Confessions are not processed or analysed; they're told in a moment of desperation to a priest or to somebody interrogating you about a crime.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you have never been tortured, or locked up and verbally threatened, you may find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to something he had not done. Intuition holds that the innocent do not make false confessions.
People plead guilty or admit to crimes they didn't commit for various reasons. Certain interrogation procedures produce high rates of false confessions.
There are, I believe, many more false confessions to murders than true confessions.
You can't legislate into existence an act of forgiveness and a true confession; those are mysteries of the human heart, and they occur between one individual and another individual, not a panel of judges sitting asking questions, trying to test your truth.
To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn't confessed was a minor detail.
Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
I have hardly detained the reader long enough on the subject, to give him a just impression of the stress laid on confession. It is one of the great points to which our attention was constantly directed.
The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed.
Confession alone is not necessarily good for the soul.
The end of confession is to tell the truth to and for oneself.