i was raised a protestant and protestants don't have "confession." protestants don't go to a priest - or a pastor - and confess their sins. protestants confess their sins to God directly in prayer and sometimes in collective prayer during services. i like that.
i like catholic confession better.
without focusing on the theological basis and tradition for it, here's why:
it makes me feel waaaaaaaaay better than all the private prayers between "just me and God" ever did. waaaaaaaaaay better. it also makes me feel better than communal confession ever did (although communal confession, for me at least, was more relieving than private. and, for those of you who might not know, catholics have communal confession, too - every mass).
private confession, good as it is, is shy a couple eggs of a dozen. the benefit of confessing one's sins to someone in the flesh is sort of like an alcoholic who first admits (however grudgingly) to himself that he's an alcoholic and then goes to AA and tells the whole wide world about it.
confessing sins in front of another person, especially a person who has the ordained power to act through Christ and give human voice to the forgiveness of those sins, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. if you don't think so, you've either never tried it or you've tried it but perhaps with the wrong understanding of it or attitude about it. perhaps both.
to take the value of confession to a priest to an even deeper level, i do not confess anonymously - i confess face-to-face or, in cases where that is not available, i tell the priest who is hearing my confession what my name is. it's as different from "faceless" confession as flirting is from orgasm. ok. so bad choice of analogy. forgive me, father. :)
when i converted to catholicism in 1994, i struggled with many of its teachings, confession to a priest being one of the chief ones. i didn't really have too many (any?) well-thought out reasons why i objected to it - nothing, really, more substantial than i didn't think it was necessary - and i resisted it for quite some time.
i was wrong.
the degree to which one feels an overwhelmingly powerful - yes, even to the point of tears - sense of relief and release - but even more importantly, a sense of re-connection to Christ, is simply without equal in the protestant form of confession.
the protestant form of confession is good. very good.
i submit ( respectfully, cuz i've been on the protestant side) that the catholic one is better.
(try it.)
:)
