How to Make a Good Confession: A Pocket Guide to Reconciliation with God

by John A. Kane and Fr John A. Kane

Book Overview

How to make your Confessions less difficult and more fruitful.

If you still drag your feet about going to Confession, here's the help you need to enable you to overcome your reluctance and open your soul to the vast reservoir of mercy found in Confession.

This down-to-earth, practical guide shows you how to transform your confessions from embarrassing moments in a dark room into profound experiences of God's love. The author, Fr. John Kane, provides solid guidelines for how you can (and must) make the most effective possible use of the sacrament of Reconciliation. Even better, he shows you how to carry the grace of Confession into your daily life, so that you'll start winning - consistently - your battles against sin.

This is a book you can return to again and again in order to renew your sense of God's mercy - as well as to gain Fr. Kane's help in examining your conscience and bringing your life into greater conformity with the light of the gospel.

Get Fr. Kane's help to confess well and avoid sin:

One truth you must realize, or you'll never drive sin from your soulTwo reasons why God forgives sin, but still punishes the sinnerThree characteristics of the truly forgiven sinner: do you have them?Your past sins: startling ways they can help you love God more todayTrue repentance and its counterfeits: three ways to find the genuine articleHow to tell whether you're sorry for your sins - even if you don't feel sorryThe embarrassment of going to Confession - how it can actually help you imitate Christ The heavy price of your sins: no, you probably don't realize it, and yes, it's worse than you thinkWhy hating sin does not mean hating the sinnerWhy true saints will always consider themselves sinnersSorrow for sin: how it deepens your compassion for othersHow to take advantage of Lent each year to overcome your sinsAnd much more that will help you get more spiritual fruit out of Confession than you may even have thought was possible

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1928832296
• ISBN13: 9781928832294
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Great for a Catholic growing in Faith

I agree that this isn't a great text for beginning Catholics or those new to the Faith, but better for a Catholic looking for answers on Confession, Penance, Reconcilliation and Sin. The reflections on the 10 commmandments are great. Remember folks, the original publication date was 1943, pre-Vatican II.

Difficult things

Thinking is difficult, and meditation is difficult, and meditative silence over a long period of time is very difficult, because we are in a society which doesn't allow for any of this. Television, movies, sports, all fill our brains and have done so since the 1950s. So to read a book for one's benefit which was written before that time is to enter a privileged world, a deep silence. I highly recommend this to anyone who desires to know God and himself better. I was not upset by either the writing style (which I thought very readable) or the Biblical innacurracies (the Mary things are debatable, and in all else, this was an incredibly Biblical book) but was challanged by the whole premise of repentance. Protestants gave up Confession long ago, and most Catholics only recently. Yet Christ says, "Unless you repent . . ." Maybe that's what's wrong with the world.

Great for the advanced reader

I purchased this book for someone new to the Catholic Faith and who wanted a better understanding of Confession--how to do it, the "procedure" of this beautiful Sacrament, points to examine ones conscious. They began reading the book and gave it back to me because the writing style/use of big words was too difficult. So I read the book myself and I wouldn't recommend it for the beginner, but it's very good for one a bit more advanced. This book spends most of it's time helping one to gain a deeper understanding of the gravity of sin. The appendix includes the "process" of Confession and many wonderful questions to examine ones conscious to each of the Ten Commandments. I kept the book and will read it again, but I would not recommend it to someone new to the Faith.