Parker the Church was established by Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, not the poor soul over there. Or over there (its one on one / personal / also as a Community) This is why the Crucifix is front and center. This is the Priesthood, why we have the Church. It is better to think of yourself as the least among the others. This is where Jesus is always found. Where true peace reigns.
Parker, here is a good short read. Go directly to the page and read what the Church fathers had to say regarding the forgiveness of sins through the whole Church.
catholic.com/library/Confession.asp
**I have to ask again. What fruits can you see that can come out of the Sacrament of confession? **
Let me give you one that I have discovered.
In short it’s the line of Confession. Now a bit more detail:
We have a community penance service this Tuesday night to prepare us for Christ-mas .
We will have four or five Catholic Priest coming from different parts of Utah to be with us so that we have enough of them to hear our confessions. First we will confess together as a community, then we will each enter into a line. What has always struck me with awe is seeing the four our five lines with my peers in them waiting. I also love watching them come out. Some with smiles, some with tears. Then seeing them kneel in our Chapel under the Cross falling into prayer. I go with my wife and it is always a high point in the year.
I also go to confession when me and about 9 others stay at the Huntsville Monastery out of Ogden. This is the Priest I go to:
holytrinityabbey.org/store.html
Its always a joy with him. He kind of has is head down always in prayer peeking up at me with a smile of concern saying repeatedly “you know how much you are loved?” This man is a man of God and he does a fantastic job at connecting me to Jesus in a very special way. He does his job well as a Priest who helps Jesus, works for Jesus during Confession.
Confession from Catholic answers
http://www.catholic.com/library/Confession.asp
Are all of our sins—past, present, and future—forgiven once and for all when we become Christians? Not according to the Bible or the early Church Fathers. Scripture nowhere states that our future sins are forgiven; instead, it teaches us to pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).
The means by which God forgives sins after baptism is confession: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Minor or venial sins can be confessed directly to God, but for grave or mortal sins, which crush the spiritual life out of the soul, God has instituted a different means for obtaining forgiveness—the sacrament known popularly as confession, penance, or reconciliation.
This sacrament is rooted in the mission God gave to Christ in his capacity as the Son of man on earth to go and forgive sins (cf. Matt. 9:6). Thus, the crowds who witnessed this new power “glorified God, who had given such authority to men” (Matt. 9:8; note the plural “men”). After his resurrection, Jesus passed on his mission to forgive sins to his ministers, telling them, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. . . . Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21–23).
Since it is not possible to confess all of our many daily faults, we know that sacramental reconciliation is required only for grave or mortal sins—but it is required, or Christ would not have commanded it.
Over time, the forms in which the sacrament has been administered have changed. In the early Church, publicly known sins (such as apostasy) were often confessed openly in church, though private confession to a priest was always an option for privately committed sins. Still, confession was not just something done in silence to God alone, but something done “in church,” as the
Didache (A.D. 70) indicates.
Penances also tended to be performed before rather than after absolution, and they were much more strict than those of today (ten years’ penance for abortion, for example, was common in the early Church).
But the basics of the sacrament have always been there, as the following quotations reveal. Of special significance is their recognition that confession and absolution must be received by a sinner before receiving Holy Communion, for “[w]hoever . . . eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27).
But One verse does not the teaching of Jesus, encompass, the entire text must be used in context all scripture.
