Fr. Alfred Wilson, perhaps the best-known English-language confessor of the mid-20th century, brought great hope to countless conscientious people who were trying to conquer faults and to understand how Confession could help them work out a better spiritual life. Among his themes in three wide-ranging and practical essays:
- Remorse or repentance: what is required for true contrition?
- What it means to make a firm purpose of amendment
- The conditions for a valid confession
- Reducing, but not eliminating, our sins—the surprising truth about what the Church requires
- Proper formation of resolutions
- The benefits of human weakness
- Reasons for our failure to improve in the spiritual life
- Proper motives for confession
- The danger of “spiritual myopia”
- “The remedy for all our failures is to love God more”
- Approaching the sacrament of confession with appropriate confidence
- What is required for adequate reparation for sin
- Growing out of “emotional infancy”
- Avoiding the “mirage of routinism