SHUN CONFESSION IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Catholics have to confess their sins to a priest who then judges if he should forgive them or not. He decides if they are repentant. They are obligated by the Church on pain of mortal sin and eternal hellfire to confess at least once a year.

The Church tells you that if you have “Catholic” guilt go to confession and get the sin forgiven and it will go. That is clear statement that the religion is trying to function as a placebo. Trying to make amends sincerely should lift the guilt not that.  And it is a worry if people are conditioned to feel so guilty that they run to the confessional.

# Making laws that compel people for religious reasons to confess are intrinsically evil. It should be optional.

# Anybody that is really sorry for sin makes amends before they confess where it is possible. For example, the child molester should give all he has to some fund for victims and then confess.

# It is hard to know yourself. You might think you repent the evil deed. It is easy to think that for you will never get the chance to undo it back. You will never prove you would do differently. It is easy to tell yourself you will not do it again. That does not mean that if you could go back in a time machine you would do differently. A resolution not to do it again does not imply that you really deeply regret the past and would not do the evil deed if you could rewind the clock. You may be glad you did it before though you wouldn't do it now or in the future. Being glad to have married Annie does not mean you would marry her in a different past. You think you would not do the evil thing again if time was rewound because it is easy to think it. You do not think it because it is true for you cannot know that. It is not really the repentance it seems to be. The more your repentance is about God and not you or others the more dubious it might be. Would you really be inclined to heed a person who claimed to repent of loving his baby more than God?

# To wipe the slate clean because an unreliable person claims they would do the past differently is really condoning their evil deed. It is trusting the untrustworthy.

# Forgiving is based on the evil person really turning over a new leaf because he or she freely chooses to. Forgiving so that you are free from bitterness is about changing how you feel about the evil and not about loving the other person. It is not really forgiving. Forgiving another who claims to be sorry but who has proven his word is worthless is not forgiving but giving the benefit of the doubt. Real forgiving is about knowing what was intended by the evil and that it is truly repented. The Roman Catholic Church is unconcerned about real forgiveness.

# Aquinas said that love is simply willing what another wills. It is about doing the good to other people that they want done to them. This turns love into something dry and icy. It is baffling how some think confession should be a nice experience. They do not understand the Catholic faith. And the definition of love is so vague it is useless.

# Telling people it is a serious sin not to confess once a year is vindictive.

# Telling people it is a serious sin not to confess serious sin as soon as possible is vindictive.

# Encouraging people to tell their sins is not acceptable when there is insufficient proof that the priest really has a right from God to hear their sins. Confession and the obligation to confess to a priest are based on that right. But there can be no such right when there is no evidence for such a right. There is no need for confession to a priest - if there is then why did God not institute it until this late time in human history? And even if there is a right, the Church has no concern for informing the people of the evidence. You are encouraged to confess without knowing if you should.

# Telling people they must primarily repent because God asks it of them is encouraging them to become psychopaths should they doubt or disbelieve in God. If you love others for God's sake it means you do not really love them except as objects with which to love God. You value them for God not themselves. They are not valued but only treated as valued.

# If you tell God you repent for his sake, that is only words. If you really care about God enough, you will be willing to endure endless and extreme torture at the hands of evil spirits for some good reason and because God's plan requires it. But you are not willing. And if you say you are, that is easy to say when the opportunity is never offered to you. Catholicism demands hypocritical repentance.

# Telling people that serious sins will put them in Hell forever should they die unrepentant is off the scale vindictive. And especially when the serious sins are actually minor - such as masturbation or missing mass on a Sunday or disagreeing with papal dogma.

# Our reason - our power to cast out contradictions in our thinking - is our highest attribute for we cannot truly trust or look after others or ourselves or the truth properly without it or if we ignore it. The alternative is to depend on what our feelings make us want to do and that is dangerous. Our faith in reason is not an act of faith just like faith in religion would be. Some say it is no more convincing than religious faith. Reasonable faith is the only faith we can have. It is not a choice. It does not need evidence for it is something you see is correct just by looking. The confessional is harmful for it has no regard for reason and is not about helping people become more rational.

# No studies are undertaken to ensure that confession really does more good than bad. Nobody cares. The use of anecdotal evidence by the Church that it does some people some good is unimpressive. Such evidence is as manipulative as the anecdotal evidence put out by beauty cream companies and their useless anti-ageing creams.

# Nobody is given guidelines about safe use of the confessional and there is no system for reporting a priest who has behaved inappropriately or who has asked inappropriate questions.

# No priest who would have known who clerical sex abusers were through confession ever asked them to free them from the obligation of the seal so that they could report them or get them professional help. The seal of confession only applies if the penitent wants it to.

# No priest has reported a clerical colleague to the police to stop him abusing children. They could say that the penitent waived the seal of confession. It would only be the penitent's word against theirs. They should lie.

# Taking confession seriously as a deterrent to sin is absurd when it is based on bad rules. It totally opposes the notion that nothing that risks hurting a person should be allowed in religion or in anything. Faith is no excuse.

Some - not all! - Catholics might say confession has been good for them but you see through this when they admit they would rather the priest forgave them after a public confession of sin in a general way and if they didn't have to confess privately. They do not confess properly anyway. What is the point of confessing going to a prostitute without detailing the activities, the reasons and the circumstances? If A is married to a good wife, that makes his evil worse than it would be if she were slightly less good. The confession is really about wiping guilt feelings and not the evil within. The evil within may still be dealt with - that is in spite of confession and not because of it.

Confession to a priest should be shunned. To be silent is to let the priest promote and enable the evil system. It is not on. Do not demean yourself by saying nothing.