I go to confession regularly, at least once a month, and I find that I am confessing largely the same sins each time. Is this an abuse of the sacrament?
No, it is not an abuse of the sacrament. Let me explain.
Each person is a unique individual, with a particular age, temperament and personality, strengths and weaknesses, family situation, work situation, degree of health, etc. Within this situation the person will naturally experience particular temptations and weaknesses that will be basically the same day after day, week after week. That is normal. Others will experience different temptations and tendencies.
We priests see this, and we experience it ourselves. Each person will tend to confess the same sins from one confession to the next, with some different ones from time to time. That is normal and unavoidable, because they are the same person in the same situations.
One person will confess especially repeated outbursts of anger, another overeating, another abuse of alcohol, another selfishness, another wasting time, another sins against chastity, and so on. Naturally, the person will have a combination of sins, but these will be more or less the same ones in each confession.
What would be an abuse of the sacrament is if they confessed the same sins because they were not really sorry and were not making an effort to struggle against them.
We know that true sorrow by its very nature implies the resolution to avoid falling into the same sins again. The Catechism expresses it succinctly: “Among the penitent’s acts contrition occupies first place. Contrition is ‘sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again’” (CCC 1451).
It will be helpful to recall here what the Catechism says about the two types of contrition: perfect and imperfect. “When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called ‘perfect’ (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible” (CCC 1452).
It should be understood that the perfection of perfect contrition does not lie in the intensity of the sorrow felt, but in the motive for it: sorrow of love, which virtually all acts of contrition express in their wording.
“The contrition called ‘imperfect’ (or ‘attrition’) … is born of the consideration of sin’s ugliness or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner (contrition of fear)” (CCC 1453). This contrition is sufficient in the sacrament of penance, always accompanied by the resolution not to sin again.
It would be a real abuse of the sacrament of penance if the penitent had no intention of trying to avoid falling into the sins again. They would be just using the sacrament to assuage their sense of guilt, perhaps so that they could now go to Communion in the state of grace, while knowing they are going to commit the sins again. Protestants sometimes accuse Catholics of having this attitude.
While the person must have the resolution not to sin again, this is compatible with the knowledge that they will sin again, no matter how hard they try. It is normal to have the experience of fully intending to struggle to avoid the sins, and yet fall again, out of weakness. No one can eliminate all sin from their life, given the weakness of human nature.
The Council of Trent said as much: “If anyone says that a man once justified can sin no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he who falls and sins was never truly justified; or, on the contrary, that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even venial ones, except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Virgin Mary; let him be anathema” (Decree on Justification, Sixth Session, 13 January 1547, Can. 23).
So, no, it is not an abuse of confession to confess the same sins time and again. We all do.
