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"There are great Catholics in public life like Limbaugh, OReilly, Hannity, Justices Roberts, Alito, and Scalia. But then Kennedy, Pelosi, Kerry, and Biden get to call themselves Catholic, too. How can one church encompass both opposites? I read that the Vatican supported the proposed gun ban in Brazil last year, too? What about somebody floating the idea of forgiving Judas? Just what the hell is the Roman Catholic Church about?"

Have you never read the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares? (Matthew 13:24-30) Hypocritical Catholics will always be sowed within the Church. We ALL need the mercy of God, so it's a matter of degree and not kind. The hypocrites you cite and a host of others aren't fooling God, I assure you. As for the priests and bishops, well, the Church is being chastised by God at this time for those publicly scnadalous sins within the ranks of the clergy, although such men are still a small minority of the total. I know. I life at Ground Zero for the mess here in the US: Boston. Nevertheless, we are not Donatists. To labor under the delusion of clerical perfectionism is a pointless exercise. These men are sinners. All of them. WHo denies it? THEY have to confess their sins, too. Failure on their part to do so will be dealt with by God accordingly. Nevertheless, Jesus meant what He said when He endowed the apostles - all of them sinful men, too - with the power to forgive sins or retain them (John 20:23). In order to forgive or retain any man's sins, the apostles, their successor bishops, and their helper priests, MUST know what those sins are. There is no getting around it.

I don't know *anyone* who "likes" confession as an exercise. The penitents don't like it because it's potentially embarrassing and too introspective for a lot of people's comfort zone; the priests don't like it because it is similarly uncomfortable for them sometimes and can take on the character of a chore if that tendency isn';t actively controlled. Yet we Catholics and Orthodox *do* this anyway. It is Jesus' command. He knows our hearts far better than we know them ourselves. He knows that going through the process of confessing sins to another man, being uncomfortable, is far more likely to spur avoidance of sin than merely looking skyward and saying "sorry!" to God directly (though that should be done, too, of course, even before hitting the confessional, as repentance starts interiorly BEFORE one is motivated to go to confession).

At any rate, the plain words of Christ Himself mandate the need for this Sacrament. His own words make this process "normative" for the forgiveness of sins. I'd be very uncomfortable indeed reading John 20:23 if I were in your shoes.