Huffpost Politics The Blog   Christopher Brauchli Headshot
Cigarettes and Sinners  Posted: Updated:  "Confession of our
faults is the next thing to innocence." -- Publilius Syrus,
Maxim 1060 (First Century b.c.)  I'd rather be a Catholic than a
cigarette company. Confessions are done in private, and priests
(and God) are more forgiving of past transgressions than the
Justice Department (and judges.) As Catholic On-Line explains
it, "The basic requirement for a good Confession is to have the
intention of returning to God like the "prodigal son" and to
acknowledge our sins with true sorrow before the priest." Once a
Catholic has confessed to a specific sin in the privacy of the
Confessional, the appropriate punishment is imposed by the
priest and the penitent can go on about his/her business
confident that the transgression has been forgiven. The Pope's
confessional is a kind of one stop shopping for forgiveness
whereas the legal confessional, at least as interpreted by Judge
Gladys Kessler of the U.S. Distric