Making confession cool? DC churches hope so

by Kaitlin | February 22, 2007 at 03:43 pm

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The most interesting thing about this story to me is the fact that people are choosing to go elsewhere for their confessional needs, specifically online. This comes just one day after christian1021 posted a link to Postsecret here on NowPublic--one of the sites in question. So people are confessing, it seems, just not to the right place...according to the church.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - The Archdiocese of Washington is starting a wave of advertisements designed to get Roman Catholics back into confessional booths.

The marketing offensive, which includes billboards, signs posted on buses and subway trains, radio spots and 100,000 brochures to be distributed, uses the slogan "The Light is On for You" in an attempt to curb falling confession rates in Catholic churches, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The media blitz was planned to coincide with Lent, the Catholic period of reflection and penitence that began Wednesday and lasts until Easter. During that period, all 140 churches in the archdiocese will be open Wednesday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for confession. The move marks the first large-scale public project by Donald Wuerl, who was recently appointed archbishop, the Post said.

The drop in confession rates has been attributed to a number of factors, including the availability of anonymous Internet forums for people to confess their guilt.

"People go online and confess all sorts of things, but they don't do it in a way of apology. And it's very hard to verbalize what you did wrong," archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs told the Post.