what does mea culpa mean
Look up mea culpa in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that means through my fault and is an acknowledgement of having done wrong. Grammatically, meÄ culpÄ is in the ablative case, with an instrumental meaning.The phrase comes from a prayer of confession of sinfulness, known as the Confiteor, used in the Roman Rite at the beginning of Mass or when receiving the sacrament of Penance.lthough the Confiteor was not then part of the Mass, it was used in administering the sacrament of Penance. In some forms it already included the phrase mea culpa. Thus the 9th-century Paenitentiale Vallicellanum II had a thrice-repeated mea culpa (without maxima) in its elaborate form of the Confiteor.