Invalid Absolutions?

I had to ring a priest friend for advice this morning – had the priest who'd heard my confession absolved me using a valid formula? would I have to go to confession again?

The "visiting priest" officiating in the confessional had said "...I absolve you from your sins, and may almighty God bless you, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".  Now, interpolating a blessing was all very nice, but misguided – it left me puzzled and upset, trying to work out if I had to go to confession again.

My friend told me over the phone that this formula was invalid – I had rather hoped it wasn't – but that I would not need to go to confession again, as the Church supplies (Ecclesia supplet).

The same problem comes up regularly here in Launceston: another priest, the usual confessor in fact, always ends a divergent version of the absolution with "I absolve you from your sins, Father, Son and Holy Spirit".  Now, I suspect he is not attempting to absolve the Trinity, nor enumerating my sins as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but this odd apparent vocative or accusative, missing out "in the name of" by some sort of elision, is quite serious, and could invalidate it also, my interlocutor told me this morning.  It is at the least grammatically incoherent.

I was advised over the phone, therefore, to explain to the priest (if it happen again) that I have a Theology degree, and therefore know of what I speak, and then to get the priest to say the correct words...

This happened to me once some years ago – the priest tried, three times, to say the formula right, without success, and finally I had to say, "Father, repeat after me", and I taught it to him!!!  (To be fair, he told me afterward he had suffered a lapse of memory, and was going to bring the words written out with him in future.)

As I said to my friend very testily, if these priests can't learn the correct formula, let alone make up some sentimental nonsense of their own, they have no business being priests – let them go and dig holes, since literacy is not required in that case!

Another thought: after the words of consecration at Mass (the same in every Eucharistic Prayer), the sacramental formula most used by priests would be the words of absolution, since I doubt the average priest baptizes more than he shrives.  It is therefore most damning for a priest not even to know the correct words with which to absolve – it is after all easily found in the relevant liturgical book.

The lips of a priest should drip wisdom, and his flock seek God's law from his mouth, since he is an angel of the Lord (cf. Mal. ii, 7).  We have instead too many stammering, shitten shepherds, through sheer ignorance neglecting, even harming their flocks.

All this reminds me of the thousands of invalidly baptized babies in Brisbane, albeit in that case there was heretical malice aforethought, the priests involved wickedly refusing to employ the Trinitarian formula due to their fanatical misbelief.  It took Roman pressure to force the lazy Archbishop there to stop winking at their crimes and finally, after decades, to suspend them from the ministry.

I do feel rather aggrieved by all this – I just hope I haven't sinned again by slagging off at clerical misbehaviours, given that I have only this morning confessed, and, I think, been forgiven my own sins.  It's all very confusing.  And people wonder why I prefer the Traditional forms of the Sacraments... well, for a start there's more security that they'll be confected aright: those who use such forms tend to be careful, and not inclined to make it up as they go along.