CONFESSION

Bring what you did.Not who you are.

Confession is for the harm you have actually done and the weight you are actually carrying. Confession for trans people has been misused for a generation as an instrument of shame, and this church will not use it that way. If it has been years, or never, say so and you will be walked through it.

Ask for confession → Pastoral care

On what is not matter for confession

Your existence is not matter for confession. Being trans, being queer, transitioning, your name, your body, your marriage, and your survival are not sins, and no confessor of this church will treat them as sins or accept them as the subject of an absolution.

A stole
on a chair
WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY FOR

Naming the harm, and setting it down.

Confession is for the things you did that hurt someone, including yourself — the cruelty, the lie, the abandonment, the years of contempt you turned inward because you were taught to. You say it out loud to another human being, you hear that it is forgiven, and you stop carrying it alone.

Confession for trans people is not a different rite and not a lesser one; it is this. There is no interrogation and no list to get through. The confessor’s work is to help you name the thing accurately, not to extract more than you came to say. Absolution is given in the Roman Rite of 1962, and nothing about it is conditioned on a promise to become a different kind of person than you are.

Absolute. What is said in sacramental confession is never repeated to anyone, for any reason, under any pressure, and the seal does not expire. It holds if you are furious with this church afterward, if you never speak to us again, and if you go public with everything else about us.
The seal covers sacramental confession and nothing else. Everything learned outside it — in a conversation, an email, a support group, a text message — is not sealed and is reported where the law requires. Oregon clergy are mandatory reporters under ORS 419B.010; clergy-penitent privilege is ORS 40.260 and is narrow. Child abuse concerns go to the Oregon Child Abuse Hotline, 855-503-SAFE (855-503-7233), and that duty is non-dispensable even by the Ordinary.
Say exactly that at the start. You will be walked through it line by line, and the confessor will do the structural work so you can concentrate on what you came to say. Nobody is graded on the form.
No. What was done to you there was spiritual harm, and it is worth naming as such. The Chancery also celebrates a Renunciation of Harmful Teaching for people who want to put that down formally.
Many people come to confession carrying real harm and very little faith. Bring the harm. The sacrament does not require you to have settled the larger question first.
Within sacramental confession, yes — the seal is absolute and this church does not maintain a private exception to it. Outside it, no, and you should assume so. If you are unsure which conversation you are in, ask before you speak; you will be told plainly.

You ask

Use the form or write to the form on the Ask page. You do not have to say what it is about.

A time is set

In person or by voice, at a time that is safe for you. Petitions to the Chancery are answered within two days.

You are told where the seal starts

Before anything else, the confessor states plainly when the sacrament has begun, so you always know which conversation you are in.

Stated every time — not waivable

You say it

In whatever order it comes. You will be helped through the words if you have forgotten them or never learned them.

Absolution

Given in the Roman Rite of 1962. Nothing is written down. No register exists for this sacrament and none ever will.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our iniquities from us.”

Psalm 102:12, Douay-Rheims

Ask for confession

You only need to ask for a time. Nothing you write here is part of the sacrament, so keep it to logistics.

FF_PASTORAL
This form is correspondence, not confession, and is not covered by the seal. It is read by the Office of the Ordinary, never published, and deleted on request.
CONFESSION

You can put it down
and walk out lighter.

Ask for a time. What you bring stays where you bring it, permanently.

Ask → For the exiled