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"Bless me, father, for I have sinned."
—Catholic Sacrament of Penance * also present in other religions, but see below
A scene where a character confesses things to a priest, even if they're (implicity or explicitly) not Catholic, but also if they are.
This doesn't have to specifically be in a confessional. Deathbed confessions (of the religious type) should also be included, and any other situation in which a confession of this nature is made to a priest.
As a literary device, there could almost be a subtrope for cases in which the character discovers (usually after making their confession) that the "priest" is not actually a priest. Sometimes they don't discover it. See Bad Habits for impersonation of religious figures generally.
Definitely related to Christianity is Catholic. Lutherans have the option of private confessions, too, though it's seldom exercised. And they don't have formal confessionals.
The booth itself is so very useful to the screenwriter for a number of well-worn reasons:
- Similar to to placing a character on a psychiatrist's couch - it allows the character to spout emotional or narrative exposition, speedily cluing the audience, while often implying a certain amount of religious angst into the bargain. You don't even have to write characterisation for your protagonist's confidant - a disembodied "Yes, my child?" will do.
- It places the confessor - priest or not - in a position of great psychical or very real power (blackmail, intrigue) over the one who confesses and makes for tales of cruel abuse and inspiring integrity.
- Can create interesting ethical dilemmas for the priest: when a criminal confesses a crime, usually a murder, to a priest, the information can't be passed on to the police because it's forbidden to divulge the content of a confession. If a priest does repeat a confession, he is excommunicated from the church and has to confess to the Pope in order to be forgiven. See Confess In Confidence.
- The element of concealment allows for shock reveals.
- The association with the taboo and ''naughtiness' supplies gag material.
- Is a good way to round a character otherwise seen as steadfastly upright and moral. His confession can reveal that he, too, deliberately does things he knows to be wrong and subsequently regrets them, but that those things are simply smaller and less frequent than those of the average person. This makes the point that even the best, most upright people sometimes do evil, but without actually undermining the idea that we should admire characters who do good selflessly.
Examples
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Real Priest
Anime and Manga
- The yaoi comic Little Lost Lamb has a storyline where a young priest is put on confessional duty and finds himself taking confessions from a young man he's attracted to. The man confesses being attracted to other men and masturbating, and the priest encourages him towards demonstrating such acts before God (including things that should not be done with icons EVER), before finally revealing himself for happy sexy times.
- In the manga Fist of the Blue Sky, which is a prequel to Fist of the North Star, the priest at the local Corrupt Church is only too happy to dole out forgiveness in his confessional in exchange for fat stacks of cash. Unfortunately for him, the protagonist considers his behavior to negate the protection of clergy.
- The protagonist in Osamu Tezuka's suspense thriller manga MW is a Catholic Priest who is wracked with guilt because he is unable to tell the police about the crimes that arch villain Yuki Michio has confessed (read: bragged) to him about, including blackmail, robbery, murder, and a plot to steal an American chemical weapon and use it to destroy the world. This despite the fact that he has already broken his priestly vows countless times by taking said arch villain as his gay lover.
Comic Books
- Hyperion seeks guidance from a priest in a confessional in Supreme Power. The priest's words give him an epiphany... Causing him to storm the US Army base he was kept in before he was assigned a foster family, looking for answers. This was so awesome for the way it ended: "You've got this weird tan, father!" - Hyperion's "flash vision" had flared up briefly during the confession, giving the priest tan lines in the pattern of the booth's screen.
- Subverted in the original Sin City in which Marv confesses, but it turns out the priest is someone he is looking for and so he interrogates the priest and then kills him.
- In the movie, played by author Frank Miller. He's in heaven with his whores now.
- There's an independent comic out there where a gangster confesses to assaulting and disfiguring a priest a long time ago, among many other sins. Guess who was in the other side of the booth.
- In The Punisher graphic novel Welcome Back Frank, a priest snaps and turns into a brutal vigilante killer from hearing way too many people bragging about their sins rather than confessing them.
Fan Fiction
- DJ Croft in Neon Exodus Evangelion does this, kind of, at an Episcopalian church. He isn't seeking penitence so much as religious reassurance that he's not trying to thwart the divine plan; the priest reassures him, saying, "...if [God] wished to destroy us with the Second Impact, He would have done it right the first time."
Film
- In A League of Their Own, before a big game the team goes to a church and everyone goes to confession. After Mae's, however, the priest is in a great state of distress and Mae looks very pleased with herself.
- The film version of Amadeus uses the Framing Device of Salieri's confession to a priest. (The play version just talks to the audience).
- The Godfather Part III has Michael Corleone confessing his sins to a priest. The priest considers Michael so evil that this is what he has to say: "Your sins are terrible. It is just that you suffer. Your life could be redeemed, but I know you don't believe that. You will not change."
- Note that a precondition for the Sacrament of Confession is sincere sorrow and repentance, and willingness to change. A priest has the right to refuse confession to someone who does not appear to be repentant.
- Though, as one in training, I have always been taught that in real life priests should always forgive people unless it is really obvious they aren't sorry; since it doesn't work if you lie, no matter what the priest does.
- Pertaining to this, while the priest does chastise Michael for his lifetime of evil, Michael is visibly sorrowful for his sins, and the priest gives him absolution.
- In the Movie Adaptation of Ghost Rider, Blackheart goes into a church and says, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned... I've sinned a lot."
- The confessional seal was a major plot-point in the movie Priest. However, as Roger Ebert pointed out in a review, the plot had a major hole: the criminal's victim reveals the crimes in the confessional, so the confessional seal is in place... but when the criminal reveals them, he's nowhere near the confessional, yet the priest still acts like his hands are tied.
- Agent Smecker in The Boondock Saints goes to a confessional whilst very hung over. He realized that the McManus brothers were only killing bad guys who would otherwise get away and asked the priest's advice on whether he should help them or turn them in. The priest reluctantly gives Smecker his blessing, but only because Rocco has a gun to his head (while Connor is holding a gun to Rocco's head at the same time; the brothers do not like it when anyone hurts a member of the clergy, and Rocco had originally wanted to kill Smecker because he perceived him to be a liability, which neither of the brothers wanted either).
- In A Bronx Tale, the main character (who is 10 years old at the time) witnessed a murder but lied so as not to implicate the Mafia boss who had done it. He confessed his lie to the Priest, who (it is implied) understood who the murderer was. The Priest gave him 10 Hail Marys as penance.
Calogero: For a murder rap? That ain't bad, Father!
Priest: What'd you say?!!
- At the end of The Exorcist, Father Karras commits suicide to get rid of the demon, who has recently possessed him. Father Dyer arrives just in time to take his confession, but Karras is unable to speak and just squeezes Dyer's hand as a confirmation that he repents his sins
- Wrong sacrament - that was Final Unction/Anointing of the Sick/Last Rites.
- Last Rites usually includes Confession. Whether communicating in something other than speech for that purpose is a question so complicated, folks actually get paid to figure out the answer.
- Soylent Green. It's implied that a priest heard the truth about Soylent Green from the murdered businessman, and he appears traumatised by this revelation. The priest is later murdered by the assassin, who shoots him during confessional.
- In Dracula 2000, Mina Van Helsing goes to see a priest who is a old childhood friend (played by Nathan Fillion), to confess the weird dreams she's been having about a strange man Dracula and to ask about her mother's dying confession. The orginal Abraham Van Helsing is her father, and since he's been using Dracula's blood to live this long, she's part vampire as well.
- In Short Circuit 2, Johnny Five finds himself in an unintentional confession, talking to somebody behind some funny window. When the priest realizes he's talking to a robot, he angrily ejects him from the church, not realizing that he's talking to a sentient AI.
"You can't confess by remote control! Now out! Get out!"
- In the Grindhouse trailer for Machete, the titular Machete goes to confessional to visit his brother who is now a Priest to enlist his help in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Priest: I took a vow of peace, and now you want me to help you kill all these men?
Machete: Yes, bro. I mean, Father.
Priest: ...I'll see what I can do.
- Parodied in Hudson Hawk. A nun who's an agent of an undercover Vatican organization goes to confession with her superior, a priest.
- The movie Heaven Help Us, set at a Catholic high school, has The Bully advising the other boys on how to cut down on their penance by reducing the number of sins they confess to manageable but still believable levels, and then adding one lie to the list.
- Played with in 40 Days and 40 Nights - the protagonist goes to confession not to seek repentance for his sins, but simply to discuss his sexual hang-ups with the priest who happens to be his brother.
- Appears in The Conversation.
- Subverted in In Bruges: in a flashback, Ray is seen going to confession and confessing to the crime of murder. What the priest doesn't realize is that he's confessing to the murder he's about to commit - of the priest himself.
- In The Mask of Zorro, one of Zorro's allies is a priest, and they use the confessional to collude. After one such meeting just prior to the final battle, the priest asks if Zorro needs to confess as long as he's there, but he declines, saying, "Where I'm going, I'll just have to come back."
- There's a Johnny Knoxville movie where he's in a confessional and tells the Priest that he's entering in the Special Olympics to pay off a debt with the prize money. The Priest then punches him in the face, through the lattice.
- Since the eponymous character is a Catholic priest, it is no surprise that the books and films of the Don Camillo series regularly feature confessional scenes.
- In For Your Eyes Only, James Bond enters a confessional, says "Forgive me father, for I have sinned." The priest is Q, who responds "That's putting it mildly, 007!"
- In the Made-for-TV Movie Soulkeeper, the two thief protagonists are pitted against Simon Magus, an Evil Sorcerer who specializes in corrupting souls. A spirit ally tells the two that they need to cleanse their souls to avoid being corrupted by Magus. So they go to a confessional and confess every sin they ever committed in their entire lives. The priest needs aspirin by the time they are done.
- At the end of The Soundof Music, the two nuns confess to the abbess that they stole the wires from the Nazis' cars, thus preventing them from pursuing the von Trapps. The abbess just smiles.
Literature
- G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown (a Catholic priest and Amateur Sleuth) routinely takes confession from the criminals he apprehends. He also hints that much of his knowledge of the criminal underworld comes from the confessions he has heard in his duties as a priest.
- The protagonist of Angela's Ashes regularly goes to confession as part of his Irish Catholic upbringing.
- Subverted in Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, there's an interpolated tale where a woman has to pretend to complete piety as part of a revenge plot. The Marquis falls madly in love with her (which is basically the point of the plot), and bribes her confessor to share her secrets and influence her in his favor.
- Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton starts with a deathbed confession. The fact that the confession occurred is actually more important to the plot than its content — while priests in Walton's setting are technically allowed to take confessions, it ruins their reputation if anyone ever finds out about it (as it's associated with the pseudo-Catholic Old Believers). Oh, and they're all dragons.
- In an old novel about the Wandering Jew set primarily in France (if I remember correctly, it may actually have been titled "The Wandering Jew," and may or may not have been originally written in French), the evil Jesuits plant their agents as confessors to the rich and powerful to gather blackmail and other useful information.
- Literary example: the entire plot of Ann Radcliffe's The Italian hinges upon this trope—unsurprising, for a melodramatic (though well-written) Gothic romance/murder mystery.
- A Prayer for the Dying, a novel by Jack Higgins (later turned into a movie) is about an ex-IRA terrorist whose contract killing is witnessed by a priest. Rather than kill this witness, the killer simply goes round to his church and confesses, knowing the priest will have to keep silent. Unfortunately the crime boss who set up the assassination doesn't believe that the priest will keep his mouth shut, leading to an inevitable conflict.
- In the sci-fi spoof novel Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison, Bill goes to see the ship's chaplain, who also doubles as the laundry officer as there's not much call for a chaplain on a warship. Bill says that he thinks one of his crewmates is a spy. The chaplain downplays Bill's suspicions and promises to keep the confession a secret, but as soon as it's time to become the laundry officer again he calls the MPs.
- In the sixth Pretty Little Liars book, Emily receives a picture clue from A showing Wilden coming out of a confession booth with the caption "Guess we all have things to feel guilty about, huh?"
- Stephen King's story Mute has the traveling-salesman protagonist confessing to a priest about what happened after he picked up a hitchhiker and started venting about his wife's marital and financial transgressions.
- In Purple Hibiscus, there is a scene with one of these. It's an interesting insight into Kambili's mind: she confesses to, among other things, eating Cornflakes so that her painkiller will work.
- Features occasionally in the Outlander series, appropriately enough as the majority of characters are 18th century Scottish. The most memorable incident is an instance in which Jamie, needing to divert suspicion for some reason, claims to be in need of confession in the company of several government agents who are noticeably uncomfortable with the subject. Knowing full well they're listening in, he goes on to confess to the priest a sin of lust— describing in detail the sight of a shapely young woman bobbing up and down as she's churning butter. Unfortunately, the protagonist (his wife, and none too young) recognises that it's not just her, but also her butter churn. (Jamie later admits IIRC that he simply wanted something to throw the Regulators off, and he couldn't admit to theft or sodomy, as he might have to do business with them later.)
- In his non-fiction book on the Iron Cross motorcycle gang Wheels of Rage, author Kurt Saxon tells of how Paranoid George (infamous even among the bikers for his bizarre behavour) goes to sleep in a confession booth and wakes up to hear a woman describing what she did with her boyfriend in lurid terms. Thinking she's coming on to him he naturally propositions her, only to be hauled out by outraged priests, who are startled to find the booth occupied by a crazed outlaw biker dressed as a bat.
- The very first Don Camillo story is called "The Confession"; Peppone confesses to Don Camillo that he hit him over the head with a club. It would neither be the last story featuring a confession, nor the last time someone used that gambit on Don Camillo, despite the way it turned out in this one.
Live-Action TV
Video Games
- One of the errands for the second day in Postal 2 is to confess.
Postal Dude: Bless me, Father, for I have really sinned. Really. I'm not kidding here. Big sinner. Yep.
Priest: Did you drop an offering in the box?
Postal Dude: Yes.
Priest: Then you are forgiven, my son. Next!
- The beginning of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, where 47 confesses his sins to the priest of the church he's living in. Said priest is kidnapped right after, forcing 47 to take appropriate measures.
Web Comics
- In the first true battle in the webcomic Concession, the anti-religious Joel casually walks into a confession booth and confesses his sins (murdering families, forcing a friend to commit pedophilia, etc.) before trying to kill Father Timothy with his alluded-to dark spiritual power. Oddly enough, the Father also has great spiritual power, and they fight to a psychic standstill. While separated by the confessional wall. Matt had also used the confessional earlier, looking for advice on his worries about his sexuality and his budding relationship with Joel. Father Tim warned him to stay away from Joel, but he didn't listen.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons featured Homer discovering confessionals after talking to a Catholic priest. After going through it, he's informed the priest can't really help if he's not Catholic.
- Subverted in "Who Shot Mister Burns? Part 2" in which Smithers, fully convinced it was he, partakes in a confessional (despite not being Catholic) with Wiggum at the other end. After arresting him, Wiggum notes that "I should do this more often."
- In the SouthPark episode "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?", the boys (excluding Kyle) are being prepared for their First Communion; this includes making one's first confession. And Cartman has so many things to confess that Father Maxi loses his temper and rips through the confessional partition to assault him.
- Then later Father Maxi is caught having sex (with an adult female) in the confessional.
Fake Priest
Anime and Manga
- The plot of Bitter Virgin begins with a girl confessing in a church. She says that she isn't Christian but she hopes the priest hears her out anyway. He does. She confesses that she has been raped and had an abortion. The "priest," whom she can't see, is actually a classmate who wanted to hear an embarrassing little confession to laugh at. Needless to say, he is shocked and regrets having tricked her.
- In a flashback in Part 6 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the then-altar boy (later Corrupt Priest) Enrico Pucci takes a woman's confession and learns that years ago she switched out her own stillborn son for another baby born the same day. The child she took was none other than Enrico's twin brother. And then later, he finds out said brother is the guy who's been dating his sister. It gets worse...
- The sequence in Mahou Sensei Negima! where the girls don't do any actual confessing and use it like an advice column. The sequence serves as a major source of humor because while the woman on the other side of the booth is an actual nun, she definitely isn't qualified and isn't supposed to be there in the first place.
- The first chapter of Blade Of The Immortal has an assassin use this to kill criminals.
- Wolfwood of Trigun carries around a "portable confessional" with him (which is basically a box he puts on their head)—and charges people for it!
Film
- Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet plays with this: in the scene in which Hamlet finds Claudius praying, Claudius kneels at a confessional (sans priest); Hamlet slips into the priest's side of the confessional and contemplates killing his uncle.
- Cinema Paradiso: The main character, though not a priest, sneaks into the priest side, and the girl he likes comes in the other side to make confession.
- The Van Helsing movie also had an agent of the church meet his superior in a confessional.
- In the John Carpenter film In the Mouth of Madness, insane author Sutter Cane discusses the power of faith over reality with the protagonist while they sit on opposite sides of a confessional.
- Happens twice in the Mariachi trilogy:
- Sleepers. As children the protagonists hide in a booth to hear the confessions. Their dreams are answered when a woman comes in to confess to an affair, but she shocks them by concluding, "Thanks for listening, kids. I know you'll keep this to yourselves." It's then the protagonists realise they hadn't pulled across the grill concealing the confessor from the priest.
- Parodied in For Your Eyes Only. When James Bond goes into a confessional to meet with Q, who is disguised as a Greek Orthodox priest.
Bond: "Forgive me father, for I have sinned..."
"Priest": "That's putting it mildly, 007!"
- Another parody, this time in Sleeper (1973). After being captured by the Evil government, Miles Monroe goes to confession. He admits to various minor acts of disloyalty and asks for forgiveness. The priest is revealed to be a robot, which flashes "Absolved" on its screen and delivers a Kewpie doll.
- In George Lucas's early Dystopia THX-1138, confessions are made to pictures that apparently have tape recorders behind them. One manages a long speech about why buying things is a holy act; the rest play short recorded lines like "Could you be more specific?"
- The Mask of Zorro
- Nuns on the Run
- In The Seventh Seal, the knight goes to confession to discuss his doubt in God, as well as mentioning that he is playing Chess with Death, explaining his next move. Guess who turns out to be in the booth?
- In the horrible Joe Don Baker movie Final Justice, a fugitive tries to evade cop Joe Don by dressing as a priest. It might have worked, except a distraught old woman then begged him to hear her confession. His attempts to get it over with ("Sure... whatever you want,") only draw more attention to himself.
- The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. Parodied by Moriarty's coin operated robot version.
Literature
- The Sicilian, a novel by Mario Puzo. After the bandit Guiliano foils one assassination attempt, The Mafia send a hitman disguised as a priest, who tries to get Guiliano alone to "hear his confession". Guiliano laughs and points out that his sins are all over the newspapers, so what's the point of confessing them in private? His bodyguard then searches the priest's effects and finds a silenced pistol. The priest assumes that he'll be released unharmed, as the previous assassins were, but Guiliano is infuriated by this violation of the confessional and tells the hitman he's got thirty seconds to make his peace with God before he dies (in the movie the fake priest is crucified and dumped at the Big Bad's door).
Live-Action TV
- A flashback in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed Drusilla, when she was human, going in to confess for having visions. Unfortunately for her, Angelus had just killed the priest, and so impersonated him. He later turned Drusilla into a vampire.
- Father Ted did a gag where a woman went in to confession to clarify a medical matter. She'd used the morning after pill and, since the Catholic Church considered that an abortion, she had to pay a pretty steep penance. However, the Irish Medical Council had recently ruled that the morning after pill was actually a form of contraception, and so she presumably had a lot of surplus penance. The priest angrily waved her away, chiding her for her suggestion that the Catholic Church and Irish Medical Council were in cahoots. Then we got a shot of the priest, who was wearing a stethoscope.
- One season 2 episode of Life on Mars has Sam tracking down a bomber that his department believes is an Irish immigrant. Sam slips into a confessional and attempts to unburden his fears that his prolonged coma in 2007 is affecting his judgement in 1973.
- But he was sort of faking it (or was he?) because he knew the suspect was hiding in the confessional.
- Shameless: Frank sleeps in a confessional, and wakes up to Mimi describing, in detail, how she took a contract out on her husband.
- In Carnivŕle (season one, episode twelve), Ben confesses to Scudder his murder of a man for which he was temporarily incarcerated, thinking him to be a priest.
- In one episode of Forever Knight, Nick is staking out a confessional. Schanke (his partner) goes into the other side, confesses, and figures out that Nick's in the other side. Nick maintains the perfect Irish accent and reiterates his command to say his Hail Marys.
- A storyline on One Life to Live had a character working for a notorious gangster, in reality working for the police to obtain information for them. He goes to confession to admit to his duplicity and his fear of reprisal. After the man leaves the confessional, the other door opens. . .and the gangster steps out, having heard everything and knowing that his trusted right-hand man is betraying him.
- Alphonse Gangitano visits ones when he is thinking of his career as a gangster, makes the priest smile at a comment about how long it's been since his last confession, then loses his nerve and leaves. He later returns, wanting to try and find out if he is a monster because of the vicious Kings Street brawl.
- The Borgias again; in addition to the sort of legitimate version above, Cardinal della Rovere gets caught in a confessional with an assassin who's spying on him - so he stabs the man through the confessional screen, right in the eye!
Professional Wrestling
- The WWE actually subverted this at least once. The storyline was that Booker T was dodging "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and wouldn't give him a match, so Austin would follow Booker around through his everyday life and beat him up wherever he caught up to him, since he couldn't do it in the ring. So, we get to see Booker T in confession, pouring his soul out... and guess who happens to be masquerading as the priest? Cue one of the most sacrilegious brawls in WWE history, as Stone Cold and Booker T fight all around the church, breaking various holy objects over each other's head and shoulders.
Stand-Up Comedy
- George Carlin, on his 1972 album Class Clown, mentions that, as a child, he could do spot-on impressions of all the priests at his school, and evinces a wistful regret that he never got a chance to sneak into a confessional and perform them. He presumes, reasonably enough, that any confessions he heard, as long as they were sincere (and the assigned penances performed), would have been legitimate, and the sinners duly forgiven.
Web Comnics
Western Animation
Video Games
Mixed
- This trope pops up a lot in Chrono Crusade fanfiction, with both a real priest on the other side and someone that isn't. There are scenes with everything from Chrono, er, having "fun" with Rosette while she's in a confessional with Father Remington, to Chrono going into a confessional and being shocked to discover the priest on the other side is really Aion. Occasionally the trope is played straight, too, as part of Christianity is Catholic embellishments (even though the denomination of the Order is kept pretty vague in canon).
- Fulbert from French Sci Fi novel Malevil brings confession back to the After the End World War III survivors. It's almost certain he was not an ordained priest from before the war, but he clearly has Became The Mask and is now a very real and dangerous priest. As such, Emmanuel refuses to confess to him, and Fulbert is not pleased.
- The song "Confessional" by Raine Maida plays with this trope with the singer listing off a series of transgressions with a chorus that begins "these are my confessions" with Ominous Chanting in the background. The song doesn't actually state if the singer is actually in a confessional, however, despite the religious motifs.
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