Against The Grain

But no man is without sin, and although every sin is the denial and betrayal of Chris, yet in his mercy and our true contrition and confession of our sins with meekness and humility and the long suffering desire of amendment brings us forgiveness.

Nowadays the utterances of confessions on paper bears the stigma of hypocrisy, for it is too easy to cry out for our sins without true contrition, and to proclaim them without ourselves believing them to be sins. And those who read them also do not believe these things to be sins.

- Thomas Merton, 09/13/39 [Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation [The Journal of Thomas Merton, Volume 1: 1939-1941]. ].