BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

December 21, 2017

By Peter Gelzinis

No hiding sins of the cloth from God

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

To grow up Catholic is to have those words burned into your consciousness by the age of seven. When I recited them for the first time, I was kneeling in the dark, confessing what few sins I could imagine to a voice on the other side of an opaque window.

But I still recall feeling “cleansed” when the priest forgave my childish sins and told me to say three “Hail Marys” and a good Act of Contrition.

In time, Catholics come to understand that the sacrament of penance, or confession, is actually a dress rehearsal for Judgment Day, when we will all have to come clean for real before the Lord.

For Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, Judgment Day arrived Tuesday, when…