Why don't Catholics go to confession any more — or, more precisely, why do so many go so seldom? Here is an old problem that doesn't seem to be getting better. Evidently we need to dig deeper into its causes and solutions.

In a book-length interview called God and the World (Ignatius Press, 2002), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now, Pope Benedict XVI — acknowledged that the "misuse of guilt feelings" can occur. But something even worse, he said, was "to extinguish the capacity for recognizing guilt." The Nazis sought systematically to do that.

Are we once again reaching that point? A Catholic friend once informed me he hadn't been to confession in years and added, "I don't feel any need for it." To be sure. The relevant question is: Why not?

I can think of several possible reasons.

One is the idea that sin — sin in general and my sin in particular — doesn't amount to much. Is it so? "If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt, Lord, who would survive?" That's Psalm 130 speaking, and the same question is repeated over and over in the psalms and the Old Testament. As for the New Testament: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8). Are we to think the Bible is pulling our legs?

Another reason for skipping confession is the notion that God forgives sins outside the sacrament of penance. And so He does. But a Catholic who accepts the Church's teaching that Christ instituted this sacrament for the forgiveness of sin must accept the corollary that this is how Christ ordinarily wants our sins to be forgiven and is, exceptional circumstances aside, the necessary means of forgiveness in the case of mortal sin.

People who resort to this rationalization also need to ponder this question: If God forgives my sins outside the sacrament of penance, just when does that forgiving take place? Shall we suppose that if enough time elapses, the fact that we have sinned will slip God's mind? It seems a great deal more likely that we will forget than that he will.

A third reason offered for skipping the sacrament is that nobody goes to hell — either because there is no hell or because no one goes there in actual fact. The only reasonable reply to this is: How can you be sure?

On this point, too, Scripture's testimony is profoundly different. Jesus speaks about hell and about people being there — the rich man in the story of Lazarus and the rich man, a disturbingly large number of people in the Last Judgment account in Matthew 25. Not to put too fine a point on it, the casual denial of hell appears to be one more aspect of the corrosive sentimentality currently corrupting so much religious thought.

What can be done about these confused attitudes and bad ideas? One thing that could and should occur is a return to regular preaching about the sacrament of penance and the reason it's needed — sin. These matters are seldom discussed from many pulpits today. But if confession is going to make a comeback, earnest pastoral salesmanship will be required.

In the interview mentioned above, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of how hard it is for people to "cross the threshold of personal confession" in this individualistic age. Still, he insisted, it "can be learned anew. Above all because this is not an admission of guilt before men, but before God, and because it ends with the word of forgiveness."