AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

•Tory Maguire
•From: News Limited Network
•November 14, 2012

I’ve only ever been to confession twice, both times when I was a young child. The first time I couldn’t think of anything to confess to so I made up some sins and was rewarded with penance of two Hail Marys.

In hindsight the Hail Marys were probably for lying to God. Our parish priest was a good man who would have known when an 8-year-old was talking it up.

But even then it felt very weird to me that children would be expected to enter a dark little box on their own and open up the conversation with: “Forgive me Father for I have sinned”.

Even stranger was that if you’d done something wrong that was the end of it, the priest wouldn’t even tell your Mum.