Lander, WY – June 25, 2022.
According to an inside source, members of the Wyoming Catholic College (WCC) chaplaincy department are weighing options for better helping penitents in the coming school year who show up to Confession with unusual frequency. Coming up with better processes for confession at WCC is extremely important due to its infamously long confession lines that extend all the way out of its chapels in both the Roman and Byzantine rites. However, because of the seal of Confession, finding solutions has proven more difficult than first anticipated. Neither of the school’s chaplains being able to reveal anything about demographics or particular individuals that tend to show up outside of the Sacrament, they just proposed that it seemed likely that some people probably show up more often than others, whether from an excess of sinfulness or because of scrupulosity, which amounts to more or less the same thing.
However, they did determine a middle ground of sorts. Reasoning that, “He knows who they are,” they established a tier system to be used during the usual intercessory prayers. “Regulars” were determined to be those who would avail themselves of the Sacrament not more frequently than once in a month. Those who might show up twice in the average month were called “Bonus Points.” Weekly penitents, they termed, “Weekly Specials.” Daily attendees, further, are termed, “Daily Scruples.”
All of these are subcategories of a broader category of what the Chaplaincy terms “high-maintenance Catholics”, a category into which are placed most of the college’s students, faculty, staff, and their families. Taking care of these Catholics’s spiritual needs requires a lot more effort by the chaplains and the chaplaincy, and while the WCC chaplaincy wants to reward attempts at growing in holiness, it also wants to ensure that its services are “fair and equitable.” To this end, the so-called “frequently flyer program” for penitents will give “tiered benefits” that “help them efficiently and effectively along their journey while helping the chaplaincy serve its other customers just as well” according to the head of the WCC chaplaincy department, Pius Tentherson.
“Regulars” will receive a special express “confession-line” as well as the ability to sign-up for and reserve confession slots in advance once a month. Within confession itself, they will receive expedited “bullet point” advice from the priest as well as a rushed prayer of absolution, “since they already know it.”
“Bonus-point” members in the program will receive the above benefits as well as special advice on how to more “prudently and succinctly perform an examination of conscience.” They will also receive the ability to write out their sins on a special form to be read by the priest ahead of time rather than the more time-consuming and repetitive process of confessing them out loud. Alternatively, they will also have the option of simply telling the priest that they are confessing, “the usual,” while making their confession.
“Weekly Specials” will have all of the above as standard, as well as the ability to pre-pay, or, that is, “pre-perform their penances” ahead of time.
“Daily Scruples” members will have all of the above benefits as well as the ability to perform their confession over the phone with a priest.
“We’re looking into AI solutions for confession as well in order to further expedite confessions and reduce long wait times,” Pius Tentherson commented. “However, we’re not yet sure about the canonical validity of ordaining such intelligences. We know they would offer better advice than any priest, but WCC also might not be a good place to launch such a system in the spirit of its technology policy and all.”
Anyone who meets the attendance qualifications of the Sacrament of Reconciliation for each tier at Wyoming Catholic College will automatically be enrolled in the program.