A Malevolent Ritual

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I've been following this phenomenon for weeks and I think it is the modern equalivent of the ancient realization that 'confession heals.' Unfortunately, the Catholics of old institutionalized this healing process by perverting it to their religious purposes. Although they retained the anomyous aspect of confession and made it a sin for such confessions to be revealed by the priests, they in effect cancelled the efficacy of such confessions by demanding that the faithful confess everything to any old priest. This gave the priestly cast much more power than it was entitled to, not only because of what it knew but what the penitent thought it might know.

Kootch just passed by me again on her way to the bathroom (0240). She smiled and said something like, 'Time to go to sleep.' I agree.

But I still have a drink left, undrunk. As I think back to my youthful confessions I remember them as painful experiences, not at all liberating. They were ordeals. I confessed my most grievous sins to those insensitive priests who then prescribed a prayer regimen based on the Rosary. After years of this it dawned on me that here was ritual in a most malevolent form.

Nighty night.