Hey now, that T-shirt is intended to be a recognition on the part of that girl that she tends to be a princess, that she is aware of it, and that she's working on it... it's a joke. But it's a sort of confession in and of itself. So I don't really have a problem with that one.
My fear is what if I'm not ready to change? What if I go in and tell the priest I smoke, but I don't think I can quit now without screwing up my diet, or I'm just not ready to deal with that? OK, so maybe I've been at odds with God over this issue for some time and now I'm facing it square on. But can't you see how hard that is to face? How can I be absolved if I can't obey?
Same for other obsessive/compulsive sorts of things. I've whipped the drinking, drugs, sex (for now) but... I'm not pure.
"My fear is what if I'm not ready to change? What if I go in and tell the priest I smoke, but I don't think I can quit now without screwing up my diet, or I'm just not ready to deal with that? OK, so maybe I've been at odds with God over this issue for some time and now I'm facing it square on. But can't you see how hard that is to face? How can I be absolved if I can't obey?"
I should point out that I'm not a theologian and I don't play one on TV. From my perspective, I'd have to ask the question: are you engaged in the sinful behavior at the point when you're at confession? I'd say probably not. To say that you would be unable to turn away from sin with God's help tends to suggest that there is an underlying issue of faith that perhaps should be explored.
Of course people backslide. And of course people continue to sin in spite of their efforts to improve. To use a minor example, I quit smoking years ago, and I still want a cig from time to time. In my past I've started smoking only to quit again.
Re-naming "confession" the rite of reconciliation is one of the few occasions where I've really liked a renaming; in general I find re-naming of things to be a process of adding euphemisms, of "spinning" what the real underlying meaning is of something. In my view, the rite of reconciliation really gets to the nut of what we're talking about.
Our popular culture, particularly cinema, has profaned confession and the rite of reconciliation to the point where we view it as a sort of 'going in for a spanking from dad'. That completely misses the point. The point in my view is the process of reconciliation with God and improving ourselves to be more worthy of his grace. It's a process and not without it's bumps in the road. We're not perfect and not expected to be, but we are expected to constantly strive towards improvement.