SIN SANDWICH
Confession was the toughest of the Catholic sacraments. The church used to give you thematic buckets that you could use to lump together your sins so that you didn’t really have to go microscopic on how terrible you’ve been. Anything you did that involved your parents was “I disrespected my parents” and then you would attach a rough number of times you did that sort of thing.
“Impure thoughts” was another bucket that was readily available and easily filled. “Twenty three” was always a fair number to use for that one… as long as you didn’t include “a day” to your confession.
Sometimes the trespasses were very real and they didn’t fit into any bucket on their own. These were usually handled with kind but stern advice. And sometimes involved you going back and fixing whatever you did in person.
Those were the ones that made the biggest impressions on me.
