Here’s something I am genuinely very curious about and concerned by. My intention here isn’t to slam or disparage any priests. And I hope no one misunderstands me or my motives, but I see this as a very real problem and an enormous cause for concern.

I truly do not know a single woman who has confessed sexual sins and not been met with cruelty, harshness, or much worse, at least once. Among those same women, all of them have suffered abuse/neglect from their fathers/male authority figures or were have been sexually abused.

When you are the victim of abuse, the prospect of making yourself vulnerable is always terrifying. When you make yourself vulnerable to a priest and are met with further abuse, it can send you spiraling. These aren’t hypotheticals. These are real people, real, unsafe situations.

Unless you know the priest you are going to well, & that is a luxury most people don’t have, it is a crapshoot who you are met with in the confessional. How can redemption be contingent upon you placing yourself in the occasion of abuse, retraumatization, manipulation, & cruelty?

How can we tell people that confessing their mortal sins is necessary, but then give them no guarantee that they can do so safely? And before someone accuses me of being overly dramatic or speaking only of exceptions to the rule, I’m not.

I have lived in catholic circles my whole life. This is not the exception. Women being retraumatized in the confessional only to never return to church again is not some fluke thing that occurs at a negligible rate. Of that I am certain.