The Death of Confession...

As I was checking msnbc.com yesterday for some news - something I compulsively do about 10 times per day, I ran across the following story - which talks about the efforts of the Catholic church to combat the shrinking number of parishioners who are going to confession.

I have two thoughts about this story and its implications for the church - both Catholic and otherwise.  First, this trend of people not participating in confession should not be surprising. Few people would deny that, over the last few years, we have seen an erosion of the concept of "wrong" in our culture.  The "true for you but not for me" idea has led to a hands off, laissez-faire approach to morality in which nothing is truly out of bounds unless it breaks the law, and even then its debatable.  

Given that climate, is it all that surprising that confession is decreasing?  After all, if I have done nothing that is "wrong," then I have nothing to confess.  I think the shrinking confession is a symptom not necessarily of a decreased piety but of a misunderstanding of the fundamental-to-faith concept of sin.

Which leads me to my second observation - this is a bad thing for ALL churches.  Without understanding my own sinfulness, I cannot recognize my own need for forgiveness and thus will not turn to Christ.  Without sin, there is no salvation - though that sounds extreme, it is nonetheless true, just as the maxim, "without pain, there could be no pleasure" is true.  

More than anything else, the erosion and deconstruction of sin worries me.  I'm not worried about postmodernism or post-post-modernism or whatever comes next.  I'm not worried about new historical and scientific discoveries.  But I most certainly AM worried about sin.  And I have no idea how to deal with it.