem confessionalem); it is to take care, however, that there are always confessional chairs (sedes confessionales) with a fixed grate between the penitent and the confessor in an open place so that the faithful who wish to can use them freely.
§3. Confessions are not to be heard outside a confessional chair without a just cause.

This thought came to mind when an Opus Dei priest recently asked if I would hear confessions for him at a certain parish because it does not have a proper confessional, which I declined, explaining that I too am bound to the canonical norm of an open confessional with a screen!

Protecting God's priests!

I like the language of the law which speaks of "the confessional chair" (sedes confessionales) not a "confessional room!" The only proper room for confessions, according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, therefore, is the parish Church! The "confessional" is no room at all, just a chair with a fixed grill between the confessor and the penitent. In any case, every church must have a traditional confessional with an inseparable wall between priest and penitent. That is the norm!