I had attended a rather interesting session yesterday in cosdu. Interesting- because of the speaker, Fr Robbins with his cute gestures (but his tone of speech can put people off sometimes, as he can end up mumbling to himself), the topic and the questions we asked. Nevertheless, his session is informative and enriching.

The session is about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Why do we need to go for confession? Why must we confess to a priest and not confess directly to God?

I remembered his first response to the question on why do we need to go to a priest for confession is why do we need to go to church to be baptised if we can actually 'join the church' just by saying to God 'I want to join the faith'. He quoted the scripture John 20 where Jesus told his disciples 'if you forgive people sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven'. So Jesus has given the power to his apostles to forgive sins, and since the priest are the 'descendants' of the apostle, we should confess our sins to the priest.

Someone asked the defination of 'grave sin'. Well, for a sin to be considered grave, it must be a grave sin (duh), there must be self consent and knowledge (that the sin is wrong). Some questions asked 'Are priests allowed to disclose other people's sin under ALL circumstances?' Someone actually gave an example of what if someone confesses that he killed the priest's mother... *shocked*...

After the session, we went for our dinner as usual and went to a pub for drinks. I ordered a non alcoholic drink as usual and actually learned to play pool. Well, dinner session and the drinking session is indeed an eye opener as I start to learn some secrets, e.g. the couples in cosdu etc.

Oh well, going to get back to my essay question.