Obvious, really...

The Church recently came up with a brilliant idea, which I'm sure you all know. But first, I want to comment on why. Consider the following statement:
"surveys showed 60 per cent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession."

From this, we could draw one of two conclusions. One, Catholics are now sinning less than before. Two, sin isn't a big deal.

One would mean that religion works, two means that a bigger stick is needed. Clearly there is only one possible conclusion, and the view that needs to be taken into account is that the Church is a position of (self-selected) authority and needs to maintain that authority at any account.

If one will allow a moments digression into the bible not being the word of a god, consider that one great way to force authority is to accuse people of doing things that make them bad people, and those things are things that every person does. Such as, for example, feel lust, envy, pride...

Back to the survey, we have an "authority" wanting to maintain authority, and a survey that says that people that follow that authority aren't confessing sins. Yes, there is only one possible option: create new sins that everyone does (although in this case, that science does) so people can be made out to be "bad" all over again.

[END]