This doesn't seem relevent to the topic at hand. Isn't this thread a Catholic issue?
Excuse me. I'm sorry. I didn't know this was the Catholic Forum. I thought it was the Religion forum.
Silly me.
Have a nice day.
I believe that is for the poster of the thread and the Admin Moderator/Religion Moderator to decide. Cool it.
The Catholic church is one, holy, catholic (=universal) and apostolic. By definition, any Catholic issue is of utmost relevance to everyone.
Non-Catholics who recognize the relevance of Vatican in their lives deserve a great praise, and we should welcome their questions.
Well, yes, but there are so many myths around "confession," that we, as Catholics, have to understand where other people are coming from.
When I was in grade school, I used to make up things to confess because we had to go to confession on the day before First Friday, so we could all receive the Eucharist as a school body. In third grade, I confessed adultery because I thought it meant I was disrespectful of adults. The priest just ignored it.
My pastor is an expert on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and gives some of the most instructive and interesting homilies on it I've ever heard. He stresses "the view from 20,000 feet." Why am I doing the things I'm doing? What is motivating me (or not motivating me) to be dishonest, or selfish, or to constantly lie? He stresses that we have to get to the bottom of why we do what we do, and confess that, and be forgiven for that, rather than merely walk in and recite lists of sins, as if they were all unrelated.
He's a great confessor. Now, he does something some here would disagree with. At Penance services, he asks that we pick one thing, the big thing, to confess, and talk about why we think we do that. It makes the lines move quicker, but it also makes people think of what motivates them.