When I was about to be ordained, it occurred to me that there was something particularly strange about the sacrament of confession. (I suppose this occurred to me because suddenly I would be in the position of having to hear confessions.) I had seen and participated in all the other sacraments in a public way; but the only confessions I had experienced were my own--private conversations with a priest, before God, but still, unlike any other sacrament, private.
In Commonweal's ...